The Giberson Case

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 35, 11 February 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

The Giberson Case

THE case broke in the dark, hot early morning hours of August 12, 1922, at Lakehurst, New Jersey. The murder victim was a middle-aged married man named William Giberson. He was an operator of a taxicab company. He was well known and rather popular, a good husband, not mixed up with any other woman. No one could think of a reason why anybody would want to shoot him.

His wife, Mrs. Ivy Giberson, was plain and plump, matronly. She had nice eyes and pretty hair, both dark, but she wore spectacles and her hair was massed on her head in old-fashioned knots.

She was as respectable as her husband was popular, a militant prohibitionist, a church worker.

The Gibersons lived' in the secondfloor apartment of a two-storey brick building over a chain grocery store. To enter their apartment, you went around to the back of the building and up a wooden outside staircase to a rear second-floor porch. A door on the porch opened into the kitchen. From the porch you could look out across a rear yard toward the railroad tracks.

That morning, railroad employees were walking homeward along those tracks. In the darkness before dawn they heard a woman scream. When she screamed again they started for the house. They piled up the outside staircase, found the door, and heard the woman still screaming inside.

The door was open. They went in and struck matches, then switched on the lights. They were in a kitchen. On the kitchen floor, just to one side of the door by which they had entered, lay a woman in a nightgown. Her hands and feet were tied with heavy grocer's twine. A gag dangling around her neck had, obviously, been stuffed In her mouth until she had managed to work it out.

They began untying her. She was whimpering, moaning: "Oh, my God! Will! My husbandf Her eyes were fixed on a door at the other end of the room, in the side wall against which she lay. That door was ajar, but from where she lay it was impossible to see into the other room. They got her untied and found she was unhurt except where the twine had been drawn tight. One of the men went into the other room and found the switch and turned on lights. The minute she wa» on her

feet, she followed him, and when she reached the doorway she began screaming again.

In that room, against the back wall of the house, was a bed. On the bed lay William Giberson. There was some blood on his face, near his left eye, where the bullet had gone in, and more on the bed where it had come out.

They made Mrs. Giberson go back into the kitchen, where she could not see the bed—or the dead man on it.

There was not any gun, so he had not shot himself. The bedroom had been given a hasty ransacking. Drawers had been pulled out of a dresser, their contents dumped on the floor. Giberson's clothes were strewn all over the room, with his trouser pockets turned inside out. Assault Victim Was Distraught Mrs. Giberson was too distraught to tell the men much, except that she had been awakened by a noise, had got out of bed, had been seized 'by two strange men who had clapped a hand over her mouth and tied and gagged her. One of them had disappeared into the bedroom and shot her husband. Then both had hurriedly ransacked the place and vanished out the back door. It had taken her perhaps 10 minutes to work the gag out of her mouth.

The railroad workers notified the local police, and the next morning they telegraphed Ellis Parker. When he got to Lakehurst, local detectives told h'*n the respectable background of the Gibersons and gave him a synopsis of what had happened.

"She was pretty hysterical right after it, but we got a good statement from her a couple of hours ago."

Ellis Parker smoked his pipe and read the statement.

"What do you think of it?" he asked.

The Ocean County detective scratched his head. "Well," he said, "it sounds pretty right to me. What she 6ays sounds straightforward. Take the kitchen door —the point of entry. Wasn't forced. They used a key. She says she locked it herself, before she went to bed."

Ellfe Parker nodded. "Meaning," he said, "that if Mrs. Giberson knew something about her husband's death, or was trying to cover someone, she'd say the door might have been accidentally left unlocked."

"Exactly. For the past month we've been trying to lay our hands on a pair of burglars that have been working this county. Usually they go in through a window, but a couple of times they've

used a door key. Once they were surprised by a servant girl. They tied her up and gagged her, just like Mrs. Giberson."

"Never took a shot at anyone, did theyi"

The detective shook his head. "Well, there always hag to be a first time," admitted Parker.

"But that's one of the things that makes Mrs. Giberson's story look good to me. These burglars are both tall. She insists that the pair that came to her home was the Mutt-and-Jeff type: one tall, the other "short."

"The Gibereons didn't have a lot of money, did they?"

"No. But you saw what she said in the statement. Giberson drew nearly 800 dollars out of the bank yesterday afternoon. He was going to buy another taxi. He had the money in his wallet. The wallet's gone." Parker worried his close-cropped moustache for a minute. "Check with the bank on that?"

"Sure. He drew the money out all right. Maybe he flashed that roll in public yesterday and these fellows trailed him. We're trying now to find out all the places he visited after leaving the bank."

Parker nodded approvingly. "I guess we ought to look it over. She's there now, is she ? Maybe she'll remember something else about these fellows."

Mrs. Giberson'6 eyes were red from weeping, but she greeted them quietly enough in the front living room. Parker told her he hated to bother her again, but he would like to look over the apartment. "Of course," she said. The living room was clean and orderly. Mrs. Giberson was a good housekeeper. Parker glanced into the bathroom, then followed a passageway into the kitchen, and went through the connecting door to the bedroom.

