To keep the pressure on, Carl continued waking up Frank in the middle of the night to tell him he’d been screaming in his sleep, even when he hadn’t been.
Then came the mock murder, which pushed Frank to a new level of despair and vulnerability. It was the right time for the plan’s next step—bringing in a hardened gangster named Joe Springenberg.
Springenberg, of course, was not real. Schindler and his team invented him to be Carl Neumeister’s Chicago-based criminal partner and mentor. Right after the mock murder, Carl allowed Frank to see him writing a letter to Springenberg, confessing to the reckless thing he’d just done. Now they would both wait for the reply. Carl assured Frank that when he and Springenberg finally fled the country, they would take him with them. Still, Frank worried the murder in Yonkers had changed things.
A few days after they settled in Philadelphia, the Springenberg letter—written by Schindler and his men—finally arrived. It had a single, unambiguous piece of advice for Carl Neumeister.
Leave the country, and leave Frank Heidemann behind.
Carl shared the letter with Frank, whose very worst fear—being abandoned with no money and no prospects—was right there in smudged ink. That evening, Frank had a breakdown, and sobbed for nearly two hours straight while Carl tried to reassure him.
“The psychological moment,” Carl would report, “had arrived.”
Frank begged Carl not to leave him. Carl told him Springenberg was right. He wasn’t one of them. They couldn’t afford to trust him. They had no choice but to part ways. Frank would be on his own.
“You need not call me an angel and hesitate to take me in as your third partner,” Frank pleaded. “I am far from being an angel. I may have done something similar to what you did in Yonkers.”
Carl leaned in closer.
What similar thing have you done?
Heidemann wouldn’t say. Same as before, he offered no specifics. The moment passed. Frank’s weeping fits went on into the night.
The next day, Carl tried again.
He took Frank to a botanical garden, and as they walked he tried to steer their conversation back to Asbury Park. Carl suggested he would even pay for Frank’s bail should he ever be arrested, but in return, he said, Frank would need to confide in him fully. After all, Carl reasoned, he was more experienced in avoiding prosecution, and rather than tell some untrustworthy lawyer the truth, he should share it with him.
The ruse didn’t work. Nothing had worked. Frank’s true past remained a secret. He must have believed that as long as he kept his head down, he would be okay. The police couldn’t hurt him if they couldn’t find him. There was no need for him to confess his crimes to anyone.
* * *
In New York City, Schindler was frustrated by Frank’s caginess. He’d experienced it firsthand in his ten-hour interrogation; he’d seen how adept Frank was at wiggling out from under tough questioning. The staged murder had increased the pressure on the target, as planned, but it hadn’t been enough to make him open up. Something more was needed.
Something that would give Frank Heidemann a real scare. The scare of his life. Schindler had an idea. He knew what would frighten Heidemann to his very core. A certain person from his recent past.
Ray Schindler himself.
The plan: Carl would take Frank into New York City, where they would “accidentally” run into Ray Schindler.
“By putting a little fear in his heart,” Schindler reasoned, “he may be an easier subject to work on.”
Using the excuse of needing to see his New York bankers on March 6, Carl, together with Frank, took a 7:00 a.m. train to the Exchange Place Station in Jersey City. From there, the Desbrosses Street Ferry brought them to lower Manhattan. They booked a room in the Central Hotel, and Frank waited there while Carl pretended to visit his bankers.
In truth, Carl traveled to Park Row to see Ray Schindler at the Burns Agency headquarters. Together they finalized the plan.
At 12:20 p.m., Carl and Frank took the Ninth Avenue downtown L train to the South Ferry Station on Whitehall Street. A bit earlier, Schindler arrived at the station and took a spot on the elevated platform where the L train stopped. He waited as several trains came and went.
At 12:40 p.m., Carl and Frank got off the L train and ran straight into Ray Schindler. Frank clearly recognized him, and picked up his pace as he and Carl headed across the platform to take the Third Avenue train.
“Let’s get in quick,” Frank said.
But they missed the train. Frank was jittery and couldn’t stand still. He was relieved when another train pulled into the station.
“Thank God we caught this other one,” he told Carl as they waited for the train doors to close. “I just wish it would start.”
Finally, the doors were shut. Frank nervously peered out the window. On the platform, Schindler now had a uniformed police officer by his side. He and the officer walked along the platform. Schindler, who had taken note of which train car Frank got on, made sure to walk past the car’s window, the policeman right beside him.
When Frank saw them, Schindler reported, “he huddled up in a seat and turned his back toward me.”
At last, the train lurched to a start and left the station.
“Well, that danger is past,” Frank said. “Who do you think I saw, Carl? The manager of the Burns Detective Agency was at the South Ferry and saw me! He’s the one who gave me the third degree for ten hours! I don’t think he recognized me or he would have arrested me.”
