On July 27, six hundred people came to the Delmar Theater in Medina to hear about Charlie Stielow. They came in wagons, buggies, and on foot from all points within a radius of ten miles. Grace, who had been on the trail of some leads in Shelby, arrived during the day. Sophie got reports at her bedside.
When the lights dimmed and the clapping stopped, Misha Appelbaum walked to the microphone. “For the sake of the spirit of 1776,” he shouted, “we must save this great, dumb giant in the shadow of death!” Dr. Frederick Parsons was next. He was an alienist who worked out of Sing Sing to evaluate, when necessary, the mental state of prisoners during their appeals. Parsons had examined Stielow at length and wanted to share his conclusions.
“He is little more than a clod of earth,” Parsons said of Stielow.
Parsons was followed by Kohn, who, without any variance of tone or emotion, gave a step-by-step description of how Charlie would die in the electric chair. He told them all how Charlie would be strapped in, the skullcap placed on his head, and the switches flipped to unleash searing volts of lightning through his body. The crackling current, blue and wide, would stop his heart cold after two or three pulls.
The room was silent when Grace then walked up the wooden planks of the stage, dressed in her customary black. She told the audience a few facts about the case and how she hoped that they would be convincing to the governor. But when Grace realized that she was speaking to the people, and not the governor, she took a breath, and started telling a different story. Grace told that dark theater how she had visited the Stielow family home that afternoon. When Grace walked in, their mother dried her hands on her apron as Grace was immediately swarmed by the Stielow children. In the theater, Grace then held up the letter she borrowed from Charlie, written by Ethel, his eleven-year-old daughter. Grace read the words in a trembling voice. When she got to the end, she explained how Ethel signed it with fifty kisses and the message “May these be a blessing to your heart.” With that, Grace gestured to her left. There, in a private box, was the Stielow family, all of them except their father, who was far away, locked in a cell. Grace motioned for Ethel to come up to the stage. The little girl stared out at the crowd. She looked out at all the faces behind heavy glasses. She said, in a very small voice, “I know Papa is innocent,” and her words became water. Grace helped her off the stage to applause.
Inez then alighted on the stage as if on a breeze. “My friends, you are your brother’s keeper,” she sang out. She said that the only man she had brought with her on the trip from New York City was the most powerful man she knew—her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The crowd thundered their approval. Everyone knew who she was. She was married now, to a Dutchman named Eugen, but Inez still stood for suffrage, “avid for life and impatient for a world fit to live in.” Inez loudly accused Governor Whitman of treating this case, with his endless indecision, as a stepping stone to some greater political office. He was a notoriously deadly government servant and had even sent NYPD lieutenant Charles Becker to the chair for killing a small-fry casino owner in front of the Hotel Metropole. “Have mercy on us, dear Jesus,” Becker had cried, as the black helmet covered his face. When the current flowed and Becker pushed against the groaning leather straps, his lips pulled across his teeth as the crucifix he held in his hand dropped to the cement floor.
“Society is the better,” Inez shouted, “the kinder, for the distillation of the milk of human kindness. The worst that can happen is that a murderer should receive life imprisonment instead of death.” When she finished, her chin high, the deafening cheers seemed to press against the wooden floors and walls.
As Sophie sat by the phone that night in nervous anticipation, the team finished gathering over five hundred signatures. Inez was the first to call and tell her how well it went. The Stielow family retired to the nearby Hart Hotel. They had never been to such a place before and ate a meal there as a family. Or the closest to one they could be. They wore plain blue summer clothes. Roy, the youngest boy, who didn’t understand where his papa was, grinned behind his shiny spoon. It broke his mother’s heart.
The plan was that the Stielows would travel with Kohn and Applebaum to Albany to make one last plea to the governor. After that, they would go on to Sing Sing and take Charlie home. Alive or not. When a newspaperman asked Ethel if she was looking forward to the trip, she said, “We’ll be awfully glad to see Papa.” The Stielows’ trip was completely paid for by a collection taken up by the other fifteen residents of the Death House at Sing Sing. The warden couldn’t remember a stranger, or more telling, invitation.
But Grace was not going to Albany. She was going back to work. The rally was a nice gesture, perhaps even necessary for the press, but it was not going to stop Charlie Stielow from going to the electric chair. Grace knew that. They needed to work for some luck. The next day, Grace got a call from Mrs. Voorhees, a woman who lived on a farm near the Phelps place. She told Grace that five days after the murders, a hobo had come to see her. Grace had been looking for a ragman for weeks. Mrs. Voorhees said that this man had said something very puzzling.
In Albany the next afternoon, Charlie’s legal team, fresh from the rally the night before, emerged from their long meeting with Governor Whitman with grim looks and long faces. In the governor’s office, their evidence had consisted of affidavits, forensics that the bullets contained marks that proved them not to have been fired from a pistol found in the barn, and the words of three physicians—including Dr. Bernard Glueck, one of the leading alienists in the world—that Charlie Stielow did not commit the crime.
Whitman said his decision was final.