That’s when I’ll tell you all the details, Williams said.
He also assured Schindler that he had a good alibi, and that plenty of witnesses—including Mollie Williams and some employees at Griffin’s bar—would stand up for him. He claimed to have a clean record except for a single arrest for drunkenness—something Schindler knew was a lie. Williams left out his conviction and prison term for armed robbery.
Still, Schindler concluded, Williams was “apparently frank in his answers.” It wasn’t the interrogation he’d hoped to conduct, but in his short time with Williams, Schindler hadn’t seen any sign that he was struggling to conceal his role in a brutal murder. Instead, Williams’s focus was entirely on the lawsuit he wished to bring against the state.
* * *
Meanwhile, Schindler’s detectives continued their rounds through the woods and streets and corners of Asbury Park, interviewing witnesses, following up on tips, going over familiar territory again and again. On Wednesday, November 30, Charles Scholl made his way to the Bradley School, where several people who’d seen Marie Smith leave after morning recess the day she disappeared had already been interviewed.
At the school, Scholl noticed Police Officer Walter Ireton, one of the two men, along with Thomas Broderick, first assigned to the case by Police Chief William Smith. Scholl asked Ireton if they could talk, and the officer said no. He didn’t want to do or say anything that would upset the chief of police. Scholl persisted. Could Ireton just go over the events of the morning of November 13—the day Marie’s body was found?
Reluctantly, Ireton agreed. Then he told Scholl something the detective did not yet know. Ireton said that, early on the morning of November 13, he saw Max Kruschka and Frank Heidemann walk out of the Wanamassa woods.
The men told Ireton they were cutting bits of laurel from trees and shrubs to use for a funeral piece. Scholl asked about their demeanor.
I can’t say that Max Kruschka acted suspiciously, although he was noticeably garrulous, Ireton said. Heidemann didn’t act suspiciously, either.
That was all Ireton would say. He’d already told his story in a report to Police Chief Smith, and there wasn’t anything more to tell.
Scholl walked from the school to Kruschka’s home to find out more. There he encountered a brash and belligerent Max Kruschka. Scholl asked him about the morning of November 13, and Kruschka confirmed he and Heidemann had been in the woods collecting laurel. Scholl asked him to show him the spot where they had made the cuts. Kruschka led the way into the woods and eventually pointed out a shrub. He showed Scholl where he had made cuts using shears, and where Heidemann had made cuts using a knife. Scholl wasn’t convinced.
“There appeared to be a good deal of bluster about Kruschka’s demonstrating, which was altogether unwarranted,” Scholl later wrote.
Scholl and Kruschka walked out of the woods and back to Kruschka’s home. Now Frank Heidemann was there, and Scholl asked him the same questions about the morning of November 13. He asked him if he, too, could show him where they’d cut the laurel. Heidemann took Scholl into the woods, but used a different route to go in and come out. The two versions of events were inconsistent. What had Kruschka and Heidemann really been doing in the woods just hours before Marie Smith’s body was discovered?
Kruschka had his own theory about Marie’s body, which he repeatedly shared with Scholl—he insisted the body had been in the woods all along, since the day Marie disappeared and was murdered. It hadn’t been found, he claimed, because—contrary to all public accounts—that section of the woods had not actually been searched.
They assigned schoolboys to search the woods, and they didn’t do so, Kruschka said. They didn’t do it because they were afraid They were afraid of the woods and afraid of what they might find.
Scholl, finished with his interviews, thanked the men and began to walk off the property. Max Kruschka’s wife stopped him on the front lawn. The elderly woman seemed distraught and close to tears.
“I am so worried and nervous over this affair,” she told Scholl. “I do not sleep nights and my sorrow is so deep. I can only compare it to the feeling I would have if I lost through death my own dearest child.”
Then Mrs. Kruschka turned and walked back into the house.
