Duel with the Devil

No sooner had Manhattan's municipal water system come into effect when one of its wells became a crime scene.

In January 1800, the body of Gulielma ‘Elma' Sands was found floating in the frozen water of a well in Lispenard's Meadow, a marshy terrain near modern day Soho. She had left her Greenwich Street boardinghouse on December 22, 1799 after telling confidants that she intended to be married to carpenter Levi Weeks, who was a fellow boarder. Instead of a bride, Elma became a corpse in a watery grave and the blame was universally cast on Weeks.

Levi’s brother, Ezra, an influential building contractor, hired three prominent lawyers to defend him: former secretary of the treasury and Bank of the United States founder Alexander Hamilton, one-time senator and future Vice President Aaron Burr, and Brockholst Livingston, who went on to become a Justice of the Supreme Court. Although the first two were political adversaries, together with Livingston they formed the young nation’s earliest ‘dream team’.  Four years later Burr would kill Hamilton in a duel, but while the trial ran its course, they cooperated so well that the prosecution never stood a chance.

The trial of Levi Weeks was the first American murder trial to be transcribed for posterity, thanks to the new ‘technology’ of shorthand. Eager for details of the ‘Manhattan Well Mystery’, thousands of people attended the proceedings throughout their duration, which was longer than any other American trial to date. Afterwards, future New York Post editor William Coleman published the transcripts in book format.

Duel with the Devil is not merely about a landmark murder mystery: the book reaches out to explore the social customs and political chicanery of post-Revolutionary War New York. A case in point: Aaron Burr’s water company owned the crime scene, had employed Levi Weeks, and rejected a bid by a relative of Elma Sands. According to the author, Burr himself had “financial relationships” with the court recorder and the clerk and past dealings with the mayor and the judge.

Duel with the Devil is another gem by Paul Collins, who also wrote one of my favourite True Crime books: `Murder of the Century'. Collins, who is already celebrated as NPR's "literary detective", once again reveals his genius as a historian and a detective. His theory on the identity of Elma's killer may be as close to the truth as we can get after 214 years.

Infidelity: the Death of Normalcy

Infidelity (ECW Press, October 2013) is a novel about the proverbial Bad Romance: two people in a relationship that starts out cathartic and ends up corrosive- to themselves and those close to them.

Ronnie, a free-spirited hairdresser and ex-teenaged rebel, is engaged to Aaron, an ambitious caterer who tries to make an honest woman of her. Bored and antagonized by a routine existence, she begins an affair with Charlie, a neurotic  and married writer who is mesmerized by the very brashness that Aaron discourages. They meet in his university office, in Toronto hotel rooms, Bay Street bars, any place where neither is reminded of their respective obligations at home. Their need for one another obliterates all other responsibilities, until the people in their everyday lives- Ronnie’s fiancé, Charlie’s wife and autistic son- become casualties in the ultimate fallout.

Infidelity is gritty and real. It doesn’t have a happy ending, and nor should it, because Charlie and Ronnie aren’t truly in love- they’re seeking an escape from their respective personal demons. The entire novel is a beautifully-written reminder that relationships born out of desperation or rebellion have negative- and often permanent- consequences.

Recollecting the Scattered Dutchman

The murder of William Guldensuppe hasn’t received the same level of recognition as other gruesome killings that took place during the closing years of the nineteenth century. But throughout the latter half of 1897, the people of New York talked about little else.

On June 26^th, 1897, some boys out to escape the summer heat found a strange object floating in the East River and retrieved it. It turned out to be a headless and limbless male torso wrapped in oilcloth. The repulsive discovery was initially passed off as a medical student prank, but the conclusion changed to murder after doctors said that the dismemberment lacked the skill of a medical professional. The announcement sparked public interest, but when the missing limbs were found in Harlem soon afterward, intrigue morphed into hysteria. Who was the victim? Where was his head? And who had killed him?

Newspaper barons William Randolph Hearst and the aging Joseph Pulitzer turned the mysterious affair into a media circus, driving up the circulation of their respective papers as they competed to solve the case first.  This was the era of the detective journalist, so reporters from both camps schemed, tricked, and stole in order to get names and locate evidence. They were so tenacious that the press arguably deserves the credit for identifying the victim as bathhouse masseur William Guldensuppe and his suspected killers as barber Martin Thorn and midwife Augusta Nack.

Murder of the Century reads more like a detective novel than a work of history, but the author is constantly faithful to the facts and has the endnotes to prove it. Paul Collins, who moonlights as the literary detective on the NPR show “Weekend Edition”, recreates the investigation, trial, and aftermath in a way that keeps the pages turning.

As the author of three historical True Crime books, I can tell you that his task wasn’t an easy one: the ‘Case of the Scattered Dutchman’ was not widely written about after the trial concluded, so the hunt for non-newspaper sources must have been taxing. His persistence uncovered a surprising amount of forgotten details, which he uses to present his own version of how William Guldensuppe was killed, and by whom.

This is not just the story of a love triangle that ended in bloodshed: Collins has evoked Gilded Age America and its merciless tabloid wars, the echoes of which can still be felt today.

The Abingdon Waterturnpike Murder

I heard about this book several years ago, when the Daily Telegraph  (UK) ran an article about 23-year-old Giles Freeman Covington, a seaman who was hanged in Oxford in 1791 for murdering an elderly peddler. After the execution his corpse was sent to an anatomy school for use as a teaching aide. The skeleton ended up as a museum display piece, and remained so until 2001, when the curator of the Oxford Museum declared his intention to give the remains a Christian burial. The man added that he questioned the justice of Covington’s conviction and planned to secure a Royal Pardon.

The Abingdon Waterturnpike Murder revisits the October 8, 1787 killing of David Charteris, a Scottish peddler, and the alleged miscarriage of justice that followed. Charteris was found beaten to death in a ditch at Nuneham, Abingdon, but primitive police resources and the reluctance of local residents to “get involved” left the case unsolved for four years.

