by Paul R. Spitzzeri
After Norman Selby (a.k.a. Kid McCoy), a former boxing champion, was convicted just after Christmas 1924 for the shooting death of his lover, Theresa Weinstein Moers (Mors), in what was characterized as a compromise verdict of manslaughter after he was charged with first-degree murder, his attorneys, including future lawyer of the stars Jerry Geisler, announced the expected appeal. As 1925 began, his sentence by trial judge Charles S. Crail was delayed a week to 8 January to allow the defense to prepare its appeal filing.
When McCoy faced the jurist, he was handed a term of 1 to 10 years at San Quentin State Prison, these indeterminate sentences subject to the prison board to specify the actual number of years to be served. Geisler filed his appeal, Crail, after denying a motion for a new trial, issued a writ of probable cause to keep the convict in the county jail and, meanwhile, a trial date for the other charges of robbery and assault with the intent to commit murder related to McCoy’s rampage at the Mors’ antique store hours after Theresa was killed was set for mid-February.
The sentencing led the Los Angeles Record, in its humor column “Cracks in the Record” in its issue of the 15th to muse that “from one to ten years in prison should be no punishment at all for a man like Kid McCoy” because “he had eight wives.” Elsewhere in the paper, however, an article discussing the question of abolishing capital punishment, always a heated topic, included this commentary:
And how many killers have gotten off? Kid McCoy is not to hang, because he had money for good lawyers. The capital punishment law is a dismal failure, because juries are too humane to enforce it. Why, then, should it stain our statutes for those few who are too poor to get their cases before juries?
Three days before, in a letter to the editor of the paper, Mae Duperault wondered how McCoy could escape the noose when a recent young convict did not and contrasted the 51-year old former pugilist “with nothing in the past of which to be proud” and a “youth thrown out on this sea of boiling injustice.” She wanted to know what the problem was Governor Friend Richardson and whether he’d been in office too long (he served one term from 1923 to 1927) before remarking, “oh, when will men be men!”
At the beginning of the year, a Record editorial compared the McCoy case to that of three men sentenced to die for a highway robbery murder by noting that the amount of taken in the latter was $42, while for the former, the jewels taken totaled some $30,000. This led the paper to utter that “the law is a funny thing at times and the longer one contemplates it, the more ridiculous seems the McCoy verdict.”
In early February, McCoy told reporters he was considering pleading guilty to the seven remaining charges and it was added by the Los Angeles Express in its edition of the 3rd that the convict “is anxious to begin serving his sentence,” though there was no plea bargain, after all. Instead, the second trial was held in February and it seemed as if the defense was preparing for a retrial of the Mors killing by insisting that Albert Mors, Theresa’s husband, was responsible. This was despite McCoy’s claim that she committed suicide, while also positing that he was insane.
At the end of the proceeding, in early March, Albert was called by the prosecution as its star witness to testify (he taunted McCoy’s counsel at the murder trial about why he was not brought to the stand) and George Shreve, who led the defense instead of Geisler—likely because McCoy didn’t have the funds, despite the aforementioned remark, to retain him—was particularly aggressive in his questioning. Mors, who showed a decided tendency towards excitability previously, was a veritable cyclone in the witness box, yelling, screaming, gesturing and drinking glass after glass of water (apparently because of a medical condition.)
Deputy District Attorney Charles W. Fricke (later a prominent Superior Court judge), who handled the prosecution in both cases, made no effort to try and restrain Mors, while Judge Crail seemed perfectly content to let the histrionics go unchecked. Fricke later said that, had he tried to intercede, he would have been accused of manipulating Mors’ testimony, so he sat back and did nothing. Why Crail did not impose any sort of order is another question, it was merely reported that he smiled as the witness carried out unabated, though, on a second day of testimony, Mors was far more muted and restrained.