CHAPTER 21 The Agonies of the Damned
December 2, 1910
Asbury Park, New Jersey
Pressure was mounting on Robert Purdy, the town coroner, to hold an official inquest into the murder of Marie Smith. He’d postponed it more than once, hoping Schindler and his men could produce fresh evidence, but now three full weeks had passed since the killing, and Purdy was out of time. He finally announced the inquest would be held on December 2, and he issued thirty-three subpoenas. Max Kruschka and Frank Heidemann were both summoned, but Tom Williams, the only named suspect, was not.
To many, that seemed like a violation of Williams’s right to hear the evidence against him and testify on his own behalf. But having him testify would mean moving him from the Freehold County Jail to the Asbury Park Council Chamber, a fairly small room on the second floor of the Independence Hook & Ladder Company building on Mattison Avenue. Williams would need several prison guards and police officers to make the trip with him, and at least as many to protect him once he got to Asbury Park—where he would be surrounded in the council chamber by dozens of people convinced of his guilt. After the near riot outside the police station that almost got Williams lynched, no one wanted to take any more chances. So Purdy left Williams off the subpoena list.
Six jurors were selected, all white: the foreman, John Labaw, a well-respected grocer and steward of the Cranbury Fire Department; George Henderson, operator of an Asbury Park awnings business; Grandon Layton, a teamster; William Whittle, a tile and slate roofer and auxiliary police officer; Harold Jacques, a popular local athlete who went into the tire repair business; and William Truex. There was a general curiosity about which direction the questioning would lean. “Will an effort be made to place the crime on Thomas Williams,” Alvin Cliver wondered in the Asbury Park Press, “or will the prosecution direct especial effort against Frank Heidemann, the German florist?”
One indication that there might be an anti-Williams bias was the man in charge of deciding which witnesses to call, and then questioning them—Monmouth County Prosecutor John Applegate, who was known to believe firmly in Williams’s guilt. Cliver wondered if Applegate would show his full hand and conclude the inquest with a sole suspect, or hold back some key evidence as his investigation continued.
Before 10:00 a.m. on the morning of the inquest, police officers ushered the thirty-three subpoenaed witnesses into empty rooms in the firehouse. They would be brought into the council chamber one by one, so none could hear the testimony of any other witness. By then, more than one hundred people were crowded outside the firehouse, hoping to get a seat inside the chamber. Though the inquest was open to everyone, there wouldn’t be much room for spectators—just a few rows of open seats, and some standing room in the back. When the doors opened at 10:00 a.m., more people were turned away than got in.
Ray Schindler and Charles Scholl already had their seats. Schindler was anxious to hear the testimony of the two doctors who performed the autopsy, Joseph Ackerman and Earl Wagner. He had studied their reports and found them lacking. The doctors disagreed on certain key points, and neither could say with any certainty what had caused the burns on Marie’s nose and ear, or if the scars were even burn marks. Schindler needed to know more—much more.
At 10:30 a.m., Applegate called the inquest to order. The first witness was Marie’s father, Peter Smith.
Gaunt and weary, Smith took a seat in the front of the chamber. Applegate asked him about the day his daughter went missing.
“I saw Marie last Wednesday morning, November 9, before I left for work,” Smith said. “That was about 6:30. She was getting dressed. I left at 6:45. I never saw Marie alive again.”
Applegate asked him to describe the morning Ma
rie’s body was found. Peter Smith took a deep breath. He didn’t show any emotion, but he didn’t show any life, either. He looked defeated and spent. “A pathetic figure,” one paper wrote. Slowly, he forced himself to talk.
“I had no idea that the child would be found dead,” he said. “I was hoping she would be found in good health. I thought maybe somebody had kidnapped her to play a trick on me.”
And when he came upon his daughter’s mangled body?
“The body lay with the head to the east,” Smith said, “with the coat and dress pulled up and the legs exposed. I look until I saw a cut in the back of her head. Then I could stand it no longer, and I went away.”
Do you know who committed this crime? Applegate asked.
Peter Smith said, “I wish I did.”
