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| Betsy Smith Shot her husband, Mike, in bed. Maybe. |
Des Moines murderess Betsy Smith remained front-page news from 1894 to 1920.
Her story started in 1893 when her husband, Mike, got blinded by a gunshot that tore across his eyes while he was asleep. Betsy insisted robbers raided the house in the middle of the night, and her husband was blasted in the struggle.
The police had doubts. The angle of the shot was all wrong. It went down into the mattress, and the sheets were powder burned. If Mike Smith fought with the burglars, as Betsy said, there would not be powder burns, and the bullet would not have burrowed into the mattress. But Mike Smith was not talking. He could remember nothing after being shot, so no charges were filed.
Years later, the Des Moines Register told its readers Betsy meant to kill her husband. But as the paper reminded them, “women seldom make good pistol shots.”
Betsy lost interest in her husband after the shooting. Her sister, Ellen Scoville, spent most of her time—nursing and feeding him while Betsy and her daughter, Cora, spent their days and nights drinking and whoring around the city.
A year later, Mike Smith died from arsenic poisoning. Betsy was convicted of first-degree murder in 1894 and sentenced to life in prison. Her daughter, Cora McCalmly, blamed her mom, then fled the city. Later, she reconsidered, or perhaps had a twitch of guilt, and confessed she killed Mike Smith with the help of Ellen Scoville. Her mom was innocent of the crime.
Cora pleaded guilty and received a life sentence in the Anamosa
prison.
Betsy appealed and was granted a new trial in 1898 because of errors in the instructions given to the jurors. It was agreed to read the testimony of key witnesses from the previous trial rather than go to the time and expense of calling them.
In his opening statement, County Attorney Howe said Mike Smith had a $3,000 beneficiary certificate with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. When Betsy learned about it, she told her sister, Ellen Scoville, she would “kill him if she had to beat him over the head with a club to get the insurance money.”
Ellen Scoville said she cared for Betsy’s invalid husband while
Betsy and Cora drank and whored their way through the city with their
boyfriends, Frank Bellare and Chuck Davis.
All Betsy could talk about was her husband’s insurance money. She planned to leave Des Moines with Frank Bellare as soon as she got her hands on the money. Some accounts said she promised Bellare $500 to help him set up a saloon.
Ellen watched Betsy mix morphine into her husband’s oatmeal two
weeks before he died. It was one of five attempts Betsy made to kill him before
she finally succeeded.
The night Smith died, Ellen watched Betsy put poison in his pie and water. Mike became violently ill, vomiting repeatedly, but Betsy refused to send for a doctor, despite her and Frank Bellare’s pleas.
Another theory suggested Betsy poised her husband with Rough-On-Rats
The state continued reading Mrs. Scoville’s testimony the next day. Betsy continued her “orgies” with Frank Bellare until she learned she was suspected of killing him. Then, she wore a black mourning outfit and played the grieving widow.
After that, prosecutors attempted to show Betsy planned the murder for weeks in advance, stocking up on Rough on Rats, a potent poison.
The prosecution argued that in the six weeks leading up to the murder, Betsy and Frank Bellare spent $588.64 partying and carrying on. They spent $75 alone on April 23, 1894, the day of the murder.
Betsy took the stand on June 10 and denied playing any part in the murder, saying she never purchased morphine, rough on rats, or any other type of poison. She only admitted to having a few drinks with Frank Bellare the day before Mike Smith died.
Betsy admitted running a disorderly house (house of prostitution) on Grand Avenue near Fourth Street. She was one of the twenty-one people arrested in a raid on the place shortly before the murder. Frank Bellare and several other people worked there with her. She paid them $9.00 per week, which was where most of the $588 was spent, not on carousing about the city.
Cora McCalmly took the stand on June 14, and as expected, she took full blame for the murder of her stepfather. She fled the city after the murder and went to Omaha, where she worked at a house of ill repute. It was not the first time. She had worked in several houses in Des Moines and Omaha.
Cora said Ellen Scoville first suggested the idea of killing Mike Smith. And then, “in a weak and evil moment, she yielded” and killed her stepfather.
Rough-On-Rats was the poison of choice at the turn of the century
“She and Mrs. Scoville sifted rough on rats into the pie Smith ate and the water he drank.”
When Cora finished testifying, Betsy was recalled to the stand. Betsy admitted she spent part of the afternoon her husband died riding around Whitechapel with Frank Bellare. He later sold her out, stood outside her jailhouse window, and goaded her into talking about the murder. Unknown to Betsy, detectives concealed nearby listened in on their conversation.
The next day, prosecutors introduced a new piece of evidence that Betsy could not explain away. The day before the murder, Betsy put a deposit on a new room at the home of John Tallon and his wife. She did not mention her husband, telling him that the only occupants would be herself and Cora. Prosecutors took that as proof Betsy was involved in the plot to kill her husband.
Prosecutor Brockett summed up his case, saying the state and defense agreed on the facts. Mike Smith died from poison. Cora Smith administered some of the poison that killed him, and someone helped her. What they disagreed on was who helped her. The defense said it was Ellen Scoville, and the prosecution believed it was Betsy Smith.
The jury quickly found Betsy guilty of murder in . The only sticking point was affixing a penalty. Four jurors wanted her to hang, while the eight remaining jurors voted for life in prison. They settled on life in prison.
Detectives attempt to lure Betsy into making a confession
Most jurors believed giving Betsy a death sentence was an act of
futility. The governor would likely commute it to a life sentence, so why not
give her that from the start?
Cora McCalmly
struggled with prison life and eventually poisoned herself in 1898 by eating spiders,
or the tips of matches or ingesting a small vial of oxalic acid. The published
accounts differ on the exact method of poisoning, but the best evidence
suggests she swallowed a vial of oxalic acid. The Anamosa Eureka said
Cora was prepared to eat the spiders. She had nineteen black spiders stashed
away in a rolled-up handkerchief, but somehow got ahold of the poison and took
it instead.
Cora wrote a letter to
Iowa Attorney General Milton Remley before she killed herself in October 1898.
“I want to tell you the truth about my mother’s case. Ellen Scoville and myself
poisoned my stepfather, Michael Smith. Ellen made a peach pie for supper and
put rat poison in it and also in his coffee. That night I put rat poison in a
glass of water, and he drank it. My mother is innocent of what she is charged
with.”
Ellen Scoville also
wrote a letter to Remley saying she wished she would have confessed. Betsy was
innocent of killing her husband. But even the two confessions were not enough
to free Betsy.
Betsy turned her life
around in prison. She became a model prisoner and president of the Christian
Endeavor Society
She petitioned the
state for a pardon in 1901. “I would feel like giving Betsy a pardon,” said
attorney James Howe, who prosecuted Betsy, “but I should want it granted
twenty-four hours after the murderess is dead. That’s the kind of pardon I
think she deserves.”
His statement showed
the public was not ready to free Betsy.
It did not make any
difference. Betsy petitioned the governor for clemency for the next twenty
years, and her request was rejected every year. Finally, in 1920, she gave up;
whether from age or hopelessness, no one could say.
“What is funny about murder?” asked the Des Moines Register. They could not answer other than to say there was a “wrinkled old lady” who cackled through the halls of the Anamosa Prison for the past twenty-five years. The prison had slowly taken Betsy’s mind.
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