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At 11:32 p.m. Monica Welles plunged an ice pick beneath the sternum of her husband and into his heart. Less than three minutes later Charles Hamilton Welles—who was barely able to gasp the words “Why . . . now, . . . Monica?”—expired in his reclining chair.
Kathleen M. Burns, a rising Dade County prosecutor, made a reasoned yet quite impassioned plea to the jury that this monstrous act of spousal murder must be punished in the manner traditional amongst Floridians who believe in the sanctity of life and marriage and who desire to live in a safe and ordered society.
“Three centuries ago, this woman would have been thrown to alligators so that the Lord’s will might be done. Two centuries ago, she would have been hanged by the neck and then deep-sixed a mile out to sea. In the last century, she would have been electrocuted or gassed or a combination of these and her remains fed to the hogs. In accord with our current thinking, the fitting end for such a disgusting mockery of matrimonial obedience is quartering by SUVs. The state foregoes requesting the prior ‘drawing’ of her entrails in respect of the fact that she was born of the white race, however horrendously she has acted upon this earth since that birth.
“Our evidence will confirm that Mrs. Welles has confessed to police that she had a little argument about the dinner dishes, which her husband was actually at that time washing, and that, following that little argument, she sought out an ice pick and slew her divinely sanctified master as he readied himself to watch the Tonight Show with Jay Leno—watch it with her, I might add.
“We will further show beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Welles was as sane as any woman of her age and hormonal condition can be—i.e., totally sane in the eyes of the Law of the sovereign state of Florida—that killing one’s husband is in fact a capital crime in this state, and that her late husband, Professor Charles Hamilton Welles, professor and head of the Mathematics Department at G. Dubya B. Junior College for the Very Special, had made no threatening gesture towards this harpy nor, in fact, had any idea the blow was coming. In fact, according to her own confession, his very last words, in fact, were a special variant on the age-old and universally applicable question raised in the scripture of the Book of Job—‘Why, Lord? Why me?’”
As usual, the jury, especially the nine older women on it, were spellbound by her rhetoric. In the ensuing two weeks the state’s witnesses, including five forensic psychiatrists, laid out the details of Ms. Burns’s case. All prosecution exhibits, including the defendant’s signed statement of confession, were accepted without objection, and, after each witness appeared and testified, Cornell Kelly (“C. K.”) Lieberman, Mrs. Welles’s white-maned lawyer, rose to his feet and, like a broken talking doll, iterated, “The defense has no questions of this witness, your honor.”
One the fifteenth day, Monica Welles took the stand to testify.
“Mrs. Welles,” said Mr. Lieberman in his rather cracked voice, “speaking under oath, kindly tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury exactly what was the nature of the dishwashing argument on the evening you stabbed your husband through his heart with an ice pick.”
All eyes stared unblinkingly at the sixty-two-year-old widow, a moderately handsome gray-haired woman, attired in a simple dark brown dress and wearing no makeup on her smooth, diamond-shaped face.
“As he washed the dishes,” she said, looking each juror in the eye for three or four seconds apiece, “he asked me what might seem an innocent question—one involving mathematics, which was, as Ms. Burns has pointed out, Charles’s pet field of recreation as well as the chief source of his professional income at G.D.B.J.C. and of his reputation in the larger world of academe across the county.”
Her gaze was fixed upon Ms. Burns, and Ms. Burns met that gaze with her own and smiled almost pityingly, in the certain faith that Mrs. Welles was now doing the prosecutor’s own job for her.
“Charles said to me—yes, that was what I called him, as so did nearly everyone else who didn’t call him ‘sir’ or ‘professor’—Charles, for no one has ever called him ‘Charlie’ except his mother, and when she went into a senior care home, he said, ‘I told that bitch a thousand times to call me Charles, not Charlie. Maybe I can’t kill the bitch, but I can kill the bitch’s bitches,’ and then he euthenized her three dogs that we had agreed to adopt in exchange for her giving us twenty thousand dollars. But I digress. Charles said to me, ‘Monni . . . .’”