The defense turned to celebrities to try and solidify its claim that its client was insane, including introducing as a witness the famed pugilist Jack Dempsey, recently the heavyweight champ. Dempsey, afforded all the gawking, whispers and other gesticulations befitting his public persona, accounted McCoy insane by virtue of the fact that, some three years prior, he challenged Dempsey to a match. Theater magnate Sid Grauman also testified to McCoy’s insanity, citing an incident at one of his venues where the latter pulled out a gun and fired it. It also brought back Iva Martin, who previously stated that Mors was the man she saw crawling and then running by her apartment below that of McCoy and Theresa.
On 17 March, after three days of deliberation, the jury rendered a verdict that was also deemed a compromise, as McCoy was acquitted of the four robbery charges, “dismissing his banditry as a drunken prank,” but convicted of two counts of assault with the intent to commit murder on Sam and Anna Schapp, who tried to get Theresa to end her relationship with McCoy, and a diminished charge of assault with a deadly weapon against William G. Ross, who, however, was far more severely wounded. The Record reported that between two and five jury members, when polled, asserted that the defendant was insane when he went on the rampage at the store. It was added that “they were persuaded to vote for a conviction when it was agreed to acquit on the holdup charges.”
When Crail sentenced McCoy on the three charges, these were 1 to 14 years for the ones involving the Schapps and 1 to 10 for that related to Ross. Added to the manslaughter conviction, the range was 4 to 38 years, but, again, the actual term was to be decided by the prison board. It was not until nearly Thanksgiving 1926, however, until that was adjudicated, with the body deciding that the more serious charges were to run consecutively, with the manslaughter conviction bringing ten years and the pair of assault with the intent to commit murder charges each involving seven years. The assault with a deadly weapon sentence of six years was held to run concurrently, while it was reported that McCoy was eligible for parole in just two years, though it was very rare for prisoners to be granted this at the earliest possible stage.
On 11 April, McCoy, under his true name, was received at San Quentin, though reports of a riot aboard the ferry were exaggerated (another attribute of the media!) regarding photographers getting too close to him as he was transported from San Francisco to the Marin County peninsular prison. He was assigned to work in the jute mill, a general assignment, but soon became a “trusty” as he worked for the prison fire department.
This quickly led to an assignment as its chief, for which the celebrity received plenty of notoriety as well as praise for his response to blazes, though there was a change in leadership by an alteration of rules and he was relegated to being a captain. He also wrote for the San Quentin newsletter and provided physical training and boxing lessons during his term of imprisonment.
As to appeals of both trials, a large headline in the 15 September edition of the Record of “M’COY GRANTED NEW TRIAL” brought the news that the state court of appeals determined that Judge Crail erred in his instructions to the jury, though reports of Geisler’s appeal, which addressed a few points about this common target for such motions, did not mention the specific one cited by the court—which concerned the nature of Mors’ death and McCoy’s asserted role in it.
Alexander Y. Tully, the managing editor of the Express weighed in on the appellate court’s ruling and found an interesting simile as well as a caustic conclusion:
Columbus discovered America in a whole lot less time than it takes a bunch of lawyers to decide on the guilt or innocence of a suspect, and if Columbus had spent as much money as the average criminal case costs, Queen Isabella would have had to pawn her skirts in addition to her diamond studded garters.
Cases similar to McCoy’s are numerous throughout America, and with so many instances of bungled justice it isn’t strange the laymen are wondering what is the matter with our code of criminal procedure.
The California attorney general, Ulysses S. Webb, led the response requesting the Golden State’s Supreme Court to review the case and overturn the appellate ruling, which the high court did at the end of April 1926. The appeals court, meanwhile, sustained the Superior Court decision on the assault convictions, so McCoy’s final legal options were exhausted.
After his histrionics on the stand in the second trial, Albert Mors, who was very aggressive in filing suits regarding his late wife’s estate, which was variously valued at around $80,000, was challenged as to his executorship. In one instance, he won a judgment of $299 against McCoy for the breaking of an item in the store during the convict’s rampage there. Another notable suit involved Mors’ attempt to recoup $1,000 spent by Theresa financing a film called “Kidding Kid McCoy,” as well as securing the original film.
