Placeholder Title

On December 22, 1799, a young woman by the name of Gulielma Sands left her house in New York, for the purpose of (as the other tenants of her house understood it) getting married. Her bruised and beaten corpse would be found in a well two days later, sparking the first recorded murder trial in the history of the United States.

Elias and Catherine Ring, lived in Greenwich Street, New York City. Their family consisted of Hope Sands, Mrs. Ring’s sister; Gulielma Sands, her cousin; and a number of boarders, most notably Levi Weeks and his apprentice. Levi, a carpenter, was a brother of Ezra Weeks, another carpenter of sizable fame. Weeks was very intimate with Gulielma (called Elma) and she had confidentially informed Mrs. Ring and Hope Sands that she and Weeks were to be privately married.

On the evening of Sunday, December 22, Elma left the house at about eight o’clock, but she never returned. Two days later, on the 24th of December, a muff which she carried was found by a boy in the Manhattan Well. Oddly enough, there was no follow up until about a week later, on January 2nd, 1800, when her body was recovered from the well.

There were marks on the body of the victim, including marks and bruises, as well as many tears in her dress, that indicated rough handling, but they were claimed to be ‘not of a conclusive character’. The body was taken from the well to the Ring house and was laid out there for three days. Something that – to me at least – seems absurd is that on one day, the body was laid out on display for the public to come and ogle at. On January 6, the Grand Jury brought in a verdict of “Murder by a person or persons unknown,” and four days later indicted Levi Weeks.

The trial commenced on March 31st, before a bench composed of several eminent figures in the world of law. Yet perhaps the most absurd aspect of the proceedings was the disproportionately powerful nature of Weeks’legal team. Not only was he represented by Henry Brockholst Livingston, a formidable legal mind and notable diplomat of the Revolutionary era, but his defense was further bolstered by Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton – the latter a founding father of the United States and, in the words of jurist James Kent, “the greatest of the nation’s early lawyers.”

Witness accounts raised numerous suspicions: that Elma had left the house intending to meet Weeks; that he returned unusually pale and agitated; that a sleigh matching his brother’s was seen near Manhattan Well; that cries of “murder” were heard shortly after. Her dress bore signs of a struggle. Yet, so much evidence pointed towards Weeks’ guilt, the court claimed that the evidence was ‘circumstantial’. The defense, meanwhile, focused almost entirely on Weeks’s “good character” and on testimony describing Elma’s supposed suicidal thoughts, a claim that was neither well corroborated nor fairly scrutinized.

The trial continued late into the night, and procedural failures stacked up rapidly. The Chief Justice repeatedly steered the jury toward acquittal in his comments. Requests for adjournment were denied despite exhaustion. The defense’s massive political clout overshadowed the prosecution’s every effort. And most astonishing of all: after evidence closed at half-past two in the morning, the jury deliberated for all of five minutes before returning a verdict of Not Guilty.

It is safe to say that no other trial in the history of the United States up to this point had received such publicity or produced such excitement. The dramatic circumstances of the murder, the length of the courtroom battle and the sheer weight of the names on Weeks’ team has sparked much excitement. For many years afterward it was a never ending topic of conversation, and it inspired several fictitious courtroom dramas. 

The public, on their part, was dissatisfied with the result. Weeks found himself ostracised, with people showing open disdain for him. By proxy, his brother too lost considerable social standing.

Soon after, Weeks vanished from New York, settling down in Natchez, Mississippi, where he became a well-respected architect and builder. He married Ann Greenleaf and had four children. He died in 1819, at the age of 43.

It amazes me how, in the face of so clear a pattern of incriminating circumstances, Weeks was acquitted. The result seems less like the product of justice than the triumph of influence over truth. With Hamilton and Burr crafting his defense and a Chief Justice openly favoring his release, the trial’s outcome feels predetermined. The rushed deliberation, the dismissal of eyewitness cries for help, the neglect of physical evidence, the character-smearing of a young woman whose voice could no longer be heard? These were not the hallmarks of a fair proceeding. 

In a time where the United States was still defining the extent of law and accountability, the Manhattan Well trial exposed a dangerous precedent: that social standing could buy exoneration, and that the death of a vulnerable woman might be dismissed as a mere inconvenience to those who stood above her in status. Although the public realised the injustice, Weeks himself faced no legal consequence, and slipped quietly into a new life in the South.

Bibliography:

American State Trials: A Collection of the Important and Interesting Criminal Trials which Have Taken Place in the United States, from the Beginning of Our Government to the Present Day with Notes and Annotations. Volume 1 – John Davison Lawson; Robert Lorenzo Howard

“Weeks’ trial sheds light on early procedure”, History.com, 2009

The Trial of Levi Weeks Or the Manhattan Well Mystery. The Story of the First Recorded Murder Trial in U.S. History, New York, 1800 – Estelle Fox Kleiger