Corpus Delicti: The Case of the Dead Woman Walking, 1017 COBJ, Vol. 46, No. 9 Pg. 22
| Author | FRANK GIBBARD, J. |
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
FRANK GIBBARD, J.
The 1950 film noir D.O.A opens with an unforgettable scene. A small-town accountant named Frank Bigelow (played by Edmond O'Brien) walks into a police station to report a murder—his own. Bigelow has been poisoned, and there is no cure. Before he dies, in a long flashback, he tells his story and explains how he has unraveled the mystery behind his murder.
D. O.A. has earned its place on lists of the best noir films of the Fifties. The idea of detectives interviewing a man who is still lucid, walking and talking, but doomed, resonated with viewers. It was popular enough to be remade in 1988, as a film of the same title starring Dennis Quaid.
A real Colorado murder case from 1899 featured a similarly eerie scenario. The victim was struck a fatal blow, but went on with her life for one last ordinary but doomed day. Unlike in the film noir, however, this victim didn't know she was finished when she told witnesses what had happened to her. The trial transcript allows us to follow her travels through the landscape of tum-of-the-century Denver, a world that now lives only in faded photographs.
Mrs. Herren's Last Day
On January 22, 1899, at about 10:00 in the morning, an engineer named E.W. Wilson noticed Corrilla Herren standing on a platform near the boiler room door at the West End Power House in Denver.[1] Mr. Wilson knew Mrs. Herren and her husband, John. They lived in a tent across from the tramway power house at 22nd and Prospect, near Elitch Gardens. Mr. Herren worked for the tramway.
Mrs. Herren was standing near some scales with a man named Pike. Mr. Wilson thought she looked dazed.
Henry Pike was a teamster. He hauled ice in the summer and coal in the winter. He also saw Mrs. Herren that morning at the scales, as he was unloading coal.
Mr. Pike thought Mrs. Herren did not seem well. She staggered, as though she had been drinking. She put her hand to her head, as though she was hurt. She told him, "[John] Herren knocked me down" and he "knocked me cold."2
Mr. Wilson came over to hand Mr. Pike a ticket for the coal, which would be used to feed the boiler that powered the local tramway. He, too, heard Mrs. Herren say, "He knocked me down and I thought he knocked me cold."[3] Mrs. Herren was holding her right hand to the back of her head. Her head was wobbling.
She waited around for a few minutes, then left to catch a streetcar. On the way, she passed by a drugstore, where she saw other people she knew. She did not complain to them about the blow she had received to her head.4
Later that day, Mrs. Herren arrived at the home of Cora McGowan, her daughter from a previous marriage, on Tenth Street in Denver.5 According to Ms. McGowan, her mother did not seem well. She was pale and complained that her head hurt. She walked slowly to the up stairs bedroom, seeming to drag herself up the stairs.
The next morning, William Hill arrived at Ms. McGowan's home. The address was 1464 Tenth Street.6 Mr. Hill was an African-American expressman who took passengers to their destinations in a horse-driven cab. Between 8 and 9 that morning, he knocked on the door.
Mrs. Herren came down the stairs and met him at the door. He later testified that she seemed to have no trouble walking down the stairs and getting into his wagon. He'd been told she needed a ride down Wazee Street to Elitch Gardens, where she lived.
As they pulled away from the house in his wagon, making their way slowly down the block, Mr. Hill and Mrs. Herren traded small talk. She said it was a cool day. Mr. Hill agreed. She asked him who had sent him to pick her up. He replied that it was a man named Walker. She asked him what he charged. He told her it was in the note he'd given her.
Mrs. Herren leaned over and opened her pocketbook to retrieve the note. That was when things got strange.
As Mr. Hill watched, Mrs. Herren kept leaning over, farther and farther, until her head was in her lap. Mr. Hill asked her what was the matter with her. She didn't reply. He reached over, grabbed her dress, and pulled her back to a sitting position. Still, she didn't say anything.
Suddenly, she straightened up and threw herself back against the seat. Her limbs were jerking spasmodically. Worried by her odd behavior, Mr. Hill drove to Mullen's Mill (also known as Hungarian Mills) in Auraria, looking for help.[7] The men he found there asked him what was the matter with her.
"I suppose she is dying—I don't know," he said.8
He asked the men to help her. At first, none of them would. Eventually, someone telephoned an ambulance. One of the men fetched Mrs. Herren's daughter from the house on Tenth Street. But it was too late. Mrs. Herren was dead.
The Autopsy
Corrilla Herren's postmortem took place on a dark January evening, in a windowless chamber lit only by gaslight, known as the "dead room."9 The principal pathologist was Dr. C.E. Tenant. He was a homeopathic doctor, but had also received trainingin allopathic techniques—what we now consider modern medicine. He was assisted by another doctor, Samuel S. Smy the, who had practiced in Denver for 18 years.
Dr. Tenant noted that Mrs. Herren was about 55 years old, five foot four inches tall, weighing 111 pounds. She was anemic and had flabby muscle tone.10 He noticed a slight swelling on the back of her head. After he peeled back the scalp, he found a large quantity of clotted blood between the scalp and skull.
Dr. Smythe testified that when they opened Mrs. Herren's skull, they found blood on the brain. In response to a juror's question, he stated that death could have taken days or weeks after she received her blow to the head.[11] Dr. Tenant concluded that Mrs. Herren had suffered a premortem injury from a blunt instrument, a violent blow to the head that could have occurred two or three days prior to the autopsy.12 He diagnosed her cause of death as a subdural hemorrhage.
The Arrest and Interrogation
It didn't take long for the police to focus their investigation on Mrs. Herren's husband...
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