A break in the investigation occurred when gossip led to the arrest of one Richard Kilby, an army deserter who offered to tell all in exchange for a Royal Pardon. He told the authorities that Giles Covington and an accomplice named Charles Shury had killed Charteris during a robbery attempt gone wrong.

When Covington’s ship docked in London in 1791 he was arrested and brought to Oxford to stand trial. He didn’t accept accusation gracefully: while Kilby was giving evidence, Covington sprang from his seat and tried to punch him. The jury returned a guilty verdict and three days later, on March 7, 1791, he was executed at the entrance to Oxford Castle. Before submitting to the hangman’s deadly art, he tossed a paper off the scaffold: it was a letter addressed to a local magistrate and read, "I hope you and your family will live to find that Giles Freeman Covington died innocent and then I hope you would relieve the widow that is left behind if Bedlam is not to be her doom."

The Abingdon Waterturnpike Murder is a slim volume about a murder and aftermath that weren’t particularly shocking or sensational, but Mark Davies points out that Covington’s conviction on the basis of an accomplice’s testimony may have been a miscarriage of justice, and ‘justice denied’ stories have a certain pathos. The book also provides a fascinating insight into late eighteenth century social customs and mores. Davies notes in his forward, “Most (of the people who appear in the book) – ordinary working people of little note – would no doubt be greatly surprised to find themselves remembered over 200 years later. But that, I hope is part of the charm of this tale.”

I’m not sure if the Oxford Museum curator went ahead with the pardon request and, if so, what the outcome was. Apparently a similar application was made on March 7, 1991 (the 200^th anniversary of Covington’s execution) but a spokesman for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy division at the Home Office stated, "Normally cases like this involve people who are still alive and in prison. But the rules are still the same. (The applicants) will have to produce new evidence to show the original conviction was unsafe." After over two hundred years it’s unlikely that exculpatory evidence will ever come to light, but perhaps a public exoneration in this book will be sufficient.

A Gangster Star is Reborn

Whenever newsmen wrote about American gangland during the Prohibition era, two names usually made into the final copy: Al Capone and Legs Diamond. Both were household names and front page staples, but their similarity ended there. Capone was a multimillionaire whose criminal empire and power made the President uneasy. Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond had a handful of followers and was only modestly successful in the bootlegging and narcotics rackets. Yet Diamond was so famous that he hung around with celebrities, received fan mail, and nearly became the subject of a MGM feature film.

“Legs Diamond, Gangster” is the biography of the handsome Irish-American bootlegger who competed with Big Al for headlines during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Although spiteful rivals referred to Jack Diamond as “overrated”, author Pat Downey has written an excellent reminder of why Legs made such a splash during his day. The book covers the four attempts on his life, war with former protégé Dutch Schultz, Hotsy Totsy bloodbath, and other acts of violence in which Diamond was either an instigator or a target. Also included is his inglorious military service, an ill-fated trip to Europe that made him a celebrity on both sides of the pond, and his relationship with Ziegfeld dancer Marion “Kiki” Roberts.

“Legs Diamond, Gangster” is NOT a rehash of old newspaper articles and Diamond biographies. Using official records, family interviews, and a healthy dose of scepticism, Pat Downey does a thorough job of reconstructing Jack Diamond’s life from his tragic Philadelphia boyhood to his sudden demise in a cheap rooming house. At various points along the way, a few persistent myths are debunked. Example: Diamond’s nickname allegedly came from his dancing and/or bullet-dodging skills, but Downey offers evidence that the moniker belonged originally to Jack’s brother Eddie. This historical tidbit is one of many that make this book one of the most entertaining and best-researched gangster bios to come out in a long time.

Dying for Love

Famed Chicago historian Richard C. Lindberg has excavated the long-buried stories of Belle Gunness and Johann Hoch, two serial killers who preyed on the lovelorn during the closing years of the nineteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth. It’s a darkly fascinating look at a ruthless pair who profited from their respective marriage-murder sprees until the law caught up with one and fire destroyed the other… maybe.

Belle Gunness was a homely middle-aged widow whose Northwest Indiana farm included an unmarked graveyard for all her slain suitors. From 1900-1908 she lured well-to-do men to her home, promising love and material comfort and delivering a horrific death instead. She is arguably the most prolific female serial killer of her era, and Lindberg enlivens her story with details about recent DNA testing of human remains found on the old Gunness farm site in LaPorte. When a fire destroyed the place in 1908, apparently killing the murderess along with her children, some investigators were convinced that the adult female skeleton found was not Belle’s. The authorities had been closing in on her, alerted by the suspicious relatives of her victims, and many believed that she’d murdered a homeless woman to aid in her escape. The mystery isn’t solved yet, but this modern postscript suggests that one day it may be.

Johann Hoch’s legend is not as well remembered, but no less intriguing. A squat, balding man who somehow appealed to women, Hoch spent some time as an apprentice to serial killer H.H. Holmes (a fact that Lindberg’s masterful research has brought to light), whose Englewood “murder castle” claimed dozens of lives. Hoch married thirty-five women for their money and assets and killed at least ten of them. Forensic science proved his undoing: one of his victims, Marie Walcker, had arsenic in her system, and when the mortician proved that the poison had not been a component of the embalming fluid, Hoch was charged with murder. He was convicted after a sensational trial and hanged in 1906.

Lindberg documents the murder for profit sprees of Gunness and Hoch in alternating chapters, and in a gritty, intense style that makes the events he describes as chilling today as they were at the time of their discovery. Heartland Serial Killers will appeal to True Crime fans, lovers of Chicago history, and anyone who enjoys a literary foray into the underworld of human nature.

Deadly and Delicious

On the afternoon of August 30, 1895, Mary Alice Livingston Fleming ordered clam chowder and lemon meringue pie from the kitchen of New York’s Colonial Hotel, where she lived with her three children. When it arrived, she wrapped the pie, poured the chowder into a pail, and asked her ten-year-old daughter Gracie to deliver the food to her mother, Evelina Bliss, who lived nearby.