A lack of accounting was cited as the reason he was stripped of that role and the estate handed to a third-party on behalf of Theresa’s parents, the Weinsteins—it was revealed in filings that Theresa was born in Europe out of wedlock before her mother met her father. Legal fees and creditor demands, however, whittled the estate down to just several thousands of dollars, all to be paid to satisfy debts, with creditors reportedly receiving just 25 cents on the dollar. In March 1926, Albert married a Baltimore woman and had two children with her and gradually receded into anonymity.
Theresa also largely faded from public view, except in reference to her death, while McCoy was often referred to in the press, both for the sensationalistic circumstances of the shooting, his trial, conviction and imprisonment and for regular remembrances of the glory of his boxing career. Concerning his imprisonment, efforts were made from as early as 1928 to seek his release, with boxing legend and McCoy opponent in the ring, James J. Corbett, writing the prison board that year asking for “every consideration and leniency” to “the squarest man that ever stepped into a prize ring.”
This led the Express to editorialize in its 17 May issue about this effort of “that eminent publicist and student of penology” as it scored “Professor” Corbett for his praise of a man who “is remembered as the murderer who brutally shot a woman to death in this city.” Moreover, the paper opined that “we shall urge that the same consideration and leniency that Kid McCoy showed wretched Teresa Mors be shown to him.” Corbett’s plea was deemed “a curious perversion of reasoning” offered by “sentimentalists who excuse murder as a venial offense.”
The piece ended with the admonition:
Intending murderers take profitable notice. Hours devoted to pleasant occupation in relief of prison monotony may open prison gates. “Every consideration and leniency” will be invoked in Mr. Murderer’s behalf if it can be shown that he was the squarest man who ever played a game of solitaire.
In March 1930, San Quentin welcomed a new prisoner, one of nearly 5,000 in the facility, in Asa Keyes, the district attorney who prosecuted McCoy a half-dozen year prior and who sent to the big house on a conviction involving bribery from the C.C. Julian Oil Company, formerly McCoy’s employer, during its stock-selling scandal.
At the end of the year, Keyes and McCoy spoke to a gathering of Bay Area peace officers, with the former D.A. telling the assemblage that his nine months at San Quentin to warn that, unless prisoners were better segregated, “you are simply sending in new recruits for California’s growing crime army.” He added that a third of the prison population were young men, whose association with older, hardened criminals would only mean that “nine out of ten of them go out of there smart and crafty crooks.” McCoy, though, only offered tales of his boxing career.
Corbett paid a visit to his old ring antagonist in February 1931, at which time McCoy told the press that he would apply for parole in July, which would mark about half his sentence, allowing for good behavior credits. He added that he had several job offers, generally a pre-condition for parole, including from automaker titan Henry Ford. A 4 March feature in the Record by Charles Daggett carried the title “PRISON SOFTENS EX-RING CHAMP,” but also referred to the convict as “charming as Satan” while noting that he refused to talk about the Mors killing.
Daggett, however, provided the reader a palpable, if not entirely accurate, reminder, writing:
The bullet that McCoy fired struck Mrs. Teresa Mors, in the mouth [it was actually her temple]. She died quickly in a violet-tinted room. When the door sprang open under the ramming shoulders of cops, McCoy’s tenth love lay in her own blood on a divan [it was the floor]. McCoy’s picture—a youthful pose of him—was clutched to her bosom.
The San Quentin denizen was described as “cruel and merciless” in the ring but also “gentle and charming” to women and, while he sounded ominous to Daggett when it came to pride of physique and what he could do with it to those who crossed him, he also asserted “my life has been a wasted life” while he claimed “all I want to do now is to go outside and help others” because “I love people. I love everybody.”
As much as McCoy wanted to avoid the past, particularly Theresa’s killing, he very much enjoyed reliving the glory years of his champion status,” but Daggett also noted that he and Keyes became friends behind prison walls, while McCoy told him he held out hope for a release that year. The columnist ended his piece by noting that “at 59, when most men are finished, he is all man. Still the same compound of gentle cruelty. Still charming. Charming as Satan.”
