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.

More on Jacques Millere

This week, additional insight into the mysterious death of Jacques Millere arrived in the form of a nice, thick parcel bearing a Newfoundland postmark. My friend in St. John's, who recently retired after a long career in the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, scoured the provincial archives for me and made a few calls to police outposts near Deer Lake, where Millere's body was found in March 1909. The package, which contained photocopied news articles from the Western Star and a hastily scrawled police report, is what he calls his first 'check in'.

On the afternoon of March 15, 1909, a mill worker named Frank Penny discovered a half-frozen male corpse in an abandoned camp belonging to the Humber River Pulp and Lumber Company in Deer Lake. Although so terrified that he could not recall later whether he left the shanty "by the door or window", he reported the gruesome find to the manager, who in turn alerted authorities in St. John's. A local judge named March, accompanied by two police officers and a physician named Fisher, boarded the next east-bound train.

Upon arrival, Dr. Fisher examined the body, which laid on its side in a bunk, knees drawn up and arms folded across the chest. Death had evidently occurred several days before, as the stench of decomposition was so strong that even Fisher blanched. Seeing no wounds or any other mark of violence, the doctor opined that exhaustion and exposure had killed the stranger. "The end was evidently peaceful," the Western Star informed its readers on March 17th, "the countenance bearing a look of serenity as if the unfortunate had passed quietly into the great beyond."

Peaceful or not, the five mill workers that the manager had sent to assist the police took one look at the dead man and refused to touch him, citing superstitious fears. Fisher, Judge March, and the two policemen were forced to carry the corpse themselves across the frozen lake to a waiting sleigh, where a new development in the tragicomedy unfolded: " The driver absolutely refused to drive the horse and put as much space between him and the corpse as his legs could accomplish," stated the Western Star. Despite the mass desertions, the men from St. John's managed to convey the body to a nearby house, where the owner, who was made of stronger and more sensible stuff, allowed it to be prepared for burial.

The dead man's pockets contained astronomical drawings, a crude airship blueprint, and rambling dissertations on the relationship between mankind and the planets. Combing through the damp and crumpled paperwork, investigators found two identifying items: a crude self-portrait with 'Jas. R. Millere' scrawled beneath it, and a receipt from a Summerside, P.E.I. post office indicating that a Jacques Millere had recently registered a letter to the Duke of Orleans in Paris.

At the magisterial inquiry, a railway section hand testified that he recognized the body as that of a 'Frank Millere' he had met about eight miles west of Deer Lake the previous week. Millere said that he had been kicked off a train near the small community of Riverhead, and intended to make his way to St. John's. One might naturally conclude, then, that the deceased had been a foreign wanderer, one of thousands that tramped their way throughout the North American countryside during the early 1900s.

But the police weren't so sure. There was something about Millere -perhaps his outlandish scribblings, or the undeciphered connection to the Duke of Orleans- that made them hesitate to dismiss him as a tramp. Newspapers all over the province published an appeal for more information.

"Whether he was some visionary royalist dreaming of the restoration of the French monarchy or an ordinary crank will probably never be ascertained, " the Western Star concluded. And that seems to be the case so far. I'll see if my ex-copper friend digs up additional information. Even if he doesn't, the Millere tragedy is one of those fascinating mini-dramas that make an inquisitive writer or historian pause and wonder whether there's more to the story than meets the eye.

Meet the Ann Rule of Victorian era mayhem

In Arsenic Under the Elms: Murder in Victorian New Haven, attorney and college professor Virginia McConnell focuses on two murders that shocked the residents of New Haven, Connecticut in 1878 and 1881 but have since been forgotten. The victims were not showgirls or society ladies, but average young women who fell prey to unscrupulous men. Their sensational deaths, however, spawned media frenzies that exposed the contemporary attitudes toward male promiscuity and female virtue.

The first half of Arsenic Under the Elms describes the killing of Mary Stannard, a simple-minded, 22-year-old unmarried mother, who convinced herself and the Reverend Herbert Hayden, a married minister, that she was pregnant with his child. He lured her into the woods in September 1878, saying that he had procured some medicine that would induce abortion. What he actually gave her was ninety grams of arsenic, which did such a surprisingly slow job of killing her that Hayden had to complete his grim task by clubbing her and slitting her throat. The evidence against Hayden was damning, but he went free after his blindly devoted wife provided exculpatory testimony on the witness stand, perjuring herself to protect him.