“Objection, your honor!” Ms. Burns was on her feet. “The victim is not on trial here, and even if he were on trial, this would be unsubstantiated hearsay as to an oral contract that might have been violated—or not—and which has totally not the least bit of relevance to this case.”
“Sustained,” said Judge Thomas. “The jury is herewith instructed to disregard all of this defendant’s remarks as to her late husband’s statements and actions pertaining to his mother’s dogs. The defendant is likewise hereby instructed to stick to only the matters of the present case and to answer the question that was earlier put forth unto herself.”
“Yes, your honor. I . . . I apologize to the court for my . . . stupidity. Charles said to me, ‘Monni’—that was his nickname for me whenever he didn’t want anything from me, and that is what led me to expect he was going to prove to me yet once more that I was merely a stupid woman, deserving his corrective belittlement if not a thorough thrashing—as he tended to say to me more and more often during the past seven or eight years when—I . . . I’m sorry, your honor. I was recalling my state of mind that night.”
She sighed and looked briefly at the ceiling before continuing.
“‘Monni,’ he said to me, ‘there once was a man who washed dishes. This isn’t a limerick—it’s a kind of story I’d like to tell you. He used to wash dishes every day of his adult life—as a very happily divorced man. At breakfast he always had the same general things—a big bowl of cereal, some kind of fruit in a small dish, and a mug of coffee—and his breakfast dishes, lined up side-by-side on his kitchen counter, measured eighteen inches. He was a man of a curious state of mind, as most men are, you’ll understand, and he measured them before putting them into his sink to soak all day. At his lunches, this same man always had the same sorts of things—soup and sandwiches and a bowl of fruit and another mug of coffee. These he measured to be another eighteen inches when put side-by-side. And, for his suppers, although he varied his diet, he always used a small dinner plate, a small salad bowl, a dessert bowl, and yet a third coffee mug—although this time, because he considered suppers to be special meals that were somewhat more formal, he put a small saucer under his mug.’
Mrs. Welles paused and glanced at the judge, who was staring at her with a somewhat heavy-lidded expression.
“Charles was silent for a few seconds, and then he asked me if I were following him thus far, and I said I hoped I was. I had, by the way, earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Penn State and had been able to work to support both of us for five years while Charles completed his doctorate. Later, our combined incomes allowed us to make a substantial down-payment on our first house. But I digress. Charles resumed his narrative to me: ‘These supper dishes measured, when laid side-by-side, a total of twenty-four inches—which gives a grand cumulative total of how many inches, Monni?’
“I confess that I feared this might be a trick question of some sort, and so I said, ‘Charles, am I to understand that the silverware is not to be included in the total?’ and Charles replied, ‘We’re taking this one baby step at a time, Monni. For now the silverware, as you call it, is not to be considered. Later—perhaps—it will be a factor in your calculations.’
“So I hazarded a guess and said, ‘Sixty inches, Charles—five feet.’ And Charles said, ‘Excellent, Monni. You may have a natural bent for figures. Now let me add that this gentleman, who like many unmarried men did his dishes but once a day at most, also measured his flatware—for he used stainless steel utensils, not sterling or even silver plate, being a practical fellow who had no interest in feminine things like two or three big sets of so-called fine china or sets of real silverware—he measured his flatware and determined that, laid out the long ways, his breakfast flatware measured eighteen inches, his luncheon flatware was also eighteen inches, and his dinner flatware was an even twenty-four inches in length. How much is that, Monni?’
“Again I totaled these figure in my mind and said, ‘It’s also five feet, Charles.’ And he said, ‘And how long would both the dishes du jour and the flatware du jour measure, Monni?’ And I replied, ‘One hundred and twenty inches or ten feet, Charles. That’s an even ten feet per day.’” And Charles smiled, placing the last plate into the drying rack and waving my hand away from it, for he preferred to let the dishes drip a bit before I dried them with a towel. ‘Perfect, Monni,’ he said.
