The Mad Sculptor (34 page)

It was immediately clear that Sullivan had no intention of letting the New York City police reap all the glory for the capture of America’s
most high-profile fugitive. Demanding to see the official arrest warrant, he ordered Owens to stay put. Minutes later, a squad of Chicago police officers burst into the sheriff’s office and took Irwin into custody.
³

With Owens and Crimmins beside him and his press retinue following close behind, Irwin was driven to Chief Sullivan’s office, where—much to the chagrin of the two New York City detectives—it was discovered that the arrest warrant had been made out for “Arthur Irwin.” A wire was immediately dispatched to Commissioner Valentine, requesting an amended document.

While awaiting a reply, Sullivan—determined to grab as much attention as possible before relinquishing Irwin—staged an elaborate charade for the benefit of the press. Before an audience of fifty newspapermen and an equal number of police officials, Bob—smiling, joking, and generally basking in the limelight—was paraded through the booking process. After being fingerprinted, he was told to remove his jacket so his physical measurements could be taken, a standard procedure in the Chicago PD, which had never fully abandoned the Bertillon system of “anthropometric identification” it had adopted in 1888.

“Say, old man,” said the officer recording his statistics, “you look as though you’re in good shape.”

“You bet I am,” Bob said, puffing out his chest. “I always keep myself that way.”

A few minutes later, when one of the spectators offered another flattering comment about his physique, Bob struck a preening pose and said, “Sure, I’m proud of it.”

Police matrons and female clerks kept popping into the room to steal glimpses of the celebrity killer. They emerged like starstruck schoolgirls, burbling, “How good-looking he is…What a lovely boy…Hasn’t he got nice hair…How could he have done such a thing…”
⁴

Manacled to Detective Charles Moore, Bob was then placed in the weekly police lineup, along with eight other men arrested on
minor charges. Told to turn this way and that on the floodlit platform so the audience could view him from all sides, he obeyed with “a jaunty, unconcerned air.” When Chief Sullivan asked if he understood why he was there, Bob grinned and said, “Sure. A trip to New York.”

Only once did he lose his composure. As he stepped from the lineup, a news photographer reached out and snatched Bob’s Panama hat from his head to get a better picture of his face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” screamed Bob, lunging so violently at the man that Detective Moore, still handcuffed to the prisoner, was thrown off balance. For those witnessing the scene, the moment was a revelation—a dramatic display of “the swift flow of emotion that made him such a dangerous character.”
⁵

By the time Bob was led back down to Chief Sullivan’s office, he had regained his aplomb. By then, a corrected warrant had been wired from Chief Valentine. Officially transferred into the custody of Detectives Owens and Crimmins, Bob was driven to the Chicago Municipal Airport in Cicero, where an estimated crowd of four hundred gawkers—most of them women—were waiting to see him off. At precisely 5:32 local time, Bob and his entourage—now consisting of the two New York City detectives, a pair of Chicago policemen, Ray Doyle of the
New York Daily Mirror
, and three other Hearst reporters—took off in a specially chartered, twenty-one-seat American Airlines passenger plane, the
Arkansas
, flagship of the line’s fleet.
⁶

During the four-hour flight, Bob—whose handcuffs were removed upon boarding—devoured a meal of sliced chicken, tomato salad, nut bread, and coffee; chain-smoked an entire pack of cigarettes; chatted pleasantly with stewardess Bernadette Anderle; and calmly answered questions posed to him by Detective Crimmins.

He grew visibly agitated only once—when Crimmins asked why he “stole that clock from Ronnie Gedeon’s bedroom the night she was killed.”

“Do you know,” Bob said with a grimace, “that’s the one thing
I’m ashamed of—stealing that clock. To kill is one thing. But to be a sneak thief—ugh!”

“So why did you do it?” Crimmins pressed.

