Maury y Billy

I’ve reached critical mass of research. I have collected one too many tidbits, to the point that one anecdote that won’t fit into the book.

In February 1917, Blanca’s brother Billy Errazuriz attended the Pan-American Aeronautics Exposition in New York City as a Chilean representative. One of the expo’s hosts, listed on the welcoming committee, was John’s cousin Maurice Heckscher. This is after the ugly and painfully public divorce, when John and Blanca are living in separate homes and splitting custody of their little boy. It’s just 6 months before the murder. 

By the end of the same year, these two men—Billy and Maurice—would glare at each other from opposite aisles of the court room. But on this day, the only thing on their minds were the marvelous new airplanes on display. They said hello. They chatted about the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh. They fantasized about the day when people might use “airbuses” on a regular basis, perhaps replacing steamships for travel across the ocean. They shook hands and wished each other well. 

I look back through the lens of time at the exposition’s program schedule (thank you, Google books) and my heart flutters at the irony. You poor bastards… You both had no idea of what the future held. 

I love research

Maybe it's 'cause my dad loved reading mysteries. Maybe it's 'cause my mom was an avid reader and took us to museums and libraries all the time.  But, I LOVE RESEARCH.  I love digging around in dusty old archives and finding out stuff that nobody else knows.  Not a lot of people have this personality trait.  They enjoy hearing the results of somebody's research, the interesting gossip of folks long dead, but they don't like rolling up their sleeves and getting into it.

I have had a blast researching the John de Saulles case.  Thank God for Google!!  I've been doing genealogy as a hobby for about 25 years, and what a difference the internet makes.  It used to be I'd drive to the local Mormon library, squint at hardback books of printed indexes or microfiche, then if I was lucky enough to find a clue, I'd order a microfilm from the underground vaults in Salt Lake City.  I'm not kidding, there are really underground vaults.

Once I got bit by the curiosity bug, it wasn't hard to go through the basic steps.  Old newspapers digitized online. Federal census. Vital documents, marriages and birth certs and death notices. Good ol' Ancestry.com gave me access to cool stuff like scanned passports and U.K. port manifests.  Ellis Island has a free database of all travelers from the 1890s through the 1950s. Published local histories are getting scanned into Google ebooks by the truckload.  Rootsweb put me in touch with descendants of cousins who, sadly, know less than I do about ol' Jack. Blanca's home town in Chile has a website now, with a heritage association, a historical magazine, and online archives!  Oh boy!  Reference librarians at historical societies and a couple of universities have been awesome.

Gleefully exhausting all the usual sources, I am now getting creative. Again, thanks to Google ebooks (snippet view) I discovered that a guy wrote a cookbook about New Orleans cuisine, and to be unique, he included profiles of some of the well known historic houses.  Guess who I found?  Yes... Jack's grandfather Louis de Saulles had a plantation mansion, and it's still there!  From the "acknowledgments" in the cookbook, I got the exact name of the historical society that was the source, and from their website I got the exact reference to the obituary.  I put a $6 check in the mail today, and I can't wait to get the obit of Louis de Saulles.  One more piece of the puzzle.

I love research.

Fact or Fiction

Do people want facts, really?

When I first mention the book I am writing, to friends or colleagues, they assume I am making a work of fiction.  They do not automatically think of a nonfiction biography/courtroom drama even though it is a true crime story.  Okay, fiction gives an author more latitude.  I wouldn't have to worry about cross-checking facts, squinting at smudgy pages of the federal census, getting death certificates and baptismal certificates, plucking clues from 100 year old newspapers, making footnotes and keeping up a bibliography.  I could just.... wheeee!!  Whatever comes to mind.  Edith Wharton.  D.H. Lawrence.  F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Maybe I'd change the names, or maybe I'd keep 'em.  The folks involved are long since dead and gone, so no one is alive to sue me if I get it wrong.

Fiction is freedom.

