Last week in Part One of A Small Town Murder: Oscar Harrison was dead, brutally bludgeoned to death with a hammer and found lying on the floor of Cornell Van Gaasbeek’s run-down dwelling in Zena on a December morning in 1905. Van Gaasbeek, a 55 year old, unemployed black man who — along with his nephews, the Conine family — had come to be known as Woodstock’s “bad lot,” was already under suspicion for the recent theft of chickens from a number of Woodstock homes.
With the discovery of Harrison’s body and a town already turned against him, Van Gaasbeek fled, believing he had but one option — get out of Woodstock.
Everett Roosa, a local mechanic who claimed to have learned all there was to know about detective work by reading Sherlock Holmes mysteries, took up the pursuit of Van Gaasbeek, following tips that led him on foot across the face of Overlook, through West Saugerties and, eventually, by wagon, to the towns of Palenville, Cairo and Purling. Two days later, the self-styled Sherlock had his man. Transported back to Ulster County, Van Gaasbeek was thrown into a Kingston jail cell to await trial for the murder of Oscar Harrison. He could only but turn to his childhood friend, the attorney Augustus Van Buren.
The Trial
Just one month past the new year, 1906, Cornell Van Gaasbeek sat in a Kingston courtroom as District Attorney Frederick Stephan began his opening remarks. Only the day before, the twelfth juror, Matthew Delany — a fisherman who also maintained 55 beehives — had joined eleven others completing the all-white, all-male jury. As the lawyers had proceeded through the jury pool, the question of circumstantial evidence — and could a juror bring them self to convict on such evidence — had become a central issue. While one potential juror was dismissed because he did not know what the term referred to, the prosecution also dismissed others when they firmly asserted that they could not convict on circumstantial evidence alone. James Ackerman, a farmer from Shawangunk, in response to a question about circumstantial evidence stated, “Circumstances alter cases.” And, no matter how strong that evidence might be, he did not think he could convict on that alone. Yet another perspective juror, David Stilwell from Lloyd put it more bluntly, “A just verdict on circumstantial evidence would be not guilty.”
But in the age before modern police technology and without an eyewitness, circumstantial was the case District Attorney Stephan began to place before the jury. Beginning with testimony by John Harrison, the deceased’s father, Dr. Mortimer Downer, the Woodstock physician who was first on the scene and Charles Wolven, the Kingston City Reservoir employee who was first confronted by Van Gaasbeek, the jury was treated to accounts describing the events on the morning Oscar Harrison’s body was discovered. Dr. Downer described the murder scene he and Wolven had encountered. Identifying the hammer found at the scene, the “disarrayed carpet,” and the spots of blood found on both the floor and the stairs, Downer also mentioned noticing a corncob pipe. On cross-examination, the Woodstock doctor further testified that the “victim was struck on the head and probably fell where he was found,” adding that Harrison had “possibly lay unconscious for three hours after being struck and before death.” Harrison, Downer estimated, had been dead some “12 to 16 hours when found.”
The following day, Dr. Henry Van Hoevenberg took the stand to affirm the findings of the autopsy he had performed on Harrison’s body in the basement of the Reformed Church on the Village Green. Declaring that death had occurred due to a fractured skull, Van Hoevenberg described four contused wounds on the head and one which had been found on the back of Harrison’s neck. In a bizarre bit of courtroom drama the skull of the victim was produced and the injuries shown to the jury. As Van Hoevenberg explained the wounds, according to a description provided in the Kingston Freeman, “morbid curiosity seekers who crowded the courtroom stretched their neck and trod on one another’s toes to get a view of the gruesome exhibit.” During cross-examination, Van Hoevenberg expanded on the previous estimate given by Dr. Downer when he offered that Harrison “had lived some time after receiving the blow — probably five or six hours longer.”
On the second day of the trial, District Attorney Stephan moved on to his prime witness, Van Gaasbeek’s own nephew, George Conine. As reported in the Freeman following his testimony, “George Conine, negro, testified that he lived in the house near Van Gaasbeek’s house” and went on to establish the presence of Harrison at Van Gaasbeek’s home on the day of the murder. “I saw Oscar Harrison at Cornell Van Gaasbeek’s house about dinner time. He stood by the door.” Conine further offered, “I saw Harrison again about 3 o’clock that afternoon. I was in the yard near the corner of the house and he stood about 100 feet from Van Gaasbeek’s house. He was not walking around but standing still. No one was near. He was alone. I did not see Oscar alive after that.”