Bob blinked nervously. “The clock was in front of me as I strangled Ronnie. Its dial shone. It looked like two green eyes. It fascinated me.”
⁷

Even before the plane landed in New York, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur had been contacted by reporters struck by the uncanny parallels between their hit show
The Front Page
and the events that had just played out in Chicago. Both men reacted with high amusement. Recalling his own brazen exploits as a crime reporter for the
Herald and Examiner
, MacArthur was gratified to see that the paper still retained its old scrappy spirit. “After I left, it seemed to calm down,” he said. “I thought it had reformed. As an alumnus, I’m delighted it has not.”

As for Hecht—by then the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood—he conveyed his delight in mock indignation. “We ought to sue the
Herald and Examiner
for plagiarism!” he exclaimed to reporters. “They stole our plot! Our best plot!”
⁸

A mob of several hundred curiosity seekers, kept back from the landing strip by more than two dozen police officers, was waiting at Floyd Bennett Field in southeast Brooklyn when the
Arkansas
touched down shortly before midnight. Handcuffed to Owens, Bob—looking somewhat rumpled but chipper as ever—stepped off the plane and waved cheerfully to the crowd before being bundled into a police automobile. Preceded, flanked, and followed by a cavalcade of motorcycle patrolmen and squad cars, he was sped to police headquarters on Centre Street, hustled through a rear entrance to avoid the horde of newsmen gathered in front, and led directly to Assistant Chief Inspector Lyons’s second-floor office.

Besides Lyons, a group of high officials was assembled in the room, among them Commissioner Valentine, District Attorney
Dodge, Assistant DA Miles O’Brien, Deputy Chief Inspector Francis Kear, and Captain Ed Mullins. Much to their frustration, the normally voluble prisoner suddenly clammed up, refusing to answer any questions or to verify the confession he had made in Chicago. Staring defiantly up at Dodge, he said, “You can beat the Jesus out of me, you won’t make me talk.”

“We don’t do things like that here,” the DA answered with a tight smile.

Owens, also present in the room, had a theory about Bob’s stubborn silence. “He thinks his contract with the
Herald and Examiner
is so binding that he can’t make a statement to anybody,” Owens said to the others. “Otherwise he’ll forfeit the five thousand dollars.”

Turning to Bob, he said, “The contract says you can’t give your story to other newspapers. It doesn’t mean you can’t talk to the District Attorney or the police.”

“All we want to know,” said Dodge, “is whether the confession you signed in Chicago was a true confession.”

Bob, however, would not be cajoled into talking. The “atmosphere in the room is too hostile,” he said. He insisted on having “at least one friendly face” present. When asked whom he had in mind, Bob replied without hesitation: Dr. Fredric Wertham.
⁹

The phone had been ringing for a while before it roused Wertham from his sleep. Gazing at the bedside clock with bleary eyes, he saw that it was half past three in the morning. He lifted the receiver and gave a groggy hello.

“Is that you, doctor?” said the voice on the other end.

“Yes, this is Dr. Wertham.”

“Don’t you recognize me? It’s Bob.”

Wertham was stunned into momentary silence. “Where on earth are you?” he asked when he regained his voice.

“Down here in police headquarters with Commissioner Valentine and the district attorney and a lot of other police officials.”

Half believing that the call was a hoax, Wertham asked to speak to one of the officials. Almost at once, someone got on the phone and identified himself as Inspector John Lyons.

“Bob insists that he has to talk to you,” said Lyons. “Commissioner Valentine would appreciate it if you would. He’ll send his own car to fetch you.”

Wertham asked for a few minutes to get ready. By the time he had washed, shaved, and thrown on his clothes, the police car was waiting for him.

Minutes later he was ushered into a side entrance of the Centre Street headquarters. Inside a second-floor conference room, he found Bob standing in front of a long table whose seats were occupied by “about fifteen of the highest officials of the police department and the district attorney’s office.”

At his first glimpse of the psychiatrist, Bob broke into a broad grin. “Not often in my life,” Wertham said afterward, “have I seen a man so pleased to see me.”

Obtaining permission from Commissioner Valentine to confer in private, Wertham and Irwin were led into the corridor, where they stood in a corner and spoke in hushed voices, Bob “talking excitedly” and “looking around to make sure that no one was listening.”

“What’s happened won’t make any difference between us, will it?” he asked with a catch in his voice.

