By Mara Bovsun - DailyNews.com

Tuesday, March 25th 2008

Miss Frances Swope would not listen to her mother, uncle, sisters, brothers, or, it seemed, to reason.

Her mother, Mrs. Logan Swope, insisted the man Frances loved, Dr. Bennett Clark Hyde, was no good. Everyone in the Swope clan, one of the most prominent families in the state of Kansas, agreed he was not to be trusted.

Their low opinion of the fiancé was based partly upon a previous scrape with the law, in which Dr.Hyde had been arrested as the head of a gang of grave robbers, and partly upon his reputation for cruelty to women.

Frances would hear none of it. In 1905, she secretly married the doctor.

A good wife, Frances stood by her husband, even when another woman sued him for breach of promise within days of the wedding.

She stood by him, even when all her relatives, including her moneybags uncle, Col. Thomas Hunton Swope, shunned the newlyweds.

Frances would continue to stand by her husband, even as he stood before a court four years later, accused of trying to wipe out her entire family with cocktails of typhoid, cyanide and strychnine.

Kin fell ill

It was a gradual process. By 1909, Frances and her husband had wormed their way back into her family's favor, so much so that it seemed reasonable that Hyde would be called when her kin fell ill.

First came James Moss Hunton, Col. Swope's cousin. Dr. Hyde was called to tend to Hunton, who had a stomach problem, in late September 1909. The doctor decided the best treatment would be to extract the bad blood. Two pints and some pills later, Hunton was dead.

Dr. Hyde listed the cause of death as apoplexy.

A few days later, Dr. Hyde was called to the bedside of another family member - no less than the clan chieftain himself, Col. Swope.

Swope was one of the state's wealthiest and most influential citizens. He had come to Kansas in 1857, and promptly started to buy land; by the end of the 19th century he owned big chunks of the state.

A bachelor, Swope made sure that his relatives were well provided for. His will promised generous gifts to siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces, including Frances Hyde. His will also left a good deal of cash to charity, and donated thousands of acres of parkland to Kansas City.

On Oct. 1, 1909, the 82-year-old millionaire needed something to soothe his stomach, so he called on his niece's husband.

Dr. Hyde's "digestion pills" didn't make Swope feel one bit better.

Pearl Keller, the nurse attending him on the day of his death, said that Col. Swope had been reading the newspaper when she gave him his capsule. Within 20 minutes, his limbs began to stiffen, he started groan, then fell into violent convulsions.

His last words, Nurse Keller said, were: "I wish I had not taken that medicine. I wish I were dead."

His wish came true minutes later.

The death certificate, signed by Dr. Hyde, listed the cause as "apoplexy."

In December, more misfortune struck the Swope family. Eight nieces, nephews and cousins - all named in the will - came down with typhoid.

Chrisman Swope died on Dec. 6, three days after he started to show symptoms that bore a disturbing resemblance to those suffered by his late uncle.

It was all too much for Frances' mother. Never a fan of her son-in-law, she was now certain that he harbored murderous intentions.

The motive was money, she told police. Dr. Hyde had seen Col. Swope's will, and was bumping off anyone who stood between him and the old man's fortune.

The bodies of Col. Swope and his nephew were exhumed and examined for traces of poison. Investigators found strychnine, but the concentrations were not high enough to prove that Dr. Hyde had knowingly poisoned his patients.

But then one of Dr. Hyde's colleagues - Dr. Edward Stewart - told police he had given Hyde a test tube filled with typhoid culture on Nov. 10. Hyde told Stewart he was planning to use the cultures for an experiment.

And a druggist came forth, saying that he had sold Hyde large quantities of cyanide and strychnine, which the doctor said he needed to kill rats.

Police arrested Hyde in late December. Frances declared to the press that her husband was wrongly accused.

Motive to kill

There were fireworks at the trial, which started on April 11, 1910, as Frances and her mother, brother and sisters clashed on the witness stand.

"Mother-in-Law tries to hang Son-in-Law," reported one newspaper after Mrs. Swope's testimony that Hyde had knowledge of Swope's will, and thus a motive to kill.

Frances' younger sisters gave damning testimony about Hyde's bedside manner. "Dr. Hyde came into my room and looked over my medicines," said Margaret Swope. A short time later, a nurse gave her a capsule. "My convulsions followed." Another sister said that Hyde had come into her room in the middle of the night and jabbed her arm with a needle. The arm quickly became infected.

Hyde's defense said that Col. Swope had died of old age, and the illnesses among the other relatives were all a result of bad drinking water at the Swope mansion in Independence, where most of the family lived.

The jury, however, could not understand why Dr. Hyde needed all that cyanide and strychnine to kill off a few rats. They found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Frances had one terse statement for the press.

"Clark is innocent and he shall be freed," she said.

She hired the best lawyers she could find. In September, they filed an appeal, citing 255 errors in the case and attacking the competence of the poison experts who testified for the prosecution.

'Walls and eyes around me'

Hyde won a new trial, which started in October 1911, and, after eight long weeks, came to an abrupt and bizarre halt. Around midnight on Dec. 11, juror Harry Waldron pried open a nailed transom, crawled through the space, slipped down a fire escape, and bolted from the jurors' hotel.

Earlier that day, he had become agitated when he spotted his children and wife in the courtroom. He missed them so much, he said, it was driving him mad.

Police caught up with the runaway a few days later, but he was in no shape for the jury box. "I had been driven almost to distraction," a wild-eyed and trembling Waldron told the judge. "I couldn't stand being cooped up. There seemed to be nothing but walls and eyes around me."

Hyde's second hearing ended in a mistrial. And while Waldron's lunacy seemed genuine, there were some who suggested that it was all an act, paid for by Hyde's devoted wife.

A third trial in 1913 ended when the jury could not agree. Prosecutors talked about a fourth trial, but in 1917, the charges were dismissed.

Three years later, after bearing him a son and a daughter, Frances Hyde finally saw what her mother had seen in 1905.

In October 1920, charging "repeated and constant acts of cruelty and violence," she filed for divorce.

His family gone, Hyde moved to a small community, Lexington, about 40 miles from Kansas City. He set up a modest country practice, and lived quietly and alone until Aug. 8, 1934.

That day, as was his habit, he had gone to visit the local newspaper office to get a sneak peek at the news. A few seconds after he entered the office, he fell down and was dead when he hit the ground.

The cause of death was listed as apoplexy.