The gesture was surprising, and suspicious. Mary Alice’s relations with her mother had been less than cordial, despite later protests to the contrary. She had borne three children out of wedlock and was pregnant with a fourth, an accomplishment that drew Mrs. Bliss’ ire. Mary Alice was also desperate for money, and Evelina was all that stood between her and a massive inheritance from her father. When Mrs. Bliss died hours after eating the chowder, Mary Alice was arrested for murder and became the darling of the New York press.

Mary Alice

Arsenic and Clam Chowder recounts Mary Alice’s sensational 1896 murder trial. The case riveted the public for several reasons. One was that the defendant came from one of New York’s must illustrious families: the Livingstons. Another was that the crime was matricide, which was relatively rare at the time. A third, which sent the newspapers into a frenzy and made jury selection difficult, was that if found guilty, Mary Alice could be the first woman to die in New York’s electric chair. These factors, combined with salacious testimony about Mary Alice's unladylike love life, ensured that the courtroom was filled every day of the trial and kept the story on the front pages throughout the summer of 1896.

Henry Hale Bliss

Author James D. Livingston does a nice job of linking Mary Alice to notable contemporary figures. While awaiting trial in the Tombs, one of her fellow inmates was Maria Barbella, an Italian immigrant who nearly became the electric chair’s first female victim. Her stepfather, Henry Hale Bliss, was struck by an automobile in September 1899, making him the first motor vehicle casualty in the United States. She faced Howe and Hummel, the city’s most notorious and corrupt criminal defense team, during a breach of promise suit she brought against a former lover.

In addition to recounting the crime, trial, and aftermath, Livingston explores issues such as jury bias, capital punishment, women’s rights, and the precise meaning of “reasonable doubt” in court cases. I didn’t find these statistic-laden sections as compelling as the rest of the narrative, but readers seeking a broader overview of the forces that helped decide Mary Alice Livingston Fleming’s fate will find persuasive evidence that the jury’s verdict was a foregone conclusion.

Arsenic and Clam Chowder can be enjoyed by True Crime fans, social historians, or mystery buffs wanting to see life imitate art.

Fortune, Fame, and a Ruined Name

In June 1873, nineteen-year-old Frank Walworth shot his father, novelist Mansfield Tracy Walworth, to death in a Manhattan hotel room. The Walworths were a socially prominent Saratoga family long regarded as models of virtue and civic accomplishment. When Frank justified his actions by claiming that his father had threatened to kill his mother, the New York press dug into the family’s past and unearthed rumors of domestic violence, hereditary insanity, and religious fanaticism. The result was a media frenzy that shattered the sanctity of the Walworth name.

Geoffrey O’Brien’s Fall of the House of Walworth limns this Gilded Age murder and the warped dynamics that provoked it. It’s partly the grim history of a distinguished yet dysfunctional family and partly a Gothic morality tale of the sort Poe might have conceived.

Mansfield Walworth was an aggressive and pompous narcissist. His novels sold moderately well but did not bring him the mass adulation he craved. Impulsive and constantly chasing get-rich-quick schemes, he repeatedly abandoned his family but exploded when his wife, the former Ellen Hardin, finally left him. Hardin, an intelligent and articulate woman deeply involved in civic affairs, received abusive and threatening letters until her devoted son put a stop to it.

O’Brien betrays his background as a poet. The book abounds with descriptions like the following: “A quantity of blood had splattered the washstand, filling the toothbrush dish and mingling with the soap in the soap dish to form a frothy red foam." Normally this type of cinematic writing is irritating in a nonfiction work, but in this instance it’s strangely in accord with the dark and surreal story.

Walworth history is covered more extensively than Frank’s act of parricide and the ensuing trial, something that might annoy readers who prefer less back story.  But by clearly demonstrating how abuse, psychosis, and murder destroyed a once noble family, Fall of the House of Walworth imparts a chill that a dedicated treatment of the murder alone could not summon.

The Big Policeman

The Big Policeman chronicles the career of Thomas F. Byrnes, who headed the New York City Police Department’s Detective Bureau from 1880 until 1895. Among the cases he oversaw or personally investigated were the Manhattan Savings Bank robbery of 1878, the snatching of millionaire merchant Alexander T. Stewart’s corpse from St. Mark’s churchyard, and the Ripper-style murder of aging barfly Carrie Brown in 1891. These and other lesser known investigations are recounted in detail by J. North Conway, whose previous publishing credits include King of Heists: The Sensational Bank Robbery of 1878 That Shocked America and The Cape Cod Canal: Breaking Through the Bared and Bended Arm.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, Byrnes joined the NYPD in 1863. When the New York City draft riots broke out that same year, he conducted himself with such courage and tenacity that his superiors took notice. Over the years his bravery and resourcefulness won him accolades and promotions. He was appointed chief of the Detective Bureau in 1880 and soon became the most powerful policeman in the city, revered by the Wall Street financiers whose assets he personally protected and feared by the criminals whom he systematically set out to ruin.

Byrnes was the bane of New York’s netherworld. He compiled the Rogue’s Gallery, a mug shot portfolio presented to witnesses and victims of crime for identification purposes, and perfected the physical and psychological torture known as the ‘Third Degree’. In 1886 he instituted a ‘Mulberry Street Morning Parade’ of suspected criminals before his detectives so that they could remember the arrestees’ faces and connect them with future crimes. That same year, he published a book, Professional Criminals of America.  Author Julian Hawthorn found him so inspiring that he made Byrnes the subject of a series of crime fighter novels.

Byrnes usually got his man (or woman). If evidence was too circumstantial to support a future conviction, he conned confessions out of suspects via mental gimmickry that played on their fears and suspicions. When mind games or verbal intimidation failed, he cheerfully resorted to the Third Degree.  Once the cases went to trial Byrnes, who kept the press in the dark whenever he was on unstable ground, reframed events to make himself look like a hero. Jacob Riis, who was a police reporter for the New York Sun, acknowledged his superior detective skills and called him the "big policeman".