* * *
Peter’s wife, Nora, was next. She was dressed head-to-toe in black, with a heavy black mourning veil over her face. She, too, seemed impossibly tired. She explained that she had four children—but that only two of them, Thomas and Joseph, were still alive.
Applegate asked about her drinking, and if she ever drank with Delia Jackson—the woman who had hired Tom Williams to work on her property the day Marie didn’t come home.
“Yes, a bit of beer occasionally,” Nora answered. “Sometimes she would come in my place and drink.”
“Did Tom Williams ever buy beer for you and bring it into your house?” Applegate asked.
“He did. He bought me two bottles of beer on three occasions. I never drank with him and he never saw me drink anything.”
“Did you ever have any quarrel with Williams?”
“I never did,” Nora said.
Could Delia Jackson, perhaps, have had anything to do with her daughter’s murder? Applegate asked.
Nora Smith, like her husband, answered with hopeless resignation.
“That I don’t know,” she said.
The two doctors, Ackerman and Wagner, soon followed. They talked about compound fractures, brain tissue, incision sizes. They both believed the strange marks on Marie’s nose and ear were burn marks, most likely the result of Marie “coming in contact with direct heat,” Ackerman testified. But neither seemed all that convincing.
Schindler listened to their findings and knew he would need more information than what they had provided. Why couldn’t the doctors be more specific about the weapon used to strike Marie? Was it a knife? A hatchet? An ax? Were there any substances in Marie’s blood? Morphine, perhaps? Had the burn marks been examined microscopically? Why hadn’t more testing been done before the child was buried?
There was more testimony. Delia Jackson confirmed that she had lunch with Frank Heidemann on the day Marie Smith vanished, as Heidemann claimed. She also said she hadn’t seen Heidemann until they sat down to eat “soon after the twelve o’clock whistle had blown.” She could not provide him an alibi for the previous ninety minutes, which was when Marie went missing. Even so, was it possible that Heidemann could have committed such a gruesome crime and then casually sat down for lunch with Delia Jackson, as if nothing had happened?
Heidemann’s boss, Max Kruschka, also took the stand. His answers were short and he didn’t say anything he hadn’t already told reporters.
“Is this man Heidemann addicted to any bad habits?” John Applegate asked him. “Does he ever take any narcotics?”
“Not that I know of,” Kruschka answered.
Had he discussed Marie’s murder with Heidemann?
Yes, he had, and Heidemann told him he didn’t have anything to do with it. Kruschka testified that he fully believed this denial.
Frank Heidemann himself was next to the stand.
* * *
Much like Ray Schindler had, Applegate took Heidemann through his life history. This time Heidemann gave a more truthful version, which included arriving in America in 1906. His story at the inquest matched the story Alvin Cliver had published. There was nothing new or surprising about his testimony. Then Applegate—who knew that drugs had been found in Heidemann’s room—asked him if he had ever used morphine. This was the first that anyone in Asbury Park was hearing about Heidemann’s drug use. Heidemann, however, was unfazed. He was ready for the question.
I occasionally take morphine tablets to produce sleep, he said. At times I am very nervous, and I take a tablet about once every two or three weeks.
Heidemann reached into his vest pocket and took out a small vial of morphine tablets. He showed it to the prosecutor, who took it and logged it as evidence before returning it to Heidemann. It was as if he had known the matter would be raised, and was prepared to answer the question in a way that made his use of morphine seem inconsequential.
In fact, Heidemann had been prepared for the question. It later emerged that the two Greater New York detectives, Johnson and Cunningham, had warned Heidemann the question would likely be asked—and had advised him to bring a vial of his medication with him to the inquest, as a way to defuse the whole situation. Heidemann followed their advice, and Applegate soon dropped the line of questioning.
Next, he asked Heidemann if he had gone to see Marie Smith’s body in the woods. Heidemann admitted that he had. “Chief of Police Smith was in the road near where the body was found,” he said. “I asked him if I could go down and see the body. He said I could. I told him if he wanted me I would be down there.”
Why, Applegate wondered, had he bothered to tell Chief Smith where he could be found, in case, as he put it, the police “wanted me”? Why would the police want to see him?