Keyes was certainly convinced that McCoy was rehabilitated, as the Los Angeles Times of 7 April observed that “prison confinement has been instrumental in making a defender out of Asa Keyes” who confirmed that “he has written a letter of intercession for Norman Selby (Kid McCoy) in the latter’s effort to obtain a pardon, though he would not reveal what he wrote. McCoy, however, remarked that it referred to “insufficient evidence” as well as criticized that “compromise verdict.”
McCoy claimed he had letters of support for parole from Alfred Smith, former New York governor and presidential candidate, other governors, United States senators, and Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York City. He also averred that he had five job offers if paroled including from Ford, who the prisoner said was “my ideal for twenty years because he has done so much for humanity and for himself.” Others involved magazine work, the New York state boxing commission, a detective agency and a country club, while he recently reiterated his interest in becoming a referee, which might have related to the boxing commission offer.
On that day, recently inaugurated California governor James Rolph denied to pardon McCoy, who then turned to the state prison board for parole. On 13 August, reported the next day’s Times, he “emerged victorious in his most important fight since he quit the prize ring,” as the board approved parole effective in fifteen months, or the end of 1932. It was added that, on that date, “McCoy will go at once to Detroit to become physical director for employees of the Ford Motor Company.”
The board took just ten minutes to render the decision, stating that it was made “because of his exemplary conduct as a prisoner and because of the faithfulness in handling the trust imposed on him” in the San Quentin fire department. A Times editorial three days later, however, remarked that “the reason for parole is certainly inadequate” and concluded that,
So many criminals of the McCoy type have been turned loose in recent years that one wonders that the public has even a vestigial [barely functional] trace of faith in our system of penology.
Albert Mors, out of the spotlight for around a half-decade, emerged from obscurity, to write a letter to Governor Rolph, claiming that detectives of the Los Angeles Police Department were “surreptitiously and clandestinely” favoring McCoy after he was nabbed for Theresa’s killing, while urging the Golden State’s chief executive to “keep McCoy in jail where he belongs.”
To pave the way for an earlier release, McCoy left his position with the prison fire brigade in October to work on a road camp near San Simeon and the estate of media mogul William Randolph Hearst, this move allowing him to be freed the following August. His prison identification card shows his parole date as 21 July 1932 and, while he did work in that job with Ford, it was immediately reported after he left prison that he took a position at a Rochester, New York restaurant owned by a friend.
On 20 March 1937, McCoy was officially discharged from parole and that August he took his ninth wife, Sue Cobb Cowley, the niece of the well-known newspaper columnist Irvin S. Cobb. At the end of the year he visited Los Angeles, returning for the first time since 1925 and claiming he hadn’t touched alcohol since he went to prison. Remarking “I’m going to have a swell future. I’ve got friends, a swell wife, everything a man could ask for,” the 64-year old ex-con” informed the local press corps, “just tell ’em Kid McCoy is back.”
McCoy watched the great fighter Joe Louis spar, in September 1939, before the world champ’s next fight and told reporters he was a security guard for Ford “guarding the dough of the richest man in the world.” On 18 April 1940, however, “death nailed him with a knockout punch” as, with no small measure of irony, McCoy committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills in a Detroit hotel room. As he did almost 16 yeas before, he scratched out a will of sorts leaving his property to “my good wife, Sue,” while declaring in another note, “I can’t stand this world’s madness any longer.”
The story of Theresa Weinstein Moers’ killing by McCoy in August 1924 is instructive on several levels, including the role celebrity played in the drama (one can look back to Tiburcio Vásquez, possibly Los Angeles’ first celebrity killer, and his arrest and jailing in 1874 or gaze forward to the O.J. Simpson trial of 1995); the role of the media in excessive dramatizing, as well as reporting, on high-profile cases; the controversy of “compromise verdicts;” debates about the death penalty; unequal justice for the rich and famous as opposed to the poor and friendless; and the process of parole.
What also stands out, however, is how little was actually devoted, among all the column space and ink, to the terrible tragedy of Theresa’s death in media representation, other than that she was the victim of a crime committed by a sports legend and cultural celebrity. Her personhood was substantially subsumed in sensationalism, but she should be remembered otherwise.