Although he acted like a dedicated public guardian, Byrnes was actually corrupt. His salary averaged less than $5,000 a year, but he managed to bank over $350,000, which suggests that he accepted bribes from those who subverted the law. When questioned about this fortune in 1894 by the Lexow Committee, a probe into NYPD corruption, he attributed it to successful land speculation in Japan and good investment advice from grateful Wall Street financiers. Among those who received this explanation skeptically was Theodore Roosevelt, who became president of the New York City Police Commission in 1895 and compelled Byrnes to resign.

The “Big Policeman” took advantage of his city-wide fame and valuable contacts to open his own successful detective agency on Wall Street, and died in luxury in 1910.

The Big Policeman is an absorbing read, because it contains all the salient details of Byrnes’ most notorious cases. Conway also does a nice job of creating period atmosphere by itemizing other interesting historical events that occurred during the investigations. But there’s surprisingly little said about the shadow side of Byrnes’ police career: the bribes he almost certainly took, and the payments he must have made in turn for his promotions, as insiders admitted that advancement in the NYPD was rarely accomplished on merit alone. While Byrnes is not exactly presented as a paragon of civic virtue, he did have serious ethical flaws (besides tricking and beating suspects!) that should have been thoroughly documented in a book dedicated to his life and exploits.

That said, I enjoyed The Big Policeman and recommend it to those who fascinated by the darker history of Gilded Age New York.

Prince of Quacks

Prince of Quacks is the definitive biography of Victorian era herb doctor and charlatan Francis Tumblety, who acquired a posthumous notoriety when Stewart Evans and Paul Gainey named him as Jack the Ripper in their book Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer (1998). The authors based their hypothesis on a letter written in 1913 by Scotland Yard Chief Inspector John Littlechild, who described Tumblety as a “very likely suspect”. Although the majority of Ripperologists (detective-historians who analyze and discuss the Whitechapel murders) were not convinced, author Timothy Riordan recognized the controversial doctor as one of nineteenth century America’s most intriguing figures, and worthy of a book in his own right.

In retrospect, it appears that Francis Tumblety did everything to offend Victorian sensibilities EXCEPT murder five London prostitutes in 1888. He was connected to the Lincoln assassination, charged with peddling abortion drugs, and arrested for homosexual activity. Some of these episodes were well-publicized, but patients still flocked to his offices and bought his herbal remedies because he knew how to beguile the public: whenever he opened for business in a new city, Tumblety took out huge newspaper ads bearing testimonials from leading citizens, and he responded to criticism by publishing pamphlets that ground his detractors into the dust. Even when he wasn’t in trouble, people took notice, as he was fond of riding through the streets in military regalia with two greyhounds trailing him, his chest glittering with medals supposedly bestowed on him by European royalty.

What makes Tumblety so fascinating is that he represented the best and worst of the era he lived in. On one hand he was a wealthy medical professional who hobnobbed with the rich and famous; his name was linked to Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Prince of Wales. On the other, he sold contraceptive and abortion medication and carried on steamy affairs with much younger men. Many of his patients hailed the ‘Indian herb doctor’ (as he called himself) for saving them from painful surgical procedures, but the mainstream medical community derided him as a dangerous quack and tried to put him out of business.

When Tumblety went to England in 1888, his notoriety resulted in his being questioned about the Ripper murders. There was no evidence to hold him and he returned to New York. The American press had a field day over a possible U.S. connection to the bloody crimes; reporters converged eagerly on those who had known Tumblety in Rochester, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and other cities. One of these sources, C.A. Dunham, (a known criminal and perjurer), expounded at length on Tumblety’s supposed hatred of women in general and prostitutes in particular. It was this type of testimony that would prompt Chief Inspector Littlechild to remember the doctor as a person of interest 25 years later.

I bought Prince of Quacks because Tumblety is a local legend in my hometown (Hamilton, Ontario). A walking tour points out a location where he supposedly opened an office after moving here temporarily in July 1856. I’d also heard Timothy Riordan being interviewed on Rippercast, a podcast series about the Whitechapel murders, and been impressed both by Tumblety’s story and Riordan’s mastery of it.

The book is a massive research triumph. Tumblety worked and played in Canada, the United States, and Europe, and his career spanned several decades, so putting together such a complete history was no small achievement. I was pleased to see that this is not another ‘Ripper suspect’ book. The Whitechapel murders are included because Tumblety was questioned about them, but the real focus of Prince of Quacks is Tumblety himself.

A minor criticism: from time to time the narrative is slowed down by excessive and arguably superfluous detail i.e. the newspapers Tumblety advertised in, which editions published the ads, etc. But it doesn’t happen often and readers who aren’t interested in such facts can always skim ahead.

Prince of Quacks is a well-written and compelling look at a forgotten nineteenth century maverick. Francis Tumblety may be the only non-royal Ripper suspect whose life overshadows his tenuous connection to the Whitechapel murders.

From the Ashes of Hannah Bradshaw

As the eighteenth century waned, the Age of Enlightenment settled over Europe, and its impact could be felt as far away as America. One of its byproducts was an explosion of literature with previously taboo themes: social upheaval, ruling class tyrannies, and supernatural influences. The American press catered to the public’s increasingly macabre tastes by printing grisly stories next to war reports and shipping news. One such tale appeared in the January 3, 1771 of the New York Journal.

The Journal informed its readers that on the evening of December 31, a young charwoman visited her employer, thirty-year-old Hannah Bradshaw, in the latter’s Division Street lodging house. Bradshaw was almost certainly a prostitute: author William Dunlap remembered her as being “a woman of large dimensions, masculine person, coarse manners, and notorious in the neighborhood for her boldness, habitual intemperance, and the vices allied to, and engendered by it.” Her nickname, ‘Man-o-War Nance’ allegedly derived from her fondness for sailors and the dives they frequented.

When the two women parted company at seven o’clock, Bradshaw was slightly drunk but otherwise in good shape. She asked her visitor to return the next day to clean her room.

The charwoman dutifully arrived early on New Year’s Day. To reach Bradshaw’s room, she trudged up a rickety wooden staircase on the outside of the building. When no one answered her repeated knocking, she presumed at first that her employer was sleeping off a spree. But when 11:00 a.m. arrived without a response, she became worried and summoned a male lodger to help her break the room’s window and climb inside. There she saw what the Journal described as “the most shocking spectacle imaginable.”

