In Cases of Missing the Corpse

Can you sentence someone to death for murder when there is no murdered body? Can you be so sure that the alleged victim really is dead? Such questions haunt jurors and were among the issues facing 11 women and one man in a gray-walled, windowless jury room in a Santa Monica courthouse this month. In April, they had decided that Billionaire Boys’ Club leader Joe Hunt was guilty of first-degree murder, with special circumstances, for slaying Beverly Hills wheeler-dealer Ron Levin, who disappeared three years ago.

But Levin’s body was never found and Arthur Barens, Hunt’s attorney, reminded the jury that never in the history of California has a man been put to death in such circumstances. If the death penalty were applied, it would be “state-sanctioned murder.”

The argument is that if you imprison a no-body murderer for life and then the deceased reappears, quite alive, at least amends can be made, whereas death in the gas chamber closes the matter forever. The Hunt jury, in fact, recommended life imprisonment without possibility of parole; sentencing is scheduled for June 25.

Yet considerations about a corpse may defy logic, if not mercy. If a jury is sufficiently sure of guilt to convict in the first place, what is the sense of a sentence like “guilty--but only if you do not execute”?

While the Hunt jury was out, a jury in Los Angeles Superior Court recommended the gas chamber for Darren Charles Williams in the 1984 execution-style slayings of the mother of former football star Kermit Alexander and three other relatives; one juror explained that the decision was based in part on the “viciousness of the killings.” Viciousness is a legitimate factor, and in the penalty phase of the Hunt trial Deputy District Attorney Fred Wapner asked the Hunt jury to consider the vicious nature of another murder alleged to have been committed by the defendant.

In Britain, having found a body always mattered until the Abolition Act of 1965 ended capital punishment. In cases without corpses, we British traditionally found guilt without finding for the death penalty. There was little practical problem about obtaining a conviction without a corpus delicti : The death of the victim was merely one more fact that could be proved by whatever admissible evidence was available. When, for instance, 30-year-old ship’s steward James Camb was tried for the murder of 21-year-old actress Gay Gibson in the 1940s--she had disappeared from her cabin in the middle of the night on the high seas--there was ample other evidence, including Camb’s own admissions to the police, to convict him of having pushed her through the porthole after she had rejected sexual advances.

But authorities still could not steel themselves to hang him. In the name of King George VI, then-Home Secretary Chuter Ede commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.

British juries have no say in matters of sentence; that is the province of the judge. Now, freed from the terrible responsibility of imposing an execution, British juries have readily convicted in many cases minus corpses since 1965.

The most recent example was last October when 46-year-old Ronald Barton was imprisoned for life for the abduction and murder of his 14-year-old step-daughter Keighley. The Old Bailey jury convicted, despite testimony from four witnesses who swore that they had seen schoolgirl Keighley in the street after she had been reported missing when taking the family dog for a walk (there have been similar reports about the missing Ron Levin).

On the following day, Barton, who had all along maintained his innocence, confessed to a prison functionary and told him where he had dumped the body--so that her mother could at last give Keighley a Christian burial.

The French, by contrast, until they too abolished capital punishment in 1981, were not squeamish about execution simply because a murderer had been clever enough to get rid of the body.

In 1922, Henri Desire Landru, the original “Bluebeard” and the inspiration for Charles Chaplin’s “Monsieur Verdoux,” was guillotined in public outside Versailles Prison for having murdered at least 11 wealthy middle-aged widows and spinsters whom he had enticed to his villa outside Paris for a “weekend of love.” No body was ever discovered but Landru’s own petty cash book was incriminating enough: It listed all Landru’s expenses--a return train fare itemized for himself on those weekends but only a one-way fare for each adoring companion. Forty-six years later, a Paris newspaper published his confession: “I did it. I burned their bodies in my kitchen stove”; his note was found scribbled on the back of a framed drawing that he gave one of his attorneys before execution.

But the ultimate example of stern French logic was the Alain Robert case. Charged in the early ‘30s at Arles Assize Court with the murder of his wealthy--and much older--wife Madeleine, the evidence appeared overwhelming despite the absence of a body. She had, he claimed, gone to visit friends in Normandy but never arrived and, in the intervening months, Robert cashed several checks that he said she left for him. The checks proved to be forgeries. The defense counsel knew that only an extraordinary forensic coup could save his client’s life.

“I have one last witness to call,” he told the judge, “Madeleine Robert.” He had the right to call, as a witness, anyone he liked. The usher threw open the doors of the court and the audience looked out as they heard the usher’s voice reverberate along the corridor: “Madeleine Robert, Madeleine Robert!” Then the usher returned to tell the judge: “No reply.”

Whereupon defense counsel launched a passionate appeal. How could the jurors possibly convict in this case? They would be condemning an innocent man; after all, when he called the name of the supposedly murdered woman, they had all turned toward the door, waiting to see if she appeared.

It was a magnificent effort. The attorney sat down, exhausted but exhilarated, sure that he had gained an acquittal.

The jurors retired--along with the judge, as is French practice--to consider their verdict. Decision: guilty. Alain Robert was guillotined.

Months later, the defense counsel asked the judge what was said in the jury room to undo the brilliance of his ploy?

“I felt it my duty to point out,” replied the judge, “that when you were enacting that magnificent piece of theater and calling the missing woman as a witness, everyone in the court turned toward the door in expectation--except the accused. He knew she would not come. He knew she was dead.”

After 35 years of practice at the English Bar, having defended in five murders, I envy French lawyers and judges their God-like self-confidence. Logic is not quite enough when you are snuffing out, in the name of society, another human life. I still look out at the corridors.