“Absolutely not,” Wertham assured him. “Everything is as before between you and me. But why on earth didn’t you come to me before Easter and tell me you felt so badly again?”

“Oh, let’s leave those old things,” Bob said. Then, “with arms and hands gesticulating,” he began “talking a blue streak,” relating everything that had happened since he’d arrived at headquarters.

“I wouldn’t talk to them before you came, but they were very nice about it,” he said. “They gave me a salad with lettuce and tomatoes. I’m crazy about tomatoes. They didn’t even beat me up.”

“High police officials never beat people up,” Wertham said dryly. “They have cops for that. That just shows what serious trouble you’re in now.”

Trying to impress upon Bob that he was in an “awful mess” and that his refusal to talk only made him look guiltier, Wertham urged him to break his silence.

“You don’t have to tell them the whole story,” he said. “But you seem to have talked a lot to reporters in Chicago. So tell them something here, just to satisfy them. Your life is in terrible danger.”

“You know that I was sick,” said Bob.

“Were!” exclaimed the doctor. “You
are
sick. And all you have to do is be yourself. That is your only chance. I promise you I’ll do anything I can for you, whatever happens.”

Though reluctant to speak without a lawyer present, Bob allowed himself to be convinced. Returning to the conference room, he took a seat, lit a cigarette, and began to talk, confirming all the details of his Chicago confession. For the most part, he recounted the tale in a calm, untroubled way, though he grew intensely agitated at several points. While he showed no emotion when describing how he’d torn off Mary’s underwear so the dog could get at her genitals, he flew into a rage when the district attorney asked if he had raped Ronnie, taking the query as “a horrid accusation.”

At another point, when Commissioner Valentine asked if he felt any remorse, Bob became wildly excited.

“Yes, but I believe those lives are not lost, they are borrowed and I can repay them,” he said, eyes glinting.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Valentine.

“I don’t believe anything is lost and that all life is only a part of the Divine Life,” said Bob. “I think that the progress of evolution is from the material to the mental or spiritual plane and I think that visualizing, developing the faculty of visualizing, may be one of the greatest contributions in that direction. And I think that by putting myself under pressure at any cost I would be able to contribute.”

Like others, District Attorney Dodge was particularly curious about Bob’s theft of Lucy Beacco’s worthless alarm clock.

“What was there about the clock that attracted you?” he asked.

As before, when Detective Crimmins had posed the same question, Bob grew uncharacteristically flustered.

“Because I looked at the clock and saw the green lights,” he said nervously.

“The luminous hands?” said Dodge. “Something about the clock that attracted you and you wanted it?

“It—it wasn’t the clock,” Bob stammered. “I had a clock. It was the green light…not the numbers…I don’t know.”
¹⁰

At 6:35 Monday morning, a little more than an hour after he finally opened up to the officials, Bob was escorted to the basement and placed in Cell No. 1, the same cell once occupied by Joseph Gedeon during his weeklong ordeal. Five minutes later, with a sergeant and two detectives keeping suicide watch, he stretched out on the cot and, despite the bright light burning directly overhead, fell instantly asleep.

He was awakened at 8:00 a.m., given a cup of coffee, and taken to the lineup. Hair mussed, suit rumpled, jaw darkened with a three-day growth of stubble, he went through “the routine questioning with ennui written on his face. He smiled frequently and yawned broadly, covering his mouth with a languid gesture. He slouched so insolently that the officer in charge had to shout through a megaphone, ‘Stand up there!’ ”

With a brawny detective clutching each of his wrists, he was then hustled out the front entrance of headquarters, where a police wagon waited to transport him to his arraignment. Wedged between the two massive lawmen, the slender, five-foot-seven prisoner looked “like a dwarf.” Sinking into the back seat, he spotted a copy of that morning’s
Daily News
on the cushion beside him. A picture of himself appearing “gay and nonchalant” as he posed for photographers in Chicago occupied the bottom two-thirds of the front page, beneath a headline reading, “
IRWIN
’
S OWN STORY
.” Snatching up the paper, he immediately began reading and didn’t raise his head until the van reached Homicide Court a few blocks away.