Nature dioramas and wax models by Henri Marchand were among the Buffalo Museum of Science's leading attractions in 1930.

So was Marchand himself — a renowned, Paris-trained artist who studied with Rodin and whose recruitment by Chauncey Hamlin, the museum's president, was credited with lifting the stature of the museum.

The shocking murder of Marchand's wife, Clothilde Marchand, changed that.

Her death 80 years ago, amid revelations that Henri Marchand had had an extramarital affair with a Seneca woman who modeled for him and may have influenced an older Seneca woman to commit the murder, became a scandal of international proportions and one of Buffalo's most shocking.

At the time, it was the scandal of the century, bringing into the spotlight a future state supreme court judge, an American vice president and famed attorney Clarence Darrow.

Still, the circumstances of Clothilde Marchand's death remain in dispute, despite a murder confession and time served in jail.

"The best way to describe the trial was 'sensational,'" said Ross Pundaloff, who directs graduate studies at Wayne State University in Detroit and has researched the crime. "It had great resonance with people because it had these lurid details of a terrible murder."

The scandal cast a dark cloud on the museum one year after its much-publicized move to Humboldt Parkway.

An article about Marchand in the March 1925 Hobbies magazine, published by the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, which operates the museum, heralded his arrival that year. Marchand's previous work for the New York State Museum in Albany and at other institutions "has attracted worldwide attention," it proclaimed.

Unfortunately for the museum, so did the murder.

"If you look at the archival material, it becomes really clear that ... the opening of the museum was an extraordinarily important event for Buffalo and the area," Pundaloff said. "The murder and the trial had the effect of torpedoing a boat."

Nancy Bowen, a 66-year-old Seneca, admitted to killing Clothilde Marchand, 50, at her home at 576 Riley St. on March 30, 1930. She was reportedly convinced by Lila Jimerson, a fellow Seneca and Henri Marchand's 36-year-old lover, that the victim was a "white witch" responsible for the death of Bowen's husband, Charley "Chief Sassafras" Bowen. Press reports at the time said Jimerson may have used a Ouija board to trick Bowen into believing Mrs. Marchand had killed her husband.

Jimerson, it was shown in Erie County court, purchased a hammer from a store on Jefferson Avenue for 10 cents and gave it along with a bottle of chloroform to Bowen. The older woman took them to the Marchand home, and hit Clothilde Marchand in the head with the hammer after she gave an amused answer when asked whether she was a witch.

Marchand tumbled down a flight of stairs, and Bowen asphyxiated her with chloroform-soaked cotton.

Jimerson had come to town that day with Bowen and spent several hours with Henri Marchand.

"Mr. Marchand, noted sculptor with the Buffalo Museum of Science... admitted being with one of the women while the other was battering the life out of his wife," The Buffalo Evening News reported two days after the murder.

Bowen and Jimerson were indicted by a grand jury for first-degree murder, and Marchand was arrested as a material witness. Clarence Darrow, the noted defense attorney, was asked to advise Jimerson's defense team, which included John V. Maloney, a future state supreme court justice, but declined.

Marchand often stayed in a cabin near Jimerson on the Cattaraugus Reservation in Gowanda he reconstructed in dioramas. At the first trial, he characterized his seduction of Jimerson as a "professional necessity." However letters he wrote to Jimerson provided evidence of an intimate relationship.

Jimerson testified Marchand had earlier discussed having his wife killed, a charge Marchand denied.

Jimerson's case was declared a mistrial following her collapse from tuberculosis in the courtroom. She later changed her plea to second-degree manslaughter, only to retract it.

At one point during the second trial, the federal government intervened at the urging of President Herbert Hoover's vice president, Charles Curtis, who was part-Indian. Richard Templeton, U.S. district attorney, asked for an adjournment, which County Judge Frank B. Thorn denied, saying, "The attorney general is not running my court."

District Attorney Gary Moore called Jimerson a "filthy Indian" during the trial, reflecting the overt bigotry of the time. She was found innocent after being retried in 1931.

Bowen pled guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to one to 10 years in jail. She served a year in Erie County jail. The press — including correspondents from France — had a field day with the courtroom proceedings, even running a serial purporting to be of Jimerson's diary. (It was later proved to be fraudulent). Written in pidgin English, it had Jimerson, an educated woman, saying things like, "Me take canoe, me paddle up river, me see great man."

During Jimerson's second trial, Police Commissioner Austin J. Roche said he believed the murder had been a calculated act by Jimerson, and that Marchand was kept in the dark.

Thorn had a harsher appraisal of Marchand.

"I believe, and I think everyone acquainted with this case believes, that Henri Marchand, through his affair with Lila Jimerson, which he cynically defended as a 'professional necessity,' has a large share morally in the killing of his wife," Thorn said from the bench.

"I do not believe, however, that he is legally responsible. There is no evidence that he is."

That prompted French consul Paul J. Speyser to say he resented the courtroom "slurs on French morals."

Thorn went on to say he thought the jury's verdict in the Jimerson case was "ridiculous" and a "miscarriage of justice," and that Bowen "was less guilty" than Jimerson. He cited that case in releasing Bowen from jail for time served.

It marked the end to what The Buffalo Evening News called "one of the most bizarre murder trials in New York court annals."

Marchand, who was asked to testify at Jimerson's first trial but not the second, reacted angrily to Jimerson's acquittal. It was now the end of 1931, and the 54-year-old man was living in a chalet near Troy with his new wife, his sister's 18-year-old foster daughter.

Marchand predicted Jimerson would one day recant her claim that he wanted his wife killed.

"The Indian lies when she says that I had any part in the death of my wife, and she lies when she says that she did not have a part in the plot that led old Nancy to kill Clothilde," Marchand said.

Jimerson later married a white man and moved to Perrysburg. She died in 1972.

The scandal didn't prevent Marchand from getting a lucrative commission to make dioramas for the Chicago World's Fair in 1933.

While the shocking murder garnered headlines around the world, it was never talked about at home, according to a granddaughter of Henri and Clothilde Marchand.

"We didn't know about it as kids, and never found out about it until we were in our teens, when my grandfather died," said Antoinette Marchand, 73, the daughter of Paul Marchand, one of Henri and Clothilde's five children, from her home near Albany.

"My father never ever, ever, ever spoke about it. It's my family's preference to let that whole thing go."

Marchand and Jimerson's roles in the murder continue to be debated. Some have wondered if Jimerson instigated the murder to be with Marchand, or if Marchand orchestrated it with her knowledge, or manipulated her to do it.

Sharon Eberhardt, who grew up in Lakeview and graduated from Frontier Central in Hamburg, wrote a play about the murder that was performed in 2008 at the Marsh Theater in San Francisco. The historical drama was written using research from the archives of the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society.

"My conclusion was probably that Henri, using his knowledge of witchcraft, manipulated the two women into murdering his wife so he would be free of her. They carried it out believing his wife was a witch," Eberhardt said.

"The 1920s into the '30s was the time of the big newspaper scandals, a 'trial of the century' every couple of years. But this was a pretty good one."

The scandal now seems light years away for the museum.

Last summer and fall, the popular traveling exhibition, "Body Worlds & the Story of the Heart," drew record crowds, and the museum is currently converting its auditorium to show 3-D science films as part of a five-year, $5 million plan.

Among the museum's most popular attractions remain the intricately made dioramas and plant and animal models by Henri Marchand's sons, Paul and George.

"This museum opened to the public on Jan. 29, 1929, at the start of the Great Depression, and then the scandal hit," said Kathryn Leacock, curator of collections. "If we can make it through that, we can make it through anything."

msommer@buffnews.com