He noted with satisfaction that, except for removal of the body, it appeared untouched. He stared down sombrely at the empty bed. There were

two depressions, where Giberson had lain and where Mrs. Giberson had lain beside him.

He stooped down and examined the pillow. It bore a little red stain and some gunpowder burns.

"This fellow must have stuck the gun in his face,"' he said.

"Yeah," the Lakehurst detective said. "He never had a chance. He started to wake up and this guy pushed the gun at him and shot him."

"How was he found?" "On his back. His face was to that wall."

"How about the bullet ?" "We dug it out of the mattress. A thirty-eight."

"Mmni. ] Ellis Farker.

Pretty hefty calibre," said

Back in the kitchen Mrs. Giberson smiled at them wanly. "Do you think you can find the men who killed my husband, Mr. Parker?"

"I'm going to try," he promised. "It might help me if you'd go over everything that happened once more."

She nodded. "We went to bed rather early. I woke up some time in the morning—between two and three. I thought I heard a noise out here in the kitchen. My husband's a heavy sleeper. I didn't disturb him.

"I got out of bed and came out here. They grabbed me. The tall man put a hand over my mouth. They stuffed the gag in and began tying my wrists and ankles.

"Just where, in the kitchen, did this happen?"

She walked to a spot toward the outside entrance to the kitchen, near the wall that separated kitchen and bedroom. Ellis Parker walked over to the spot.

"The man who was tying my legs finished first and went toward the bedroom. He was carrying a flashlight. He disappeared into the bedroom and shot my husband."

Parker nodded: "I want you to try to recall anything that was 6aid. Did your husband speak?"

"Xot a. word." "Any noi&o of a scuffle before the shot!"

"None whatever. This man walked in there, and then there was a shot. His partner was still bending over me, fastening my hands, and he shouted out: 'Why did you have to shoot him?* "The other man shouted back: was waking up!' ''The man finished tying my hands and went into the bedroom, too, and I heard them pulling drawers out." Ellis Parker nodded slowly. Standing exactly where Mrs. Giberson had been bound, he looked toward the opea bedroom door. He could not see into the bedroom. "Will you try," he asked, "to give me the best description of those two mea that you are able?" She did pretty well. She recalled that one man had a scar on his cheek and that one wore a cap, and she gave estimates of the height and weight of each man. Parker thanked her and went outside with the Lakehurst detective. He knew now how Giberson hcd been murdered and who had murdered him. (Do you know now? If you have caujrht the obvious clue in this account, you do!) They were half a block away from the house when Parker said: "What we have to do now is to find the murder gun. She hasn't been away from here, except this morning when she went to the police station, bo she must have hidden it close to the scene." The Lakehurst man gasped. "You think she killed him?" "Sure," said Ellis Parker. "Shs's the one that did it, all right. The reason I know she's lying is this: "She said these two men were tying her up. One left and disappeared into the bedroom. Disappeared is her word —and it's the right word. From where she was being tied up by the other fellow, neither she nor the man tying her up could see into the bedroom. "What happens? No struggle. No words spoken. A shot. Then the fellow that's tying her up just yells out over his shoulder to ask his partner why he killed Giberson. "Now, that's not natural. How did he know that when hi 6 partner walked into that room, Giberson didn't poll a gun and shoot?

Trapped By

Subterfuge

"He dwln't know. Couldn't po«ibly know. There are only two natural things he could have done when that 6hot was fired: Either duck out the kitchen door and get away, or run into the bedroom to see if his partner was in trouble. Instead, he goes on tying up Mrs. Giberson and yells to his pal: *Wljy did you shoot him?'" The next day they coaxed Mrs. Gibereon away from the house by a ruse. From then on it was simple. Stuffed deep into the eaves of a spare closet, they found the murder gun—William Giberson's .38. They likewise found a packet of ardent love letters from some man with whom Mrs. Giberson was infatuated. And they found a nice new black dress —"widow's weeds" —that she had pur* chased before the murder. They put the things back where they had found them, and she wore the black dress to her husband's funeral the next day, and when she came home they arrested her. She was quite cool and indignantly denied everything, and Ellis Parker decided that if he wanted an admission from this woman, he would have to vm a trick. So he showed her the murder mm and said: "I don't think you told°i» the truth. Now, wasn't this what happened? You heard these burglars and grabbed the gun from under your husband's pillow and it accidentally went off and shot him?" "That's it!" she cried eagerly "That's it!" And that was the finish. By her own spoken admission, she had shot her husband. Who was going to believe the "accidental" part of it? Where were you going to find a jury that gullible? Just to make sure of his case, Ellis Parker went over to the Giberson house again from stem to stern, and this time came out with the missing wallet and its 800 dollars. The jury that tried plump Ivy Giberson was not gullible. But perhaps it was a bit chivalrous. She got life imprisonment instead of the electric chair. Next Week: The Cine of the Audible Corpse.