Why didn’t Chester’s rich relatives come to his aid after his arrest?
Besides, Noah H. Gillette, Chester’s uncle and the owner of the factory in which Chester and Grace worked, Chester had an even richer relative: Lucien C. Warner, the millionaire owner of the Warner Brothers Corset Co. Warner was married to Chester’s grandmother’s sister. Neither of them explained why they abandoned Chester. They had helped him get into Oberlin Academy a few years before. It seems likely that Noah Gillette was responsible for sending Levi Chase to Herkimer to visit Chester. Then he backed out of the case. Warner never got involved at all. I can think of only two explanations for this. First of all, as the publicity about the case began to mount, they must have feared having their names too closely associated with Chester’s. Secondly, and, I think, more importantly, they must have thought he was guilty. This latter assumption did much to convince the public of Chester’s guilt. If his own relatives did not think it was worth while to defend him, they felt, he must have be