The second murder case is that of 20-year-old Jennie Cramer, a beautiful girl known as the Belle of New Haven, who defied propriety by associating with two rich, morally bankrupt young men and their prostitute associate. Her body was found floating in Long Island Sound in August 1881, and an autopsy revealed that she had been raped and poisoned with arsenic. Jennie’s erstwhile companions were hunted down and tried for murder, but presented a united front on the witness stand and were, like Reverend Hayden, acquitted.

McConnell’s lucid prose and detailed research make this book more than just a recount of two Connecticut tragedies. The sufferings of Mary Stannard and Jennie Cramer ended the second they died, but McConnell eloquently shows how their deaths forever altered the lives of their loved ones and the communities they called home. By way of example, she delves into public records to show that Mary’s illegitimate son Willie suffered from anxiety-driven rages for the rest of his life, and Jennie’s mother committed suicide.

I read somewhere that Virginia McConnell wants to be the Ann Rule of Victorian era crimes. After reading Arsenic Under the Elms, I’d say that she has an excellent chance of grabbing that golden fleece.

The Mystery of Jacques Millere

Next to true crime, I'm a big fan of unsolved mysteries, mainly unusual deaths and unexplained disappearances. One such case that I recently discovered in a book about Newfoundland criminal history was the 101 year old mystery surrounding the death of a Frenchman named Jacques Millere.

Shortly after 4:00 p.m. on March 15, 1909, one Frank Penney came across the cooling corpse of a man on the grounds of a pulp and lumber company near Deer Lake, Newfoundland. He notified the police, who searched the body and found some startling documents crammed in the pockets: astronomical drawings, sketches of aircraft designs, planet descriptions, and an eye-opening treatise on the relationship between man and the planets. What aroused the most comment, however, was a post office receipt issued to one 'Jacques R. Millere' at Summerside, Prince Edward Island, which indicated that Millere had recently sent a registered letter to the Duke of Orleans in Paris (pictured at top right).

The discovery of the body and its cache of extraordinary paperwork unleashed a maelstorm of speculation over to who Jacques Millere really was and what his connection to the Orléanist claimant to the throne of France might be. He was not from the Deer Lake area, so no one could enlighten the police on his antecedents. Some thought he might be a scientific genius or crackpot, while others figured that he was a royalist inventor offering to put his skills at the Duke's service.

The book that briefly outlines the case does not specify how Millere died, or give word-for-word examples of the writing found in his pockets. So to satisfy my own curiousity, I called in a favour owed by a retired Newfoundland police officer friend. He's going to see what can be done about retrieving the archived notes from the original police investigation, as well as copy the contemporary news reports.

When I know more, so will you.

Unknown Does Not Mean Forever

On February 25, 1957, the bruised, naked body of a small boy was found in a cardboard box beside a road in Philadelphia’s rural Fox Chase district. Wrapped in a plaid blanket and seriously underweight, the child appeared malnourished and neglected. Indignant that he had been thrown away like a piece of garbage, investigators from both the medical examiner’s office and the police department initiated a personal crusade to catch his killer and discover his name.

Newspapers all over the country covered the story, and the boy’s photo was even reproduced on gas bills in the hope that someone would recognize him. But he was never identified and is known today as “the Boy in the Box” and “America’s Unknown Child”.

Last weekend I read New York Times reporter David Stout’s book about the case, The Boy in the Box: the Unsolved Case of America’s Unknown Child. Stout interviewed the aging ex-cops originally involved in the investigation, reviewed the boxes of yellowing reports on the still-open case, and turned it all into a book that is one of the best examples of true crime reporting that I have ever encountered.

Like many sensational cases, thousands of leads and theories have poured in over the years. All had to be carefully followed up, but in the end, only two were deemed so viable that both the police and the press took serious notice. The first was that the boy was the illegitimate child of a young woman whose mother and stepfather operated a foster home, and that he was accidentally killed by his exasperated caretakers while misbehaving. The second was that a mentally unstable woman had acquired him from his birth parents and subjected him to years of violent abuse before killing him for vomiting in the bathtub. The latter theory was brought forward in 2002 by a woman who claimed to have witnessed the murder as a young girl. Police investigators, aided in later years by a team of retired cops and profilers known as the Vidocq Society, checked both stories but were forced to abandon them after failing to acquire sufficient evidence.

The case remains officially unsolved, but lack of a ‘happy ending’ does not give The Boy in the Box a hollow ring. Using scenes and dialogue distilled from his research and personal interviews, Stout does a masterful job of revisiting the discovery of the body, the highs and lows of the ongoing investigation, and, most poignantly, the love that the grizzled police veterans gradually developed for the tiny victim. This love drove many of them to continue the quest for justice long after retirement.