Dr. Arthur Warren Waite had it all. Or so it seemed.
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1887, he completed his training as a dentist and worked as a dentist at a work camp in South Africa for years before finally returning to the United States in 1915. Soon after his return, he married his long-time sweetheart, Clara Peck, daughter of Grand Rapids millionaire John Peck. Peck had made his fortune in lumber and pharmaceuticals and, as a gift to his daughter and son-in-law, set them up in an expensive Manhattan apartment. He also gave them a generous monthly allowance.
This allowed the good dentist to establish a prosperous New York practice and to become part of the New York social scene. Except that he he soon lost interest in his dental practice as he preferred to spend his time socializing, especially with a beautiful (and quite married) former cabaret singer named Margaret Horton. Despite the fact that he and his wife were still newlyweds, Waite managed to keep his affair hidden from his wife and her family. For reasons that would only become clear much later, he also developed an interest in germ research, including collecting active strains of some truly deadly diseases.
In December, 1915, John Peck and his wife, Hannah, arrived in New York to spend Christmas holidays with his daughter and her new husband. Soon after their arrival, Hannah Peck was suddenly taken ill and her condition declined rapidly. Nobody had any idea why she was so ill but everyone was touched by the gentle care she received from her son-in-law. After her January, 1916 the doctor who signed her death certificate declared that she had died of kidney disease.
The grieving John Peck took his wife's body back to Grand Rapids where she was cremated. Soon afterward, he decided on a return visit to New York to stay with his daughter and her kindly husband. Almost immediately after his arrival, his health began declining rapidly and,following his death March 12, the attending physician also attributed his death to kidney disease. Arthur Waite insisted that his father-in-law had requested to be cremated after his death and even made the arrangements himself. John Peck's body was carefully embalmed and the good dentist personally escorted the coffin back to Grand Rapids.
It was in Grand Rapids where things started going wrong, however. Waite's brother-in-law, Percy Peck, announced that he had received an anonymous telegram telling him not to allow the cremation. It likely helped that he had never liked his new brother-in-law and had become suspicious over the deaths of both his parents when visiting the Waites. He insisted on an autopsy which, sure enough, showed that John Peck had died of arsenic poisoning.
Though Percy Peck immediately suspected Arthur Waite of murder, police were more cautious about laying a charge. Frustrated over their inaction, Percy hired a private detective, Raymond Schindler, to investigate Waite. It was Schindler who turned up evidence of the handsome dentist's relationship with Margaret Horton. When Percy passed these details on to his sister, she refused to believe that her husband was unfaithful. But, a few days later, she became violently ill after spraying her throat with an atomizer of "medication" that had been prepared for her by her loving husband.
Immediately suspicious, Percy had the atomizer examined while his sister was still recovering; it had been laced with anthrax and typhoid germs (remember Waite's fascination with germ research?). Finally convinced that her husband might be guilty, Clara admitted that Waite had pressured her into drafting a will after her father's funeral which left him everything. Police also learned from the embalmer who had prepared John Peck's corpse that Waite had tried to bribe him into claiming that the embalming fluid had been laced with arsenic. They also interviewed Margaret Horton and her husband, both of whom insisted there had been no wrongdoing but the newspapers soon began printing all the lurid details. Police even turned up the author of the anonymous telegram to Percy. It was a distant relative of the Pecks who had become suspicious after seeing Waite at the Plaza with a "beautiful brunette when he was supposed to be happy with Clara." She added that, "When both the Pecks died so suddenly - well, I just put two and two together."
Though Arthur Waite had tried to laugh off the murder rumours, evidence of his bizarre behaviour before and after both deaths was enough to convince police to lay charges. It was the revelation that Clara was suing for divorce and named Margaret Horton in the suit was too much for him. Knowing that his arrest was imminent, Waite attempted to kill himself with sleeping pills. The police managed to get to him in time and, while he was still recovering in hospital, was soon charged with two counts of murder.
While in custody, Waite initially denied having anything to do with Hannah Peck's death and tried to explain away the arsenic in John Peck's body by claiming that the old man had committed suicide. He grudgingly admitted to providing the arsenic but only at his father-in-law's request. The Peck family were less than happy with this defence and only agreed to help with the costs of Waite's defense if he withdrew that claim. He then decided on a new tactic by claiming that he had been insane at the time.
This led to his being sent to Bellevue for a medical assessment. While there, he told doctors and police that he was possessed and that "a bad man from Egypt dwells in my body." He also insisted that " He makes me do bad things. He struggles for possession of my soul." Suffice it to say, nobody really believed him (though the doctors eventually diagnosed him as a "moral imbecile." After being found sane and returned to prison, he eventually admitted to poisoning both Pecks (despite refusing to plead guilty in court). In fact, his description of the poisoning was so detailed that it left the prosecutor with very little to in proving his case.
According to Waite, he had started poisoning his mother-in-law with the very first meal after they arrived. "I gave her six assorted tubes of pneumonia, diphtheria, and influenza germs in her food," he said. "When she finally became ill, I took her to her bed, I ground up twelve five-grain veronal, and gave her that, too, last thing at night." When it came to killing his father-in-law, he had more difficulty. Not only didn't John Peck die of the various disease strains Waite put into his food (including typhoid, diphtheria, and influenza), but he refused to die despite being given several different poisons. Finally, Waite had enough and simply chloroformed the old man before holding a pillow over John's face until he died.
But Waite's had more victims planned, including one of John Peck's sisters (she had trusted him with a hefty sum that he was supposed to invest for her), though this failed as well. As he admitted to trying to kill his wife, he was so amused by this revelation that he burst out laughing on the witness stand. When questioned about his motive, he simply stated that he wanted to inherit the fortune his in-laws left behind. He even said that he had done his wife a favour by speeding up her inheritance. It's hard to say what he hoped to accomplish by being so jovial considering he was facing the death penalty. The revelation that he had tried to bribe two members of the jury didn't do much to help his case either.
As for the jury, they didn't need much convincing. After a seven-day trial, it only took them twenty minutes to come up with a guilty verdict. Justice Slattery then sentenced Arthur Waite to death, something to which Waite only replied, "What a relief." Jovial to the end, he accepted the verdict and even suggested that he be executed as soon as possible. Finally, following a year-long appeal with psychiatrists on both sides battling it out, Arthur Waite went to the electric chair at Sing Sing on May 1, 1917. According to prison staff, his last words were "Is this all there is to it?"
Though his burial site is unknown, his wife Clare went on to remarry and move far away from New York and her life there. She had three children and dedicated herself to charity work before dying in 1965. Her obituary page makes no mention of the long-ago murder of both her parents. Or of her first husband.
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