The Heiress Whose Husband Poisoned Her Lover: Blanche Molineux's Nightmare

In Gilded Age America, wealthy gentlemen's rejection could trigger elaborate revenge plots more ruthless than any criminal underworld.

Blanche Chesebrough was an aspiring opera singer from Pennsylvania who came to Manhattan with dreams of stardom, performing at Carnegie Hall despite her modest background.

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introduction
1:16 Chapter 1: Love Among the Elite
5:15 Chapter 2: Rejection and Revenge
9:33 Chapter 3: A Christmas Gift of Death
13:44 Chapter 4: Trial of the Century
18:07 Chapter 5: Freedom and Destruction

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In 1897, at a yacht party off Maine's coast, she met Roland Burnham Molineux, heir to a distinguished Brooklyn family and son of Civil War General Edward Leslie Molineux.

Roland worked as a chemist at his father's paint company, giving him access to exotic chemicals like cyanide of mercury used in manufacturing.

When Roland introduced Blanche to his close friend Henry Barnet, a stockbroker, the attraction between them was immediate and overwhelming.

In October 1898, Roland proposed to Blanche, but she rejected him, declaring her heart belonged to Henry Barnet.

Late that month, Henry received a promotional sample at his athletic club—"Kutnow's Improved Effervescent Powder" that was actually laced with deadly poison.

Henry died thirteen days after consuming the powder, and chemical analysis later revealed it contained cyanide of mercury.

Just eight days after Henry's death, Roland proposed again, and Blanche accepted, marrying him on November 29, 1898—nineteen days after Henry's funeral.

Roland's next target was Harry Cornish, athletic director of the Knickerbocker Club, whom he despised after resigning his membership when members refused to dismiss Cornish.

On December 23, 1898, Cornish received a Christmas gift—a Tiffany box containing a silver toothpick holder and "Emerson's Bromo-Seltzer" mixed with cyanide.

When Cornish's cousin Katherine Adams used the powder for a headache, she died within minutes, becoming an unintended victim of Roland's revenge plot.

Roland was arrested in February 1899, and his trial became the longest and most expensive criminal proceeding in New York history.

The prosecution relied on handwriting analysis, with experts testifying that identical penmanship appeared on both poison packages.

Roland was convicted of first-degree murder in February 1900, but the New York Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, establishing the "Molineux Rule" prohibiting evidence of uncharged crimes.

In his second trial in October 1902, the jury acquitted Roland after deliberating just thirteen minutes.

One week later, Blanche filed for divorce and soon married her divorce attorney, Wallace Scott.

Roland attempted rebuilding his life but suffered mental breakdowns and was committed to an asylum in 1914 with neurosyphilis.

He died in institutional care in 1917 at age 51, while Blanche lived quietly until her death in 1954, deliberately avoiding public attention after becoming unwittingly entangled in one of America's most sensational murder cases.