A charred and smoking hole, four feet in diameter, yawned in the middle of the wood floor. Near its edge lay a leg fragment with the flesh still attached and an assortment of bones, some of which had been reduced to ashes. A blackened partial skeleton lay in the dirt of the crawl space below. The intestines remained intact, as did some flesh on the head, shoulder, and leg. A foul-smelling, greasy matter coated the walls and ceiling, and the heat generated by the strange blaze had even drawn the turpentine from the wainscoting. A rush-bottomed chair was burned on the leg nearest the hole, but nowhere else.

Hannah Bradshaw’s bizarre death appears to be the first (recorded) American case of the phenomenon now referred to as spontaneous human combustion. Whether it exists as described (a human being bursting into flames triggered by internal causes) continues to be a source of debate. In Bradshaw’s case, authorities did not know what to think. An overturned candle holder lay a short distance away from the fragmented body, but it did not appear to be the source of the blaze: the candle burned itself out without harming the flooring. So was she murdered by a client who burned her body afterward, or did she really combust?

It’s interesting to note that Hannah Bradshaw died not long before the dawn of the Gothic novel, which used equally creepy mysteries to chill the reader’s blood. William Dunlap, who recalled her in his written history of New York City, was a close friend of Charles Brockden Brown, the American novelist and pioneer of Gothic fiction. Since the two men almost certainly discussed it, Bradshaw’s death may have been an impetus for the literary genre that made violent death and emotional alienation a staple of popular fiction.

Hope Burned Means a Future Lost

The back cover of Brent Laporte’s debut novel Hope Burned promises that the story is “at once as bleak and moving, tense and beautiful as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” The comparison fits: both books are emotionally provocative tales of horror and hope. I’d even venture to say that Hope Burned suggests the dangerous repercussions of child abuse with the same sinister intensity that The Road stresses the importance of a healthy ecosystem to human survival.

A nameless boy endures years of abuse at the hands of his father and grandfather, who keep him isolated and enslaved on their remote farm. The only other human being he ever encountered was a young blond girl whom his guardians / jailers lured to the property and later raped and killed. We know nothing of the boy’s mother, but one surmises that she probably met a similar fate after giving birth. The memory of the girl haunts him for the remainder of his days. When he finally escapes and stumbles into civilization, he is taken in by kind people who finally give him a name- Tom.  Although he grows into a successful and happily married adult, Tom can’t stop questioning what kind of a future he has when his past refuses to stay buried. So he returns to the farm, kills both his father and grandfather, and writes a memoir to help his young son to understand why.

Laporte structured Hope Burned so that it reads like a letter from Tom to his son. It has no chapter divisions, but in this instance such structure might hinder the flow and personality of the prose.  Because Tom presents his story as both an apology and confessional, the reader’s voyeuristic instincts are quickly aroused, making it the type of book that’s consumed in a couple of sittings.

The character of Tom reminds me a lot of Canadian-born Sanford Clark, who was abducted from his Saskatoon home by his uncle, Gordon Stewart Northcott, in 1926. Northcott took the boy to his isolated chicken ranch in California and used him as farm hand and sex slave. During that time Northcott also raped and murdered at least three young boys, setting the authorities on his trail. In 1928 they rescued Sanford Clark, whose testimony ensured his uncle’s conviction and execution. (The entire tragedy later became the subject of a Clint Eastwood film, Changeling.) Clark returned to his native Saskatoon and became a leading citizen, but the memories of Northcott’s victims stayed with him. Like Tom, he always blamed himself for his failure to save them.

This is one novel that I highly recommend to True Crime fans. The people and events have so many real-life equivalents that it’s easy to forget that Hope Burned is fiction and not a survivor’s memoir.



Documentary Fiction: the Next Frontier in True Crime

It used to make me cringe whenever I’d see the expression ‘nonfiction novel’ used. It’s a contradictory term: novels, by definition, are fictitious, even if they’re ‘based on a true story’. But Canadian author Michael Winter has convinced me that there can indeed be such a beast.

In the summer of 1993, a single mother named Brenda Young was found on the floor of her Empire Avenue apartment in St. John’s, Newfoundland.  She had been stabbed thirty-one times and her underwear was so tightly wrapped around her neck that the investigators initially assumed that it had been knotted in place. Her on-again /off-again boyfriend, Randy Druken, was convicted of murder and spent six years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence. In 2000 Druken received $2.1-million in compensation and a government apology.

Michael Winter intended to write a nonfiction account of Brenda’s murder and its aftermath, but felt uneasy about exploiting the death of a woman whom he later described as being “alive, really alive”. He was also concerned about the effect such a book might have on her survivors and the other people who were drawn unwillingly into the messy investigation and court proceedings. For awhile he shelved the project, but the story stayed with him, its allure becoming stronger with time. Finally Winter yielded- partly. Instead of a true crime book, he wrote The Death of Donna Whalen, a work of what he calls “documentary fiction.”

This novel takes its content and storyline from the public record, and anyone familiar with the case will recognize the real participants’ fictional counterparts. (Brenda Young is Donna Whalen, while Randy Druken becomes Sheldon Troke.) But what keeps the book from being invasive is its presentation as a fictionalized version of a real case.

The narrative unfolds primarily through the direct words of the characters, which are grouped and structured to resemble trial testimony and police witness statements. Liberal use of Newfoundland slang gives a more powerful sense of setting than any description of downtown St. John’s or the harbor. The entire presentation resonates deeply with me personally because I ‘m originally from Eastern Canada, but you don’t have to be a Maritimer to enjoy this dark and compelling drama.

By dressing up an actual murder case as a fictional story, Winter helps outsiders better understand Donna Whalen / Brenda Young, Sheldon Troke / Randy Druken, and their world, which can be incomprehensible: Donna feared for her life, but let the man who slapped her around look after her two children whenever she wanted a night out. Donna’s little girl, Sharon, knew that Sheldon pushed her mother around yet still regarded him as a parent figure, going to him for advice when she had problems with her friends. But Winter demonstrates that violence was a natural and trivialized by-product of that society, where parties could end in knife fights and a jail cell was a second home to many.

