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According to Delmont, Rappe and Arbuckle had a few drinks, and then he pulled her into an adjoining room. Delmont heard Arbuckle say “I’ve waited for you five years and now I’ve got you.” Delmont claimed that after about half an hour, she heard screaming, so she forced her way into the room. Delmont claimed that she saw Rappe sprawled on the bed, naked and bleeding crying: “Arbuckle did it.” According to Delmont’s version of events, the ruptured bladder was caused by Arbuckle’s heft atop Rappe when he was raping her. Some journalists accused Arbuckle of raping her with a foreign object.
==== The Aftermath ==What happened after Arbuckle was arrested for Murder? ==
With two competing versions of the story in play, Arbuckle was soon arrested and charged with murder. The nation's newspapers went wild. According to William Randolph Hearst, the Arbuckle story sold more papers than the sinking of the Lusitania. People reacted immediately to the accusations against Arbuckle. His movies were pulled from theaters across the country, and his party, and the scandal, became representative symbols of the immorality in Hollywood.
The incident split the motion picture industry—with “one group convinced of the big comedian’s blameleness and determined to aid him to clear his name, and the other equally determined to ‘see justice done.’”<ref>“Murder Charge Placed Aagainst Against Fatty Arbuckle,” Indianapolis Star, September 12, 1921, 1.</ref> Lambasting Arbuckle, Henry Lehrman, film director and Rappe’s fiancé, exclaimed: this “is from making idols and millionaires out of people that you take from the gutter.”<ref>Quoted in “Murder Charge Placed Against Fatty Arbuckle,” Indianapolis Star, September 12, 1921, 2.</ref> The result of the trial put Hollywood, and the motion picture industry under intense public scrutiny.
Historian Lois Banner stated that performers’ private lives became public—and publicized—as “free and easy.” One authority high up in the theatrical world remarked: That [in] Hollywood… Stories of drug parties, liquor parties, and other forms of debauchery by certain individuals at various parties throughout the country are no longer new. In the aftermath of Virginia Rappe’s death, the film industry went on the attack against allegations that they were particularly immoral. The Billboard newsletter urged Hollywood to “purge” the trade of “those intruders whose actions have brought only discredit upon the film industry.”<ref>Quoted in Marion Russell, ed., “Drive Out the Rotters from the Film Industry,” The Billboard, vol. 33, no. 39, (September 24, 1921): 104.</ref>
Delmont proved a troublesome witness. In some versions of her story, she was lifelong friends with Rappe. In others, they had just met a few days before. Furthermore, Delmont had a history of fraud and extortion. She was sometimes referred to as “Madame Black.” She would procure young women for parties with wealthy male guests, but then they would eventually be accused of rape or blackmailed into paying for silence. Some telegrams were also discovered where Delmont said: “WE HAVE ROSCOE ARBUCKLE IN A HOLE HERE CHANCE TO MAKE SOME MONEY OUT OF HIM.”<ref>Gilbert King, "The Skinny on the Fatty Arbuckle Trial," Smithsonian Magazine, November 8, 2011, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-skinny-on-the-fatty-arbuckle-trial-131228859/.</ref>
Arbuckle’s lawyers found evidence showing that Rappe had a chronic bladder condition, and there was no evidence of violence or defensive wounds. When the final jury found Arbuckle not guilty, they issued him an apology. Over the course of the three trials, Arbuckle had spent more than $700,000 on his defense, and his career and reputation were ruined.
==== After the Trials ====
