Inez arrived soon after, and they realized the brief they had prepared was not completely ready. So, at the suggestion of the policeman, the motorcars put off at full speed for the all-night Western Union telegraph office on 125th Street. As they spilled in, they saw only one typewriter on the premises. As Kohn finished up his last revisions with a pen, Inez dictated the final lines of the brief to Eugen, who plucked out the letters on the keys.
When they returned back to Convent Avenue, Justice Guy was waiting in his library. It was a quarter past four in the morning. Charlie Stielow was scheduled to die at quarter to six. Inez showed him the affidavits and evidence. The Justice read them thoughtfully, with no sense of anger. When he was done, he agreed that this new evidence must be considered and issued a stay of execution until eleven o’clock that night.
Justice Guy picked up the phone and asked for Sing Sing. Once the connection to the prison was established, Guy was informed that both Assistant Warden Miller and Warden Osborne had left in protest of Charlie’s pending execution, leaving Principal Keeper Dorner in charge. Justice Guy told him that the execution was to be put on hold. But Dorner replied that, unless the order for the stay bearing the justice’s signature was physically put into his hands, he must proceed with the execution as planned. Those were the rules.
Stielow was scheduled to die in a little over an hour and it was twenty-seven miles to Sing Sing.
Kohn, who was normally the quiet, matter-of-fact one, sprung to action. He had a fast motor and was positive he could make it. So, at twenty-two minutes to five o’clock, Kohn started off with the signed order for the stay in his pocket. The policeman called Central and told them not to interfere with a speeding car headed for Sing Sing.
Kohn had devoted his life to the absolute nature of the law. But tonight, as he barreled up the road in the dark, pushing his mechanical car past its limits, he was consciously doing the opposite in favor of what he perceived as the greater good. As he passed through Yonkers, a cop who had missed the order jumped out in back of him and shot at the back of his tires. Kohn kept going.
There was a hint of dark blue in the sky above Sing Sing by now. It was five o’clock in the morning when the thirteen witnesses were summoned to the Death House.
On the other side of a partition, the executioner was tinkering with the apparatus attached to the squat black chair. Stielow had already said good-bye to his wife and two little children earlier that night. The children were asleep as Laura Stielow waited on the veranda of the warden’s house, watching the sun rise over the blocky prison buildings, coming up behind the Westchester hills.
Dorner alone knew that a stay might be coming, but he didn’t tell anyone because it was still such a long shot. He had no idea if that had really been Judge Guy. Still, Dorner stood at the outer door of the prison, glancing at his watch and praying for time. Dorner knew Charlie Stielow and did not want to officiate his killing.
As the sky tipped to yellow, the honking of a horn was heard on the road. At twenty-three minutes past five, Kohn’s car turned the corner and flew toward Dorner, his hand outstretched from the automobile’s window. Dorner ran alongside the car and snatched the letter. As he disappeared inside, Kohn’s car finally reached a halt, and he followed Dorner inside, running.
At home, Sophie Loeb was trying to stare at the clock and the telephone at the same time. When the phone rang, as she knew it finally would, she answered it. It was Kohn. He had gotten to Sing Sing with only fifteen minutes to spare. Charlie was saved.
That afternoon, Inez and Mr. Kohn finished up the full paperwork and submitted it to Justice Guy. He issued an order returnable in Rochester on the twenty-third of the next month to show cause why a new trial should not be granted to Charles Stielow. Justice Guy ordered a stay until after the hearing and determination of the motion. As both attorneys got some much-needed sleep, Sophie Loeb was visited by Mrs. Stielow and her children, who wanted to give their thanks in person. As they surrounded her bed with smiles and small hands, Sophie was overwhelmed by their bright-eyed gratitude. But she knew that Charlie was not wholly out of the woods yet. They had to find new evidence that would finally reunite him with his family, once and for all, outside of prison walls.
In a small room in the Little Valley sheriff’s office, Grace Humiston had her eyes finally fixed on Erwin King, the man whom she had been chasing around upstate New York for the better part of the summer. At two separate times over the past few months, she thought she had been fairly close to being shot in her pursuit of him. In the end, Grace had finally just gotten lucky. The sheriff found King working odd jobs at a hotel. They snatched him up right away and called Grace. The crowded room included Sheriff Nichols and his wife; the justice of the peace, Pratt; the surrogate, Larkin; and Martha Hughes, a stenographer. It was August 10, just over ten days since Charlie Stielow had come a quarter turn of the clock away from being killed.
Grace sat down across from King. He was tall (over six feet) and dirty, but his clean-shaven face was self-assured. Grace nodded to Larkin. She wanted him to ask the questions so that there would be no question of impropriety. She had ridden with King in the car all the way from Buffalo just to get a read on him. King seemed surprised that she actually had some power here.
“Do you know what the statement you are making is?” Larkin asked.
“Yes,” King replied.
“Do you know what it might mean?”
“I do not know whether it will be the electric chair or life sentence.”
Larkin paused. “Knowing that this might mean the electric chair for you, will you still make this statement?”
“Yes, sir. I have got to a stage where I do not care.”
“Would you just as soon make this attempt if you knew that it meant the electric chair?”
“Yes; I feel that I ought to.”
“Is it the truth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Has any one threatened you if you did not?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you had anything to drink to-day?”
“Not a drop.”
“Are you ready to make a statement in regard to the Phelps murder at West Shelby?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now go ahead and tell us what you know of this murder.”
“I got up to Medina on a Sunday around toward 4 o’clock, and went into Kelly’s Hotel and got to drinking,” King said. “I was drinking beer and something else in this hotel, on the back sitting room, as the bar was closed. No one was there but the bartender. I was there two hours, or perhaps longer. I do not know just what time it was when I left, but it was dark and the lights were on. I met O’Connell on the corner of Main and Centre Streets and he said that he wanted me to take a ride with him, and I said all right.”