Still, Frank explained to Carl, he couldn’t take that chance. If Schindler had failed to recognize him, he might remember him later. And when he did, he and his officers would scour the city searching for him. They needed to return to Philadelphia right away, Frank said.
Schindler and Carl knew they had to seize on Frank’s heightened emotional state. They had to act fast. That very evening, Carl made plans for him and Frank to take a train to Atlantic City, sixty miles southeast of Philadelphia, where together they would wait for the arrival of Carl’s criminal cohort, the fictitious Joe Springenberg. They packed up and left the Brogley Hotel and made a stop at the post office, where Carl picked up the Yonkers Herald that had been forwarded to him.
He let Heidemann read the headline: “Atrocious Murder Discovered on Midland Avenue.”
The news that police had a description of possible suspects was bad enough, but Carl added a twist—he told Frank that, out of anger, he had shredded a second issue of the Herald sent to him, and in that issue it was reported that police had traced the Colt revolver used in the shooting back to the killer. Back to Carl.
The walls were closing in on Frank Heidemann.
* * *
Carl and Frank took the 9:40 p.m. train to Atlantic City. They booked a room at the Newark House hotel on South Carolina Avenue, near the ocean. Then it was a waiting game. Joe Springenberg was due any day. In the meantime, Carl kept up the pressure on Frank. He returned to the topic of Asbury Park as often as he could.
On March 9, three days after they arrived in Atlantic City, the strategy finally paid off. That morning, Frank volunteered a curious story.
They were talking about the Marie Smith case, as they sometimes did. This time, Frank told Carl that, on the morning Marie’s body was found in the woods—specifically, fifteen minutes before she was discovered—he’d experienced a strange sensation.
In those minutes, Frank explained, his heart began to race. And then: “I had a premonition, Carl.”
Frank said he suddenly felt something horrible was about to happen. He didn’t know what, just that something awful was coming. A few minutes later, he learned Marie Smith’s body had been found. He hadn’t known she’d been murdered, he insisted. So hearing she was dead came as a shock. Carl listened attentively but didn’t ask any questions.
Instead, that afternoon, Carl shut down.
He sat in their shared room at the hotel and sulked. Heidemann asked if he wanted a game of pinochle. Carl said no.
>
How about chess? Again, Carl said no.
“Don’t bother me,” Carl grunted.
Frank was confused. He told Carl he’d figured out why he was acting so strangely—he must have received another letter from Springenberg. He guessed they were plotting to flee to Honduras and leave him behind in Atlantic City. That was it, wasn’t it?
“When Joe comes, both of you will disappear and leave me here all alone,” he said, “without any money or friends.”
Carl told him to go ahead and get a job.
“What makes you talk like that?” Frank asked.
“Why, this morning you told me about the premonition you had fifteen minutes before the girl was found,” Carl said. “You claimed to me that you did not know that the girl was killed. You must take me for a damn chump to try and get me to believe that. And another thing—if you tell that lie to Joe, he’ll simply turn around and walk off.”
Frank began to protest.
“Don’t interrupt me, you fool!” Carl snapped. “Just listen and I will tell you. We’ve been together for over two months now, and in that time you have dropped certain remarks, which convinced me that you killed the girl. Now, I don’t give a damn whether you did or not, but I think you are not sincere by not having told me the truth right along from the start, as I have always told the truth to you. You have been lying right along to me in this matter, and I have no use for a lying friend.”
Frank appeared wounded. This was the worst argument they’d ever had, and the angriest he’d ever seen Carl.
“Now,” Carl went on, “you can send me and Joe to the electric chair, either by direct or indirect denunciation, at any time you please, and we’ve got nothing on you.”
The implication was clear. The time had come for Frank to prove he was one of them. Not just a grifter, not just immoral, but a man fully capable of taking a life. Cold-blooded and murderous, like them.
Frank paced the room, back and forth, one side to the other, over and over, while Carl waited patiently for an answer.
“Carl,” Frank finally said, “if it does you any good—yes, I did it.”
Did what?
“I killed the girl.”
CHAPTER 33 Once to Every Man and Nation
September 19, 1910
Chicago, Illinois
Sheriff Fred Nellis brought Steve Green back to Chicago on the same train line that took him away. Newspapers reported on the dramatic happenings at the Cairo station.
“The stoutest heart quivered and the weaker hearts stood still, for the last faint hope seemed to be glimmering away to failure,” read a story in the Broad Ax. Nellis rescued Green “at the doorstep of certain death.”
A hearing was scheduled for mid-September to resolve the writ of habeas corpus and, effectively, Steve Green’s future. If a judge ruled Green had been properly turned over to Arkansas authorities, he would be given to them once more and taken back to Jericho—the fate Wells and her attorneys were desperate to prevent.