Upon further questioning from the district attorney, Conine delivered an even more dramatic element to the case against Van Gaasbeek. Noting that it was a cold night when he (Conine) finally returned home, the witness told the jury that he had gone outside to retrieve some dry wood for the fire. Explaining that he walked halfway between the two houses where there was some “hickory brush,” Conine then related, “As I was breaking it up I heard a groaning noise and like somebody stomping around the floor. I listened for a minute and went into [my] house.”
After tending to the fire and eating his dinner, Conine testified, that “between 10 and 11 o’clock Cornell Van Gaasbeek came in, stood by the stove warming himself, got a chair, sat down and went to sleep.”
The next morning, Conine told the jury, though he wanted to get ready for work, Van Gaasbeek was still at his house. Conine then related the following conversation with his uncle:
“Uncle Corny, if I was you I’d go over home and see what went on at your house last night. I heard very strange noises there.”
“I’m kinder afraid to go up there after what you say,” responded Van Gaasbeek.
“That’s strange,” I told him. “Afraid to go to your own house? I’ll go with you.”
Approaching the house, Van Gaasbeek found the door would not open all the way. Squeezing through what opening there was, Conine testified that his uncle, once inside, shouted, “He’s dead. Look here, he’s dead.”
Looking in, Conine explained, he could only see a leg and a foot. Feeling there was nothing else he could do, he returned to his house only to be followed by his uncle calling after him, “George, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
“I don’t know,” Conine responded, “unless you telephone to his father.” With that, Conine prepared to head to work offering, before he left, that Van Gaasbeek had commented to him, “It was a strange thing for that boy to poison himself in his own house.” Conine would also testify that that would be the last he saw of his uncle the rest of the day.
Before the district attorney was finished with him, the nephew’s testimony would drive an additional nail into his uncle’s legal coffin. Describing Conine’s assessment of his uncle’s physical state as the day of the murder progressed with the headline, “Three Stages of Inebriety,” the Freeman reported that Conine told the courtroom, “He was intoxicated.” “He was drunk.” “He was drunker yet.” To underscore Conine’s contentions, the prosecutor called others to the stand who had also observed the defendant that day. Nicholas Dibble, who operated the old Disch Mill in Woodstock, testified that he had seen Van Gaasbeek at the mill on the afternoon in question and that “he staggered.” Henry Longendyke, also at the mill that day, corroborated Dibble’s testimony. DA Stephan then brought 13-year-old Sarah Wolven to the stand who told the jury that, as she headed home from school that day, her path crossed Van Gaasbeek’s and that he was intoxicated and staggering. Similarly, Peter Anson who, along with his wife was the proprietor of the infamous Klondyke, a tavern/alleged brothel out near what is now Route 28, also invoked “he staggered” in his description of Van Gaasbeek when he saw him at about 6:30 that evening. Anson recalled telling Van Gaasbeek, “I say you’re quite drunk.” Van Gaasbeek, according to Anson, replied, “Do you think so?”
Finally, would-be detective Everett Roosa was called before the jury for the primary purpose of reminding the jury that Van Gaasbeek had fled town following the discovery of Harrison’s body on the floor of his home. Adding to what had already been published regarding his brief conversation with the suspect in Purling, Roosa testified that he had asked Van Gaasbeek, “What did you lay that fellow out that way for?” Roosa stated that Van Gaasbeek hung his head and replied, “I don’t know.”
The Defense
“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.” – Sherlock Holmes in The Boscombe Valley Mystery.
In his approach to the case and in his efforts to convince twelve white men who occupied the jury box that Cornell Van Gaasbeek was an innocent man falsely accused, defense attorney Augustus Van Buren argued that the case against his client was thinly circumstantial. As he stood before George Conine to begin his cross-examination, Van Buren’s opening question took the witness — and the courtroom — by surprise. He knew of the corncob pipe, along with some Mullen’s tobacco (a local product out of Higginsville which the Freeman noted was, “the product of every true and loyal son of Ulster County”) that had been found at the scene — and he also knew that Van Gaasbeek did not use Mullen’s, let alone a corncob pipe.