Again, Heidemann was ready with an answer.
I knew I was under suspicion because of the many visits the detectives had paid me since the child disappeared, he said calmly. I didn’t want the chief to think I would try to get away.
Throughout his testimony, Heidemann remained composed. “His very frankness in telling of his use of [morphine] and his production of the only tube he had opened had a good effect,” Alvin Cliver wrote in the Press. “His story was told in his usual frank manner, and produced the impression that he was guiltless of any implication in the crime.”
Several more witnesses testified: County Detective Elwood Minugh, who had arrested Tom Williams; William Griffin, owner of Griffin’s Wanamassa Hotel, where Williams drank in the hours before Marie disappeared; John “the Cripple” Carlton, the bartender who sold Williams whiskey; William Wynn, who was at the rooming house where Williams had spent most of three days in bed. One of the last people to testify was Martha Coleman, a black twenty-six-year-old resident of Asbury Park. Coleman had already signed an affidavit, on November 21, swearing that, four days before Marie Smith vanished, she had heard Tom Williams say “that there was a little white girl he was going to get familiar with if he got the chance.”
On the stand, she repeated her assertion, and testified that Williams had said the girl was at “Mrs. Jackson’s”—the home of Delia Jackson, where Marie Smith and her parents were living, and where Williams was working a job. The implication was clear—Tom Williams was talking about Marie Smith.
Coleman’s statement had already been refuted by two men she said also heard the remark. Yet the prosecutor, John Applegate, chose not to subpoena either man. He also decided to make Martha Coleman the second-to-last witness to testify, adding more weight to her claim.
Applegate also left Grace Foster off his witness list, denying jurors the chance to hear her describe Frank Heidemann’s offer to her. He chose not to present any testimony about Tom Williams’s criminal record, either, but to some, Applegate’s choice and placement of witnesses seemed highly strategic. Besides the news about Frank Heidemann’s use of morphine, Martha Coleman’s testimony was the biggest revelation of the day. Her claim capped off the testimony on a decidedly anti-Williams note. Indeed, the Asbury Park Press’s headline blared: “Woman Heard Him Say He Would Possess Tiny Victim.”
After the final, inconsequential witness—the elderly Mrs. Thomas Sculthorpe, who was confused by Applegate’s aggressive q
uestioning—Robert Purdy read the coroner’s charge to the six male jurors.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “you are sworn upon your oaths to declare of the death of Marie Smith, whether she came to her death by murder, manslaughter, misfortune, accident or otherwise, and where and when and by what means and in what manner, and if by murder, who were the principals and who were the accessories, and if by manslaughter who were the perpetrators, and with what instrument the stroke or wound was in either case given.”
At 5:45 p.m., Detective Minugh escorted the six jurors to a room behind the chambers and locked the door behind them.
Just twenty minutes later, the jury foreman, John Labaw, was ready with a statement: “We, the Jury, find that the said Marie Smith came to her death at the hands of a person or persons unknown to the Jury.”
That was it. No decision. No progress. No new suspect was named, nor was Williams found to be guilty. Three weeks into the investigation, nothing of note had been determined, not even what weapon had been used to strike the child. Not a single piece of hard evidence connected anybody to the crime. Even so, John Applegate decided to keep Tom Williams imprisoned as a suspect.
Frank Heidemann, on the other hand, had the conditions of his bail rescinded at the close of the inquest, by law. He was no longer considered an official suspect. Without any reservations, Heidemann was free to do as he pleased. He had every right to leave Asbury Park and disappear, if he wished to.
The inquest left many in Asbury Park feeling hopeless, as if the best chance to catch Marie Smith’s killer had already come and gone.
“Whoever committed this awful crime must be suffering the agonies of the damned if he has any senses,” read an uncharacteristically resigned editorial in the Press. “He will never have a minute’s peace until he has made his full and complete confession. Herein seems to lie the final hope of solving this awful mystery.”
The Rope Page 15