Mrs. Frances Bates served as one of Arbuckle’s defense witnesses in all three trials. Mrs. Bates, a resident of Santa Ana, California, in 1921, had been located by Arbuckle’s personal lawyer, Milton Cohen. She testified that in October 1913, while a sales clerk at Mandel Brothers Department Store in Chicago, she witnessed Virginia Rappe, working as a live model, tear up one of her gowns and going into hysterics, clutching her abdomen, weeping, and so on. She had to be treated in the store hospital.

Such episodes were intended to prove that Rappe had a history of illnesses that resembled what the defense said occurred on September 5, 1921, while she was a guest at a Labor Day party in Arbuckle’s 12^th floor suite at the St. Francis Hotel. Milton U’Ren, a prosecutor, however, suspected Mrs. Bates was lying and that she had never crossed paths with Rappe. He eventually procured store records that suggested Mrs. Bates and Miss Rappe weren’t employed by Mandel Brothers at the same time.

In March 1922, at the third trial, U’Ren called William F. De Rose to the stand. He was an assistant superintendent of the department store. He took the stand and shared store records with the jury that showed that Mrs. Bates had worked at Mandel Brothers for a few months between September 1909 and January 1910 before she was let go for insufficient references.

As for Rappe, she had worked between September 1911 and September 1912.

Although Mrs. Bates claimed her signature on the employment forms wasn’t hers, a handwriting expert confirmed that the signature was hers. Her testimony wasn’t stricken from the court record, but it was certainly moot and she potentially could be charged with perjury.

Rappe, however, wasn’t alive to substantiate her employment. In fact, she was in in New York City in the autumn of 1912. But Mandel Brothers did have a significant fashion show of French gowns and Japanese-inspired kimonos to inaugurate a new wing of the store with an expanded women’s department. We wondered if there was any graphical evidence of Rappe’s modeling work. It’s hard to say, but there is one illustration that could be based on Rappe. She had a certain beauty that obviously worked well for pen-and-ink fashion illustrators of the day. But it’s all in the eye of the beholder.