About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
The story began two generations before the murder. Were any of the earlier events predictive? Each of us must decide for ourselves.
A Jewish immigrant, Max E. Bernheimer arrived in this country in the mid-19th century. He learned the beer business in Germany. Soon after arriving, he co-founded a brewery in New York City. Lion Beer was a success, and that success led to substantial wealth. They say he sold his share to his partner for $6 million. It was 1903 – that is approximately $180 million today.
Six years later, Bernheimer died, leaving his fortune to his sons. New York Society in 1909 was very interested in rich, young, unmarried men, but less interested in two sons of an immigrant Jew. The sons, George and William, changed their last name to Burton, conveniently forgot their roots, and joined the Gilded Age upper crust.
George became engaged to Miss Charlotte Demarest. She was a member of the Gilded Age elite, lovely and loaded. On his wedding day, in 1920, as George waited at the altar with Charlotte’s family and their guests, Charlotte eloped with Count Edward Zichy. He was tall, handsome, charming, and titled. The Count and Countess remained happily married for 37 years until Charlotte’s death in 1957. George’s story ends more abruptly. Four years after being jilted, in 1924, George died of a heart attack. He was 32 years old.
William Burton, George’s brother, was luckier. He lived until he was 46 and was married in 1920. In 1921, he and his wife Lucille Wolfe had one daughter, Patricia. Though called spirited and avant-garde, the endless queue of young men at her husband’s bedroom door was too much for Lucille. She divorced William in 1925.
Wayne Lonergan, a Canadian, met William at the World’s Fair in 1939. Wayne joined the queue. In 1940, at the age of 46, William died. The next year, Wayne and Patricia married. Patricia was 20; Wayne was 23. The couple had one son — William Lonergan. In three generations, nothing in the Bernheimer-Burton family boded well or turned out well, and the sad trend was about to continue.
Patricia Burton Lonergan was murdered in 1943. She was just 22 years old. They say her husband did it. They say they partied separately but slept together. They say after a wild night, for reasons unknown, Wayne beat Patricia to death on the bedroom floor of 313 East 51st, NYC. No one knows why, but speculation grew increasingly wild.
Wayne confessed, Wayne recanted, Wayne had no knowledge of what happened. It was like the trial: he was convicted, the trial was declared a mistrial, the verdict was vacated. When Wayne was convicted, he was sentenced to serve 35 years to life. For the next 20 years, he battled to have the confession thrown out. After 24 years, he was successful. When the confession was thrown out, the sentence was vacated, and Lonergan was a free man.
You may wonder why. Wasn’t he alone with his wife in what the NY papers called the “murder bedroom”? Weren’t his clothes covered in her blood? That’s what the prosecution said. In fact, there was no physical evidence that Lonergan was there. The bloody uniform was assumed. It was never found. Obviously, Wayne disposed of it. Wayne’s fingerprints were not of the murder weapon. Probably he wiped them. Wasn’t he staying in that very bedroom on the night in question? No, he was staying at a friend’s apartment. With whom did he spend the evening? Another woman. On what exactly was he convicted? His confession and only his confession.
That’s compelling, right? He said he did it. However, he said he did it after being in custody for five days, without a lawyer, without being charged, and, oddly, without anyone knowing exactly where he was being held. Lonergan said, for much of the time, he was handcuffed to a radiator in a motel, starved, and beaten. He confessed as an act of self-defense.
Whomever the public chose to believe, one thing was undisputed. The prosecution had no physical evidence, no witnesses, and nothing on which to mount their case other than the confession. Twenty years later, when the confession was thrown out, Lonergan walked out of prison with a fair expectation of receiving one-third of the Patricia Burton Lonergan estate.
Over the next 77 years, everyone from Raymond Chandler to Dominick Dunne took a side and wrote an account. It fascinated and was never quite solved. Was Lonergan guilty or was he actually convicted of “being immoral” — read homosexual?
So, what does this have to do with Berkshire history? According to a reader and fellow writer, the names Mr. and Mrs. Wayne Lonergan appear in the guest book at Chesterwood. They married in the summer of 1941 and honeymooned in The Berkshires, guests of Margaret (Peggy) French Cresson, daughter of Daniel Chester French. According to the same correspondent, their names also appear in the Red Lion Inn guest book. Evidently, based on their enjoyment of the Berkshires, Cresson was searching for a summer house for them to purchase. Evidently, they returned and stayed at the Red Lion in order to tour the houses available. But, like everything else in their life, it was a task uncompleted.
Almost 200 years earlier, another young bride was struck by the beauty of The Berkshires on her honeymoon. Were the two brides similar in one way? Whoever murdered Patricia with a heavy candlestick, bludgeoned, and ultimately strangled her, did she have a moment of peace? As she lay dying, did she, too picture Stockbridge? Did she, too, think it one step from Heaven? Did she, as that other bride did so long ago, take comfort in the image?