“George, have you any smoking tobacco on you?”
“Guess, I have,” replied Conine.
“Let me see it, will you? Mullen’s isn’t it?”
“Yes sir, everyone smokes Mullen’s up here.”
“Got your pipe with you?” inquired Van Buren.
“No sir.”
“Where’s it at?” wondered the defense attorney.
“I don’t know.”
“Lost it?”
“Guess not,” offered Conine, claiming that he had it earlier in the day.
“Where did you buy it?”
“Beekman’s,” replied the witness, referring to the general merchandising store in Woodstock.
“How much did you pay for it?”
“Twelve cents.”
“Clay?” wondered Van Buren.
“I don’t use clay.”
“What do you use?”
“Mostly corncob,” was Conine’s response.
Van Buren had other questions for Conine, who he fully suspected knew more than he was willing to admit. Specifically, the defense attorney zeroed in on the morning Van Gaasbeek and Conine had discovered Harrison’s body. Returning to testimony Conine had given earlier, Van Buren noted that Conine had not gone any further than the front step of Van Gaasbeek’s home. And yet, after the defendant had squeezed through the door to find the body of Harrison on the floor and called to Conine, “What shall I do?” Conine responded by telling him to call the dead man’s father. There was just one problem with his suggestion. Conine had testified that he had only seen the leg of the dead man and, as Van Buren pointed out to the jury, Van Gaasbeek “had not said who the body was.”
Finally, Van Buren went looking for motive and to cast further suspicion on the Conine household. That motive, he seems to have believed, somehow connected to the white woman, Emma Smith, who lived with the Conines and, Van Buren believed, may have also had a relationship with Harrison. Were he able to raise the slightest possibility that such a relationship might have existed, then, perhaps, jealousy as a motive could be laid at the doorstep of one of the Conines.
Under questioning by Van Buren, George Conine described living conditions within the two-room Conine household. Just prior to the day Oscar Harrison was murdered, the house in question was occupied by the three Conine brothers, their father and Emma Smith. On the evening of Harrison’s death, George Conine testified, his brother Arthur and Emma Smith occupied one room in the house while the remaining brothers and their father stayed in the other. Only weeks before, however, those living arrangements had been quite different. Explaining that, originally, his father and Emma Smith had “set-up housekeeping” earlier in the winter, Conine revealed that, “Brother Arthur supplanted father about three weeks before the murder.” As Van Buren attempted to weave his way through testimony that he hoped would expose a situation sorely lacking in basic 1905 morality, he also managed to establish that Harrison was no stranger to the Conine household. With George Conine testifying that he had known Oscar Harrison “since he was a little boy,” he also admitted that Harrison had taken food at their table. Van Buren’s next question, seemingly innocent on the surface, was obviously, in light of what had already been established, meant to imply more than the simple response it appeared to seek. “Slept there?” asked Van Buren, referring to Harrison. “O, yes,” was the response.
Finally, it came time for Cornell Van Gaasbeek to take the stand in his own defense. Though the Freeman declared in its coverage the next day that the “defendant made a poor witness in his own behalf,” Van Gaasbeek began his testimony by tracing his work history and describing his relationship with Oscar Harrison who, he told the jury, he had known for “two or three years.” While admitting that Harrison had been at his home on the day in question and that the two had discussed where to find some work in town (Van Gaasbeek was interested in seeing if he could find employment with one of the bluestone quarries still operating in Woodstock), the defendant testified that he left Harrison at 5 o’clock that afternoon to walk into Woodstock and, as he left, he stated that the younger Harrison was “going towards the Conines” and that was the last he saw of him.
Admitting that he got a “little drunk” that evening, Van Gaasbeek went on to describe his movements on the night of the murder. Explaining that it was a very cold night and having not been home since the afternoon, “he hated to make a fire that time of night, so I walked into Conines, as I had done often before.” The next morning as he prepared to go back to his house to make breakfast, Van Gaasbeek stated that George Conine told him, “Last night when I went out for a pail of water I heard a terrible noise over in your house. Maybe it was Oscar Harrison and there is something wrong with him.”