Some readers may have trouble with how Michael Winter displaces elaborate descriptions and linear plot in favor of letting the story be told via a series of participant monologues. I admit that his approach is unique. But it makes The Death of Donna Whalen “alive, really alive”, just as he wanted Brenda Young to be remembered.

The Magnificent Spilsbury and the Case of the Brides in the Bath

In the summer of 1915, the British public experienced a temporary, if morbid, diversion from the horrors of World War I. George Smith, a middle-aged serial bigamist who was accused of drowning three wives for their money between 1912 and 1914, stood trial for murder. The Fleet Street dailies christened it the Brides in the Bath case.

Smith targeted spinsters who were considered past marriageable age. Their gratitude at finding a husband in a world unfriendly to single women weakened their instincts and made them willingly give him control of their assets. After marrying Bessie Mundy (1912), Alice Burnham (1913), and Margaret Lofty (1914), he rented lodgings with a bath and had each wife make out a will and purchase life insurance, in both instances naming him as the beneficiary. Once all papers were signed, he convinced them that they were ill enough to see a doctor. Then Smith allegedly drowned them while they were soaking in the tub, using the recent doctor’s visit to suggest that the women had fainted from ill-health and died accidentally.

The inquests on all three women each absolved Smith of wrongdoing, but his use of the same modus operandi –a bathtub drowning in a boarding house- finally aroused the suspicion of Alice Burnham’s father. But Smith’s conviction was not guaranteed, especially since three inquest juries had seen fit to turn him loose. The Crown turned to eminent forensic scientist Bernard Spilsbury, whose talent for collecting and accurately assessing post-mortem evidence was unparalleled. His testimony withstood the barrages of the eminent Sir Edward Marshall Hall, who represented the defendant, and sent Smith to the gallows in August 1915.

The Magnificent Spilsbury and the Case of the Brides in the Bath skilfully intertwines the new century’s most sensational domestic murder case to date and the evolution of scientific principles in murder investigations. Spilsbury asserted that George Smith had murdered the three women by suddenly grabbing and lifting their legs, forcing their heads under water and preventing any outcry that other lodgers might hear. His medico-legal testimony at the trial likened him to the deductive literary hero Sherlock Holmes, and the awestruck jury found Smith guilty.

But was he?

Author Jane Robins points out that Smith was an undisputed bigamist, but was he actually a murderer? He had married several women between 1908 and 1914, some of whom testified at the trial, and while he maltreated and robbed all of them, only three died. While the powerful similarity between the deaths of Bessie Mundy, Alice Burnham, and Margaret Lofty make his guilt probable, Robins debates whether he would have been executed if tried today. It’s an interesting question- perhaps a skilled defense lawyer would have raised enough reasonable doubt in a modern courtroom to gain Smith a lesser sentence.

RIP Rick Mattix

On October 27, 2010, the true crime community lost one of its greatest minds, strongest supporters, and best friends. I’m talking about Rick ‘Mad Dog’ Mattix.

I haven’t fully accepted the fact that there will be no more wryly humorous e-mails from Rick, discussing his current projects and encouraging me to persist with a good idea. Even if he was having a bad day, he could reframe all the aggravating people and incidents in a way that made me tell him more than once that he should write skits for Saturday Night Live.

In 2003 Bill Helmer encouraged me to turn my long-time fascination with Dean O’Banion into a book. Rick soon took up that cause, complaining that if he saw another Al Capone biography come out, he’d apply for a bonfire permit. I soon caved in to such hilarious determination and assembled my collection of notes and photocopies into a book, Guns and Roses. When I wrote The Man Who Got Away and The Starker, Rick sent me material, suggestions, and corrections for both titles and graciously agreed to provide the forward for the former. I like to think that they are much better books because of his input.

Like Bill, Rick warmly greeted newcomers to the field of true crime writing. Some forums are zealously (or maybe jealously is a better word) guarded by gatekeepers who regard any new blood as a threat to their standing. Rick thought that was bullshit. He believed that we all stood to learn from one another. He’s right. “Today’s newbies will probably be one of your favorite authors tomorrow,” he told me once. Right again.

Rick, you’re probably having a great time right now and wondering what we’re all fussing about down here, but until we all meet again, please know the following:

Many an aching heart continues to beat for you
and many an eye continues to pay tribute
Too solemn for words.

The Missing Corpse

The theft of Manhattan millionaire Alexander T. Stewart’s corpse from its ornate vault on November 7, 1878 shocked Gilded Age New York. It triggered one of the biggest police investigations in the NYPD’s history, and inspired Mark Twain’s satiric short story, The Stolen White Elephant. But because the body was never recovered, the public soon lost interest and the case became a grotesque footnote in the city’s wilder past.

The Missing Corpse: Grave Robbing a Gilded Age Tycoon is about a crime that does not initially seem substantial enough to warrant a book. No one was murdered: the ‘victim’ was already dead. Because the police bungled the investigation and the body snatchers were never caught, the whole affair in retrospect seems like life imitating vaudeville. But attorney Wayne Fanebust’s absorbing account of Stewart’s post-mortem abduction reminds us why the case was a public and media sensation in 1878.

When A.T. Stewart, who was widely known as the ‘Merchant Prince of Manhattan’, died in 1876, he was worth an estimated $40-50 million. Although his wealth put him on a par with Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and other Gilded Age tycoons, New York high society snubbed him because of his common origins and he was a lonely, isolated figure. Because he and his wife failed to have children, he dedicated himself to the building of a Long Island suburb, where he wanted to be eventually buried. Pending the completion of this final resting place, his remains were interred in St. Mark’s churchyard in Manhattan. When they disappeared in November 1878, the press and public went into a speculative frenzy: would there be a fabulous ransom demanded, or was the stunt a backlash against often-tyrannical Stewart personally?