“I confess I had expected a trick of some kind and felt my shoulders begin to relax. Charles then went into his home office to do whatever he did, and I prepared a meatloaf for the next day’s meal, washed up the mess I made with this project, and then graded about a hundred and twenty double-E exams for the courses I teach at—I’m sorry, double-E is slang for electrical engineering—grade the exams for the four courses I teach as an adjunct professor at three of our nearby universities. At eleven in the evening, both Charles and I both stopped whatever we were doing and sat down to watch the late evening news for half an hour, as was our wont—our custom.”
Mrs. Welles gazed down at her hands—the very hands that had held an ice pick and had forced it through her husband’s epidermis, dermis, diaphragm, and heart—and gently sucked on her lower lip for a moment. Then she cleared her throat, took a sip or two of water, and looked carefully at each member of the jury with calm, frank eyes. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, took a shallower breath, and spoke:
“During the first commercial, Charles asked me if I recalled how many feet the dishes and flatware washed in one day, which we’d discussed earlier, had measured. I replied that the distance was ten feet or one hundred and twenty inches. I admit to you that I was half expecting to be asked to convert these figures into metric numbers, but it turned out I was mistaken. After a thirty-second silence, Charles asked me, ‘How long would that be for a week, Monni?’ I answered that it seemed to be, given seven days in a week, a total of seventy feet. I held my breath, expecting him to ask me how many inches this was, and I tried to figure that in my head to be ready for him. Seven times one hundred is seven hundred, and seven times twenty is one hundred and forty—and so seventy feet is eight hundred and forty inches. But Charles said nothing, and the news came on for another four or five minutes. During the next commercial, Charles asked me how many feet long would the would the man’s washed dishes and flatware be in a typical thirty-day month, and I quickly replied, ‘Three hundred feet, Charles—and three . . . three thousand, six hundred inches.’ And Charles, whom I looked at for some clue, simply smiled to himself and said nothing further.”
Mrs. Welles closed her eyes and bit on the insides of both her lips for about ten seconds, apparently anticipating the small gap to be covered between this part of her narrative and the fatal blow she would presumably be describing.
“After the next four minutes of news, we had yet another commercial break, and Charles asked me the expected question—‘And how many feet of dishes and flatware would the man wash for a typical non-leap year of three hundred and sixty-five days, Monni?’ And I, who had been dreading that my flashy reply in inches would come back to bite me on my backside, heaved a sigh of relief and answered, ‘Three thousand, six hundred, and fifty feet, Charles. Definitely.’
“And Charles, after another thirty-second pause said, ‘What would you bet, Monni? I’ll bet you all of my salary for ten years against three months of your salary that you’re dead wrong. I’ll bet you that rag-top car I’m saving for against the new living room sofa you’re saving for that you’re dead wrong. What will you bet?’
“Of course I redid all the math in my head as Charles smiled at me. I hesitated. Then he handed me a small pocket calculator from the end-table drawer and said, ‘Do the math with this—if you have a mind to.’ I said, ‘I’ll accept what I said before—and I’ll bet a weeks’ worth of dinners at a nice seafood restaurant versus my doing the dishes alone for the next . . . next three months.’ He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘what about an activity bet instead? If I’m wrong, I’ll tell all our friends, relatives, and colleagues that you are the best lover and smartest wife a man could have, but if you’re wrong, you’ll tell all of them that you’re the worst lover and dumbest wife a man could have—and we’ll put it to a panel of four of your colleagues and one of my colleagues to decide who is right. Sound fair?’ I took the calculator and checked my figures—ten feet times seven, ten feet times thirty, and ten feet times three hundred and sixty-five. My mental math had been flawless. I didn’t like the conditions of the bet that well, but it certainly seemed that the panel of five colleagues was weighted in my favor. After a four-minute forecast of local weather, I agreed to the bet—and held my breath.”
Monica Welles paused, and nearly everyone—spectators, reporters, camera men, jurors, the bailiff, the stenographer, Ms. Kathleen M. Burns, Judge Pat Thomas—all but C. K. Lieberman—seemed to be holding their collective breath, awaiting the outcome of her testimony.