After describing his initial reactions to finding the body and his encounter with Wolven, Van Gaasbeek was led through an attempt to explain why he had fled. Responding to the question, “why did you go?” from his lawyer, Van Gaasbeek answered, “Well, when I went in the house and found Harrison lying there I didn’t know what to do or where I was going.”
“You got scared and you went?” asked Van Buren.
“Yes sir, that’s it,” responded Van Gaasbeek.
Finally, when asked by his lawyer if he had killed or struck Harrison, Van Gaasbeek replied, “God knows, I didn’t.”
As his last witness, Van Buren called Charles Merritt of Kingston to the stand. Merritt would testify that he had known the defendant some “25 or 30 years” and that, at one point, he had even employed Van Gaasbeek. When asked to testify regarding Van Gaasbeek’s character and reputation, however, Judge Charles F. Cantine ruled such questions out of order and Merritt was dismissed.
While Merritt may have been a minor witness in Van Buren’s efforts to defend his client, it is doubtful he, or anyone in the courtroom that day, could comprehend just how critical his testimony — or lack thereof — would be to the future of Cornell Van Gaasbeek.
With Merritt’s testimony concluded, the defense rested. For his part, District Attorney Stephans approached his summation to the jury in a straightforward, matter-of-fact manner. Taking his time so that the jury clearly grasped the importance of the testimony before them, Stephans highlighted to the twelve men the events and actions that, in his considered opinion, would lead to only one conclusion — guilty.
In contrast to the district attorney, defense attorney Van Buren went about his summation in a far different, emotional manner that attempted to demonstrate the lack of hard evidence against his client. Centering on his belief that the prosecution had failed to offer a motive for the murder of Harrison and that the evidence presented was circumstantial at best, Van Buren told the jury that while Van Gaasbeek “may” have killed Harrison, so it was equally possible that George or Arthur Conine “may” have perpetrated the brutal act. And, as summarized by the Freeman, Van Buren concluded, “Any of these things may have happened, but a jury cannot convict a man on what may have occurred.”
Van Buren then proceeded to attack the testimony of Everett Roosa, “a gentleman,” he offered, “on whom fame burst in a day — an obscure individual who leaped in an instant into an eternal fame.” Not content with his initial portrayal of Rosa, Van Buren further characterized him as, “the most ridiculous man on earth,” and as a “half-baked ignoramus.” Continuing his contempt for the witness, Van Buren concluded with the thought that Roosa believed himself to be “Webster’s dictionary and encyclopedia combined, and when he gets one idea in his cranium you cannot force another in without an explosion.”
As he attacked the credibility of Roosa, Van Buren did so in an effort to convince the jury that simply because his client had run away was no reason to charge him with the crime of murder. In fact, he offered, you could equally argue that to remain in Woodstock might have been the “safest course,” so as not to draw attention to himself.
Finally, Van Buren brought his summation to a close with an attempt at sentimental discourse relating to his relationship with Van Gaasbeek. Noting that he and the defendant use to go swimming together as children, he described their relationship as not unlike a “parti-colored Damon and Pythias affair.” It was his final statement, however, that realistically underscored the true nature of that relationship within the context of 1906. “Cornell Van Gaasbeek,” Van Buren declared, “was a good natured ignorant fool of a nigger who wouldn’t hurt a mosquito.”
With that, following a review by the judge on the different degrees of murder and manslaughter, the jury was charged and asked to begin its deliberations. They wouldn’t talk long. By the next day, word spread that a verdict had been reached. As a result, the curious began to flock to the courthouse, creating a scene, as described by the Freeman, that saw “spectators so numerous that they seemed to hang on the window sills and sides of the room like flies in August.”
Despite the crowd, the courtroom fell silent as the verdict was read — “Guilty of manslaughter.”
That quickly, the trial was over. Van Buren offered a motion for a new trial. Denied. District Attorney Stephan moved for sentencing and, following some basic questioning of the defendant in which Van Gaasbeek informed the court he was “quite temperate,” in nature, that he could read and write, that he had received “religious instruction in the Reformed Church,” and that this was his first conviction, Van Gaasbeek heard his fate pronounced — 17 years at hard labor in Dannemora Prison.