A.T. Stewart's Fifth Avenue mansion circa 1869 (Library of Congress)

Grave robbery was appalling but common in nineteenth century America, as medical schools needed cadavers to experiment on and paid well for them. The theft of a millionaire’s bones dragged the practice from its traditional arena of police blotters and private shame and put it on front pages everywhere.

The Missing Corpse: Grave Robbing a Gilded Age Tycoon is more than just an account of New York’s most macabre ‘missing persons’ case. It’s also a journey into the shadows of nineteenth century America, where ostracized millionaires, body snatchers, phoney clairvoyants, and other misfits wallowed and occasionally made history.

Hot Time in the Old Town

Summer was pretty mild in my neck of the woods this year, but I’ve lived through enough scorchers to know how debilitating hot temperatures can be. Edward P. Kohn’s Hot Time in the Old Town: the Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt is an intense narration of a killer heat wave that tortured New York City for ten days in August 1896. By the time it lifted, an estimated 1300 people were dead, along with William Jennings Bryan’s shot at the presidency.

New York turned into an inferno on August 5th. When temperatures rose to 100-plus degrees, working men and horses dropped dead in the streets and tenement dwellers broiled in their badly ventilated apartments. At night suffering city dwellers clustered on rooftops and along the piers, trying to suck cooler air into their overheated lungs. Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt stepped in where city officials would not, hosing down the reeking streets to lower the temperatures and raise the sanitation levels, and campaigning to provide free life-saving ice to the poor.

Small boys cooling their heads in a public fountain

Horses being cooled off in summertime New York

As this fight for life reached its zenith, William Jennings Bryan, populist from Nebraska and Democratic presidential nominee, came into town to convince the citizens of New York that they should elect him instead of Republican candidate William McKinley. But he was so wilted by a long, hot train trip across the country that he read his Madison Square Garden speech from a paper instead of giving the same type of oratory fireworks that secured him the Democratic nomination in the first place. The heat also proved too oppressive for his audience, which left in droves.

Edward Kohn takes a well-rounded approach to this history of a forgotten natural disaster. His descriptions of a city under siege are unsettling in their specificity. He uses statistics when warranted, but prefers to put a human face on the disaster. We could forget a label like ‘victim number one’ but not the story of fifteen-month old Hyman Goldman, who had arrived with his parents from Russia nine months before and died from "exhaustion" on the heat wave's first day. Another tiny victim, Annie Botchkiss was born on August 6 in a rear tenement, and succumbed to the heat only five days later.

On the surface, a book that combines a killer heat wave and an electoral contest appears to be trying to mix literary apples with oranges. But Edward Kohn proves that not even a presidential candidate was immune to the heat’s negative impact.

Death of an Overseer

While browsing the true crime offerings in the Sony e-book store, I discovered an Oxford University Press publication titled Death of an Overseer. The synopsis described it as a cultural and sociological re-interpretation of an 1857 murder in Adams County, Mississippi. I enjoy crime books that aren’t limited to a basic narrative so I bought it, despite its unusually high price for an e-book.

In May 1857 the battered corpse of Duncan Skinner, an overseer on a plantation owned by wealthy widow Clarissa Sharpe, was found in a wooded area near the estate. The original investigators concluded that he’d been killed by an accidental fall from his horse, but the dead man’s brother and other sceptical locals dug deeper and found evidence of murder. Three of Mrs. Sharpe’s slaves confessed to killing Skinner, whose harsh treatment of them was notorious, and were hanged after a brief and sensational trial.

Many Adams County residents believed that a fourth party should have joined them on the gallows: a white Irish laborer named John McCallin. During the investigation, several plantation slaves claimed that McCallin had actively incited the murder by telling them that if Skinner were dead, his way would be free to marry Clarissa Sharpe and give them all “better times.” But in 1857 Mississippi law forbade blacks from testifying against whites, and McCallin escaped arrest. He did not go unpunished, however: the plantation aristocrats ordered him out of the community. His intention to marry a social superior seemed to anger them more than his alleged crime.

Author Michael Wayne, a professor of American history, questions McCallin’s guilt. He analyzes the customs and prejudices of the antebellum South as well as the crime and its racially-biased investigation, and concludes that the Irishman may have been a scapegoat. This approach makes Death of an Overseer a detective story in some parts, a history and sociology lesson in others.

I was pleased to see that Wayne reproduced most of his primary sources verbatim and showed in painstaking detail how and why he reached a particular conclusion. He freely admits that the evidence is open to alternative interpretations and encourages the reader to play armchair detective by placing his voluminous research material at their disposal. (The book’s website at www.deathofanoverseer.com actively solicits new evidence and alternative theories.) This approach is a refreshing respite from the slew of authors who sprout fangs and claws when their ‘definitive’ accounts are questioned.

Bugs Moran vs. Al Capone: the informed approach

While visiting my local bookstore, I saw (yet another) Al Capone bio in the True Crime section. I picked it up and began flipping the pages.

I've lost count of how many versions of the Capone story I've read, but if a person's life fascinates me enough, I can always enjoy a new book on the subject. Unless it's written from a myopic perspective, as this one was. Five minutes later I put it back on the shelf and bought a novel instead.

According to the author, George 'Bugs' Moran was dimwitted. He lost his gang and his North Side territory because he was too stupid to protect either from the intellectually superior Capone's invasion. When a writer presents that argument, I know that they haven't done their homework, and thankfully, so does anyone else who has a decent understanding of the Chicago beer wars.

When researching and writing The Man Who Got Away, I spoke to recognized experts such as Mario Gomes, John Binder, Rick Mattix, and Bill Helmer; interviewed elderly individuals who knew George Moran, and spent years examining FBI reports, court and prison records, and files retained by the Chicago Crime Commission. I soon understood that Moran did not lose the war with Capone because of poor leadership, mental fallibility, or any reason typically offered by those who don't want to do the work it takes to put the bigger picture together. Moran lost because he was up against a stronger mob, one that predated the North Side gang by at least twenty years.

