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original sob sisters—to hit purple overdrive: “That silence was masterly. I have known nothing in life or on the stage that equaled it in dramatic tension. Without a word, without a gesture, one frail white girl held the courtroom in her slender hand.” 55
    Uterhart, too, played a strong supporting role. All through Blanca’s testimony he had sighed, rolled his eyes, and pulled faces at appropriate moments, in an attempt to divert the jury’s attention. By the time of the shooting, he had hit full-on sobbing mode, snuffling noisily into a handkerchief that looked far too skimpy for the task in hand. Weeks ignored these interruptions and plowed on. “You remember that he turned his back to you?”
    “No.”
    “You remember he was shot in the back, don’t you?”
    “Was he?” The reply could not have been more offhand.
    “I’m asking you, when did you first know you had shot your husband?”
    “When Mr. Ward sat here.”
    “What! You never knew until Marshall Ward testified in this courtroom? Did you not hear what the doctors said, testifying before Mr. Ward?”
    “I paid no attention—I did not see.” She explained that her eyes had not been good that day.
    “But isn’t your hearing good?”
    “If I am paying attention I can hear. When the doctors were here I was feeling very badly [ sic ].”
    “Any pressure on your head?”
    The answer was a cautious “No.”
    “Were your eyes blurry then?”
    “No.”
    “Nor your tongue large?” 56
    She replied that it wasn’t, but that she had never felt worse, despite not having experienced any of the symptoms on the day of the shooting.
    “Can’t you recall having heard the five explosions, as you turned that revolver on your husband?” 57
    “No.”
    “You knew you have [ sic ] to press both the trigger and the safety catch to fire it?”
    “What do you mean?” 58
    “You heard Captain Jones testify here?”
    “Who is Captain Jones?”
    “He is a captain in the New York Police Department.”
    “Oh, I remember.” 59
    There then followed a reiteration of Jones’s testimony that two separate motions were necessary to fire the gun. Blanca merely shrugged.
    “You say you are familiar with firearms?” asked Weeks. Blanca admitted having owned the revolver for some considerable time and knowing about the safety catch. “You want to be frank, don’t you, and tell us everything you know?”
    “I want to tell everything I know.” 60
    She claimed to have no recollection of telling Donner to wait outside The Box, or of Seaman or Thorne arriving at The Box, or telling Donner to drive to her home and get his pay, or being taken in the sheriff’s car to the town hall at Hempstead.
    “And don’t you remember Constable Thorne testifying that you told him, ‘I shot my husband because he would not give me my boy, and I hope he dies.’?”
    “Is Thorne the one with the nasty voice?” she drawled. “I think I remember him.” 61 When the question was repeated, she now claimed not to remember. Similarly with further questions about the night’s events and also the ten days that followed—it was all a total blank.
    “You don’t remember a single shot on the night of August 3?”
    “No.”
    “But you remember up to the time you walked to the door of The Box?”
    “Yes.”
    “But nothing after your husband’s words, which you say are still ringing in your ears?”
    “No.”
    “You remembered that night where Capt. Lydig was in New York, did you not?”
    “He always lives at the Ritz, I think.”
    “And you knew the telephone number?” 62
    Blanca responded with a blank look.
    “Did you ever see the inside of the Nassau County Jail?”
    “Did I ever see the inside of the Nassau County Jail?” she repeated sarcastically.
    “Don’t you remember saying when you came in and saw all the bars that it looks like a zoo?”
    “It is a very nice jail.”
    “So you do not remember a single thing that happened until August 13?” 63
    Uterhart was up