What holds me back is this:  fiction has been done on this story 3 times.  1) Hollywood produced a really trashy exploitation film in 1918 that has been lost to the dust bin of time - fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your curiosity level.  Myself, I would give anything to see it.  2) A Chilean poet Luz Larrain wrote a fictional memoirs in 1994 from Blanca's viewpoint, in Spanish, and although I got a copy, I can't read Spanish!  I've put some of it through Google translator, enough to recognize a few small factual errors.  For example, she calls John de Saulles's sister Caroline a "senorita" which means a single woman, but in fact Caroline was married and had a daughter of her own.  Little things like that bug me.

This year, a columnist for the London Sunday Times wrote a romance story involving Rudolph Valentino and used the de Saulles murder as a background setting.  Although the author did some research, she did not go quite so crazy as I did and I immediately spotted a number of factual mistakes in her timeline of events, etc.  She changed the name of John de Saulles's chauffeur just enough to give herself the "freedom" because she wanted to depict him as a jolly 6 foot+ tall blonde Swedish man.  The truth is Julius Hadamek was 5 ft. 5 in. dark haired and from Austria.  I found his passport, with photograph and physical description on Ancestry.com.  I found the passenger manifest from when he first arrived at Ellis Island in 1909.  I found him in the 1920 New York federal census, and from his World War II compulsory draft registration card, I know that he and his wife Olive stayed together for 20 years.  Facts are interesting to me.  The humble immigrant chauffeur, who watched his master be shot dead by his ex-wife, found true love and happiness for himself.

I want to be the first to write the only, definitive factual reference book about the de Saulles case.  But will it sell?  Do people really want to know what happened, or do they just want a fancy story?  Is fiction more glamorous than fact?

exploding toasters

Some people unplug the toaster every time they leave the house for fear that the simple appliance will spontaneously explode in their absence. They don't unplug the lamps or the computers or the blender. Just the toaster. I have never heard a news report of a single toaster being the cause of a house fire. It's more likely that electrical wiring to the stove or Christmas candles will do you in.

People can find all sorts of reasons to be afraid of the world, of taking risks, of simple household appliances. I think Blanca de Saulles was one of those people - terrified of going outside her comfort zone. Her father died of TB when she was 3. Her older brother died by falling off a horse. When she married a white American and sailed off to New York with him, she was not being adventurous. She came under the umbrella of John's fearless spirit, perhaps hoping that some of his reckless gleeful courage would rub off on her. She described in one of her jailhouse interviews arriving in New York for the first time, leaning over the railing of the steamship with his strong arm around her, and all the sweet romantic promises he had made. Whenever he went off to conduct business dealings or campaign for Woodrow Wilson's presidential election, she felt lost without him. His friends became her friends. His relatives were her relatives. She was isolated and alone in America. At her murder trial she blamed him for keeping her shut in... but I think she willingly let herself be a princess in a glass box. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz movie, she was in a beautiful exotic new place but all she kept saying was that she wanted to go home. She clicked her heels 3 times and did not go anywhere. So she shot him, and felt immediately relieved of her panic and fear. She endured the trial like a bad dream, and after acquittal went home to Chile with her son - and never left.

I'll bet she unplugged the toaster every time she went out.

Why I Can't Stop Thinking About this Murder Case

I am watching the morning news and they're talking about Casey Anthony being released from prison.  It's been almost 100 years since Blanca de Saulles walked away free, after gunning down her ex-husband, and it seems nothing has changed. A pretty young girl, accused of murder, tells a tale of woe and the jury lets her walk free. 

What's unique about Blanca is that she shot John de Saulles in front of several witnesses - his father, his butler, his best friend, and her own trembling maid. Unlike Lizzie Borden, or OJ Simpson, there is absolutely no doubt that she pulled the trigger. The prosecutor thought he had a slam dunk case, until the defense attorney came along. 

In the 3 months leading up to her trial, Blanca talked to reporters from her jail cell and charmed them all. She fainted and doctors feared for her health, declaring her anemic. They allowed her darling 4 year old boy to visit her in prison. A concert pianist friend visited Blanca and played the piano (that the sheriff provided) for the pleasure of the other murderers, arsonists, and drunkards in lock up. 

How did the tables turn so quickly? Her ex-husband John de Saulles was a popular college football star, a successful New York businessman, and well liked by everyone... until his wife shot him dead. Blanca in jail became a martyr, and John became the scoundrel who drove her to madness.