The genesis of the Capone syndicate was the vice ring organized during the early 1900s by Big Jim Colosimo, a flesh trader and political precinct captain. Big Jim stuffed enough dirty money into the pockets of his ward aldermen and the local cops to operate with impunity. His organization was still going strong at the time of his May 1920 assassination, and when his successor Johnny Torrio added bootlegging to the business roster, the resulting riches made it nearly invincible.

Moran's North Siders, on the other hand, sprang into existence at the dawn of Prohibition, along with hip flasks, speakeasies, and bobbed hair. Dean O'Banion, the gang's sly and charismatic founder, was a brilliant businessman who invested his money in breweries and his charm in favorable partnerships, and by 1921 he controlled all bootlegging north of Madison Street. But when he crossed Johnny Torrio in 1924, he was shot to death in the flower shop that he operated as a sideline. His murder began the six year gang war that killed over six hundred men and disgraced Chicago for all time.

O'Banion's successor, Earl 'Hymie' Weiss, (see photo, provided courtesy of Mario Gomes) was a brainy dynamo who chased Torrio out of Chicago and gave the newly ascended Al Capone nightmares until  October 1926, when a machine gun fusillade mowed him down outside Holy Name Cathedral on State Street.  Vincent Drucci then took over, but his uneventful leadership was cut short in April 1927, when he cursed a temperamental cop and was shot in the back of a police vehicle.

After Drucci's funeral, Moran inherited the dwindling remnants of a mob that had been gradually decimated by the ongoing battle with the much larger Capone syndicate. By that point there was no way he could have emerged the victor, although a former judge recalled in his memoirs that many Chicagoans who had been following the war from the safety of their newspapers were rooting for Moran to win. He did make successful inroads into labor racketeering and dog racing, suggesting that if he had been able to direct the gang's fortunes during peacetime, history might have remembered him differently.

Mario Gomes, Capone expert and webmaster of the encyclopedic My Al Capone Museum website, says, "Though greatly outnumbered by the Capone gang, the North Siders held the fort for many years thanks to the leadership of George Moran. Moran and his men had to constantly out-think and stay one step ahead of the Capone boys in order to survive. (The North Side) was very lucrative, so no wonder it was the last bastion Capone craved so badly. Moran has earned double the respect I have for Big Al."

George Moran may not have been an ingenius strategist like Johnny Torrio or Dean O'Banion, but neither was he the over-muscled dolt of popular lore. He was a hands-on leader, taking the same chances his underlings did, but in the Chicago of his day, that elicited respect, not derision. Even if he had been more proactive than reactionary, he lacked the manpower to beat Capone.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre on February 14, 1929 marked the end of Moran's reign over the North Side. For over a year, the shaken gangster debated the feasibility of continuing the fight, briefly partnering with minor league Capone rivals like renegade Sicilian Joe Aiello and pimp Jack Zuta. In late 1930 he finally conceded defeat. But he did not slink away in disgrace. The door had closed in Chicago, but he found windows of opportunity elsewhere.

He retained control of his dog racing and labor racketeering interests, both of which remained profitable. On the bootlegging front, Moran moved his breweries outside the Chicago city limits and used his Canadian connections to supply liquor to the Chain O' Lakes area in northern Illinois, a district that soaked up booze like a sponge during the summer months. Having heard good things about the West Coast from a former North Sider who moved there in 1925, he sent  emissaries to Los Angeles. Their reports were so favorable that Moran moved in, building breweries and terrorizing the local underworld so thoroughly that the LA County sheriff told newsmen about tough hoodlums literally "begging for protection from Bugs Moran gangsters." If Repeal had not interrupted the invasion, Moran might eventually have taken over the city's liquor distribution and been remembered as a successful booze baron in his own right.

In closing, George Moran was not a bulb with low wattage. He was outmanned and outgunned in Chicago, but when given the opportunity to start over elsewhere, he met instant success. Unfortunately for writers only interested in the quick buck, the truth can take time to uncover, so an entertaining fiction is often substituted. That does not bode well for the future of history.

The Man Who Killed Houdini

Harry Houdini’s egregious demise has been covered so extensively in books and movies that the very subject reminded me of a nineteenth century crime scene: so many writers have visited that territory, coming away with sensational theories the way Victorian era gawkers scurried off with bloody souvenirs, that nothing new remained to be discovered. Or so I thought.

In The Man Who Killed Houdini, Don Bell focuses on J. Gordon Whitehead, the McGill University student who fatally punched Houdini in the magician’s Montreal dressing room on October 22, 1926. Whitehead later swore in an affidavit that he had pummeled Houdini in the abdomen at the latter’s invitation to prove that his stomach muscles were strong enough to withstand any blow. Days later, the legendary magician died of a ruptured appendix that was assumed to be the result of that demonstration.

Whitehead disappeared from the public eye after the ensuing investigation died down, and no writer or researcher could discover what happened to him. Conspiracy theorists surmised that he might have been the deadly tool of the spiritualist community, whose mediums Houdini had delighted in exposing as frauds. Less imaginative minds dismissed the whole tragedy as an unfortunate accident. Sensing that Whitehead was the key to unlocking the truth, Don Bell embarked on a quest that lasted twenty years and took him all over Canada and the United Kingdom.

The Man Who Killed Houdini is investigative journalism at its finest. Bell tracked down and interviewed former McGill students Sam Smiley and Jacques Price, who had been present in the dressing room when Houdini was struck. (Price recalled that the punching was so violent that he actually pulled Whitehead off, shouting, “For God’s sake, stop!!” Smiley thought that the tall, gangly student behaved too strangely for the affair to be an accident.) Bell also contacted Whitehead’s former girlfriend and younger brother, both of whom proved to be defensive interview subjects, as well as the mysterious puncher’s former neighbors, who were more forthcoming with what they knew. The end result is a book that sets the record straight on who J. Gordon Whitehead really was and what his life was like in the aftermath of Houdini’s death.

Be forewarned: The Man Who Killed Houdini does not validate any conspiracy theories. Bell does not prove that vindictive mediums used Whitehead to stop Houdini’s anti-spiritualist investigations. But Whitehead’s final years leave the reader with a nagging suspicion that the magician’s death was not a mere accident either.