In a simple matter of six weeks, Cornell Van Gaasbeek had been arrested, tried and convicted, a process the Freeman called “prompt and efficient.” Citing the efforts of the district attorney’s office and Everett Roosa, the paper further noted that that area resident should be justly “proud” that justice had been done and that Van Gaasbeek had been found guilty “of the highest crime that could be proved against him.”
The Appeal
So it was that Cornell Van Gaasbeek was transferred to Clinton County in upstate New York, where, considering his age, it seemed likely he’d spend the rest of his life. Back home, few would give the matter further consideration. Life in Woodstock moved on. The Conines once again faded into obscurity. Little more would be heard from Everett Roosa. But as the pages turned on their lives, one man continued to press for justice on behalf of Van Gaasbeek. Augustus Van Buren.
Unfortunately, for the man behind bars, it would take more than a year before Van Buren’s efforts began to bear fruit.
Arguing on appeal that the trial judge had erred when declining to permit testimony attesting to Van Gaasbeek’s character, Van Buren found a sympathetic ear in the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. In an opinion written by Judge Kellogg, the court specifically referred to the abridged testimony of Charles Merritt. Though the witness, it was noted, had been permitted to testify as to his acquaintance with the defendant — some “25 or 30 years” — when asked to offer testimony regarding Van Gaasbeek’s reputation, objection was raised and sustained on the basis that “no proper foundation had been laid for the proof and it was not a proper way to show character.” Judge Kellogg disagreed. Believing that the objection should have been overruled, Kellogg argued, “Evidence of good character may of itself create a reasonable doubt, when without it, none would exist.” As a result, the court ordered that, “the conviction and judgment should be reversed and a new trial ordered.”
The decision to overturn Van Gaasbeek’s conviction and the ordering of a new trial, however, brought yet another appeal, this time by the district attorney’s office to the Court of Appeals. Once again, Van Buren would argue that the prohibition against testimony attesting to his client’s character had seriously jeopardized the case. And, once again, Van Buren prevailed. Cornell Van Gaasbeek would finally receive a new trial and, with a court date set, Van Gaasbeek was returned to the all too familiar accommodations of a jail cell in Kingston to await its start.
While some two years had passed since Van Gaasbeek was found guilty, it was, perhaps, the passage of time that most enhanced his chances for acquittal. First, and foremost, the chief witness against him, George Conine, had died — as had his father. In addition, as the Freeman reported, Emma Smith and Arthur Conine, though both were subpoenaed, seemed to have “had a falling out and (she) is now living with another negro.” Additionally, as Van Gaasbeek sat in prison far to the north, small town gossip — this time — moved in his favor as rumors and reports surfaced around Woodstock that George Conine had, on his deathbed, confessed to the murder of Oscar Harrison. Though unsubstantiated, even though an investigation followed, press reports regarding an end of life confession certainly could not have been detrimental to Van Gaasbeek’s chances.
With such factors, seemingly, weighing in his favor, Cornell Van Gaasbeek once again found himself seated before an all-white, all-male jury. As the attorneys for the second trial moved through what had become familiar territory, little was offered that varied from the original trial. The witness list remained much the same as Wolven, Downer, Van Hoevenberg, those who had claimed to have seen the defendant “staggering” from drink, and, of course, Everett Roosa played their familiar parts. The one major exception, of course, was the absence of George Conine. As a result, his testimony from the previous trial was read to the jury and, in the process, its impact seemed to have lessened.
What did change were the witnesses brought forward by Van Buren to attest to Van Gaasbeek’s character. Despite attempts by the prosecutor to undermine their impact, those who were called, men who had known Van Gaasbeek for “15 to 30 years, drunk and sober,” testified that his “reputation for peacefulness was good.” One witness, Officer Thomas Johnson, even managed to turn what most would fail to consider a ringing endorsement into high praise when he told the jury that even when he found Van Gaasbeek “asleep in a doorway and leaning against buildings,” he always, “went on about his business.”