“Charles then asked me, ‘Monni, try very hard to think now: if a real person washes eleven or twelve dishes each day, and those dishes measure ten feet from end to end, dirty or clean, what dishes would be used on the next day? And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, as Macbeth might say?’
Monica Welles’s eyes squinted at the ceiling, and suddenly her voice dropped half an octave and adopted a sarcastic tone: “‘Would any sane person ever have even seventy feet of dishes, let alone three hundred feet of dishes or three thousand, six hundred, and fifty? The answer is ten feet! You are so stupid—and even your own colleagues will rule against you, and—well, you know the rest. You only think you’ve had forty years’ experience at teaching, but you’ve really only had one year’s experience—forty times. With just a piddly master’s degree, they’ll never let you teach anything but the basic two introductory courses. You don’t even know the first things about mathematical sets, do you? If you have a ten-inch bowel movement every day and wipe your fat ass every time, does that mean you wipe seven fat asses every week? Ha! I’ll bet you think you wash three hundred and sixty-five smelly bras and panties a year, when it’s really just your same old four or five ugly-looking old-lady things over and over and over . . . and over and over again.’
“My face . . . my whole face suddenly felt very strange, and my jaw went slack as if I’d had three injections of novocaine and it hadn’t yet worn off and I didn’t yet have proper control of my mouth and jaw muscles—and I suddenly felt as if I were going to start drooling down the front of my blouse. Charles stared at me curiously with a broad smile that seemed to broaden by the second. Then he spoke again: ‘Will you keep your word, Moany—or doesn’t that mean anything to you—you loser?’
“And then he began to laugh in a very phlegmy manner, and I stood up and walked slowly out to the kitchen and leaned against the counter and took a dozen or so deep breaths with my hands covering my eyes. And when next I looked at my own hands, they were holding an ice pick—which was sticking out of Charles’s chest—and my cheeks felt all flushed as if I had a case of hives or an allergic reaction of some sort—and my own chest began to ache. I let go of the handle, and with blood all over my fingers I called 9-1-1 and gave them our address and the nature of the problem—a recording of which Ms. Burns has played for the jury at least three times. Then I bent over Charles and heard his last words.”
Mrs. Welles took another sip of water and continued.”
“Then Charles suddenly went very pale. He’d always been a very pink man . . . a very pink man, and suddenly he looked very, very white. When his heart stopped beating, the blood that was pumped up to his head—to his face—just all drained back down into his . . . body.”
Kathleen M. Burns was on her feet instantly. “Objection, your honor! Such information pertaining to the victim is irrelevant and immaterial to the question which was asked by the defense’s attorney. Further, it is speculative on the part of the defendant, who is neither a medical doctor nor has been shown to have any special competence within the medical profession whatsoever.”
Judge Thomas glanced at C. K. Lieberman, who shrugged slightly and tilted his head to one side.
“Objection sustained,” said the judge. “The jury is instructed to disregard the defendant’s last remarks as to the color or colors of Professor Welles’s face and the cause or causes of any alterations thereunto. Mrs. Welles, for the second time I am cautioning you again now. I am herewith further warning you. Do not try to try my patience. You will not receive a third caution in my court.”
For ten seconds Monica Welles looked at Judge Thomas’s face without speaking. Then she glanced down at her hands again and said softly, “It won’t happen again, your honor. It will not happen again.”
After half a minute of silence, Mrs. Welles gestured with her a little flutter of her hands to indicate that her testimony was done. Mr. Lieberman rose and asked her if she had anything further to add, and, when she shook her head, he said, “Let the record indicate that the defendant has indicated that she has nothing further to say.”
After a brief pause, he added that he had no further questions, and Ms. Burns stood up and echoed his statement. Following the spirited summations of both adversaries about physical murders and “soul” murders, the jurors received Judge Thomas’s instructions and deliberated for sixteen days without reaching agreement on any charges. In this trial and in the three subsequent trials, the vote was consistently five for conviction and five for acquittal, with two jurors perpetually undecided.
There was no fifth trial. The state decided that Mrs. Welles—four years older, unemployed, homeless, and without property or savings—had been punished enough.
