A Innocent Verdict

Actress Mary Scripts, sitting in the dock playing in the part of Rebecca Peake in this re‰nactment of an 1935 trial, grimaces as she hears testimony how she murdered her stepson Efraim by putting arsenic on his hash.

But Much Too Late for Rebecca

By M. D. Drysdale

One hundred and seventy-two years too late, Rebecca Peake of East Randolph was acquitted of the charge of murder Friday in the Orange County Courthouse in Chelsea.

Parts of the historic murder trial were reënacted by the Vermont Judicial Historical Society, organized by Montpelier Atty. Paul Gillies, and were witnessed by a goodly crowd of about 50 area residents.

They stayed a full two hours to hear the closing arguments of the prosecution and defense, and the final charge by the judge in the case.

Then the jury deliberated—in public, not in the usual closed chambers. One by one, the twenty-first century jurors expressed reservations with the 19th century case against Rebecca Peake, who had confessed murdering her stepson Efraim by adding arsenic to the family hash.

Then a poll was taken, and all the jurors voted (with varying degrees of conviction) for acquittal. In this they were prodded, not only by the arguments of the "defense counsel" but by playwright and former Randolph resident Maura Campbell, whose research for two plays regarding Rebecca have convinced her of her innocence.

Campbell’s pro-Rebecca comments from the audience probably would have gotten her evicted, if not arrested, 135 years ago, but they found ready acceptance by Friday’s jury.

This was not exactly a jury of Rebecca Peake’s peers. The members, picked by Gillies from the audience, were probably 100 to 175 years older than Rebecca. The panel included 10-year-old Teddy Kenyon of Randolph and 8-year-old Joshua Kumar of South Royalton, as well as former Randolph Town Manager Gwen Hallsmith, who strongly argued Rebecca’s case.

The original Rebecca wasn’t so lucky, of course. The jury, swayed by eight reported confessions, found her guilty after one hour’s deliberation, and a gallows was erected on the Chelsea South Common. Before she could be delivered to the gallows, however, she poisoned herself in the Chelsea jail.

This time, however, the defense counsel, played by Atty. Gerry Tarrant on behalf of her original lawyer Lucius Peck, was convincing when he portrayed Rebecca as a pariah in her village.

"Is it very strange then that this ignorant, weak-minded woman, surrounded as she was by an engaged populace clamorous for her blood, should have confessed her guilt when she was perfectly innocent, hoping that it would better her condition…

"These confessions … ought not to weigh a feather against the life of the accused."

Actress Mary Scripts, who was sitting in the dock playing in the part of Rebecca Peake had been acting pretty oddly during the proceedings—in-character for the real Rebecca. But when she was "acquitted" she broke out into a modern-day smile.