An additional exception to testimony from the original trial also occurred when two doctors, George Chandler and Mark O’Meara testified that the injuries sustained by Oscar Harrison could have “been caused by falling during an alcoholic fit.” Though the prosecution attempted to push back on such an assertion, the possibility that Harrison’s death might have been accidental added one more argument to Van Buren’s efforts to raise the question of reasonable doubt.
As the second trial wound down, it was, finally, left to Van Buren himself to move the jury in the direction of Van Gaasbeek’s innocence. In a summation described by the Freeman as “masterful,” Van Buren continued to assert, as he had at the first trial, that motive had not been proven and that if this case, in the minds of the jury, were to “bear equally on two interpretations, that they must place the innocent interpretation or the innocent construction upon it.”
Not relying on legal constructs, however, it was Van Buren’s description of his personal commitment to the case that proved to be the centerpiece of his summation and, for that matter, the entire trial:
“I know that all criminal actions here alleged are foreign to the nature of this man,” he began. “I knew him as a boy. I’ve grown up with him in a sense and I have fought the fight of this negro because I believe that he is innocent and I’ll fight it as long as there is any fight left in me. I’ve dragged this case through every court in the state and I’ll do it again if necessary and I don’t care if it doesn’t cost the County of Ulster a cent or if it bankrupts it. I am not a great believer in the law. I believe that nine times out of ten it’s wrong. But I believe in eternal justice. I believe if you can get a case away from the lawyers and into the hands of twelve honest, decent men, you’ll get justice and that is all I ask of you.”
As Van Buren concluded, he turned to find his client in tears.
The trial ended on a Friday afternoon. The jury was charged once more and sent off to arrive at a verdict. Working through the weekend, the jurors, having taken an initial ballot, found themselves deadlocked, six to six. With their second ballot, movement began in the direction of Van Gaasbeek’s innocence, as nine members now favored acquittal. Eventually, two more would join the majority and, on Monday morning, the vote of the jury stood at 11—1. Following breakfast, the twelve men convened once more. Finally, the last man standing in the way of a not guilty verdict gave in, they were unanimous. After more than two years of proclaiming his innocence — while so many had pointed the finger of guilt in his direction — the long ordeal of Cornell Van Gaasbeek was about to come to an end.
At 8 a.m. that Monday the verdict was announced. The Freeman declared, “Corney Van Gaasbeek is a free man.” Upon hearing the verdict, Van Gaasbeek proceeded to shake the hand of each of the jurors and thank them for his freedom. Following the judge’s discharge of the jury, the man who was no longer a defendant was returned to his cell to collect his belongings and, at 8:20 a.m. Cornell Van Gaasbeek stepped onto the streets of Kingston a free man for the first time since December, 1905.
Epilogue
It had been two years and four months since Cornell Van Gaasbeek first pounded on Charles Wolven’s door, setting in motion a process that would shock a small town and intertwine so many lives. For the individuals involved, it was finally time to move on. District Attorney Frederick Stephan would go on to serve as a New York State Assemblyman and as Vice President of the Rondout Bank. Augustus Van Buren would continue his work as a lawyer while also serving as an alderman in Kingston and as a member of the county’s Board of Supervisors. Little was ever heard again from the remaining Conines, while the last public account of Emma Smith noted her application for assistance through the Overseers of the Poor. Turned down for failing to meet the residency requirement, it is known only that, at the time, she was ill and living near the Woodstock/Saugerties line. Everett Roosa’s career as the next Sherlock Holmes was not to be. The best Roosa would do to advance his career in criminal justice would be to secure a position as a security guard at the newly constructed reservoir for $75 a month. And, for Cornell Van Gaasbeek, the last account of his whereabouts following acquittal indicates that he finally found work outside of Kingston as a cook — for Augustus Van Buren.
In the end, no one would ever know exactly how Oscar Harrison died. There would be no further investigation, no further arrests. And so, Woodstock moved on as well. But a small town is not a small town without something to talk about and, in the early 1900s, chance and geography had conspired to offer new concerns and new targets for suspicion around Woodstock. Who were these artist people anyway?
All quotes in this article, unless otherwise noted, are from the pages of the Kingston Freeman (as it was then known) — December, 1905 through March, 1908.
Richard Heppner is Woodstock Town Historian.
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