On Monday, September 19, 1910, a judge of the Circuit Court of Illinois, Cook County—the Honorable Richard Stanley Tuthill—took his place at the bench of the seventh-floor courthouse in the circuit court building in Chicago. Both the room—richly carved wood paneling, two brass, twin-shade lamps flanking the towering bench—and Judge Tuthill, with a dramatically trimmed Vandyke he’d worn for decades, were stately and imposing. Spectators, both white and black, filled every seat and every space in the room, anxious with expectation. The Broad Ax announced, “Never before in Chicago was there such a trial.”
During the first day of arguments the previous Friday, Steve Green stood before the court and told his story. Now, on the final day, Green’s black attorneys, William Anderson and Edward Wright, took over. Chicago’s assistant corporation counsel, William Barge, represented the state. Shortly after 9:00 a.m., the proceeding began.
Arkansas’s governor, George Washington Donaghey, had signed his name to an indictment and extradition papers, which were presented to the court. Judge Tuthill gave the floor to Edward Wright. Wright began speaking at 9:30 a.m. and did not finish until 4:00 p.m. He cited no less than forty legal cases, including a Supreme Court case, to bolster his central argument—the Chicago Police Department had no right to surrender Steve Green to an Arkansas sheriff. Wright claimed the paperwork sent from Arkansas, both at the time Green was taken from a Chicago jail, and submitted to the court that day, was faulty and inadequate. Wright found several technical reasons to render it invalid.
At the end of the trial, Judge Tuthill offered his verdict. The requisition from Arkansas to extradite Green, Tuthill ruled, was, indeed, poorly constructed. What’s more, he said, the Arkansas governor could not be a very good lawyer, if he was a lawyer at all, to sign his name to such shoddy extradition papers.
Therefore, Tuthill concluded, he had no choice but to discharge Steve Green “from the custody of the court, from the officers of the police department of this city, and from all other officers, within the jurisdiction of the circuit court of Cook County.”
Steve Green was free to go.
The Chicago Broad Ax heralded Wright and Anderson for winning “one of the greatest legal battles of their lives.” Judge Tuthill’s ruling set a precedent, not only for Illinois, but also for other northern states. Writers compared Green’s rescue to the days of the Underground Railroad, when escaped slaves were spirited to safety through an elaborate network of secret safe homes. This time it was a phone call from Ida Wells that triggered a series of unlikely events and actions that, in ways daring and cunning, led to freedom for Steve Green.
But it was a tenuous freedom.
After the trial, Ida Wells arranged for Green to stay at a safe house in Chicago. It was assumed Arkansas governor Donaghey’s lawyers would amend the extradition papers and try again to take Green. The risk that Green would be sent back to Arkansas was still high. Wells and Green had a decision to make. Would they take their chances with the Arkansas justice system? Or would they never let it get that far?
A meeting was held in the bedroom of one of Green’s lawyers, who was ill. Wells and the men took up a collection, and the money raised was handed to Wells. The decision had been made. They did not trust any Arkansas judges or police.
So they were going to make Steve Green disappear.
Wells arranged for Green to leave Chicago and head for the Canadian border, a few hundred miles north. Very few people knew where he was going. When Arkansas governor Donaghey learned Green was missing, he offered a two-hundred-dollar reward for his recapture. But it was never claimed. Wells kept Green out of sight until, she wrote, Arkansas officials gave up their pursuit “as a hopeless job.”
Eventually, the state of Arkansas did give up on bringing Steve Green back. They couldn’t extradite a man they couldn’t find.
Once interest in the case died down to nothing, Green returned to Chicago under an alias. He took a job and worked the night shift, and during the days he slept in the lodging house of the National Fellowship League. Even Ida Wells soon lost track of Steve Green. All she knew for sure was that he had not gone back to Arkansas against his will.
“Here is one Negro who lives to tell the tale,” she wrote, “that he was not burned alive according to program.”
* * *
Once again, word of Ida Wells’s actions in Chicago reached the New York office of the newly named National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Not surprisingly, the NAACP was also interested in Steve Green’s case. It was the kind of injustice the organization had been conceived to confront.
In its first year, the NAACP was stumbling. It had survived an intense round of early criticism—of William Walling’s alleged southern prejudices; of the presumptions of white liberals to start such an organization; of Booker T. Washington’s absence from its leadership, which was seen as a damaging boycott of the group. “This little crowd falls down every time it attempts to do some essentially big thing,” Washington wrote to a frie
nd who briefed him on the association’s early troubles. “These fellows will be troublesome for a few months, but will soon wear themselves out.”
On top of that, the NAACP could not find a competent treasurer, and anyway had very little money to work with. Early on, Oswald Garrison Villard envisioned a grand endowment of one million dollars. The reality was shockingly different. In early 1910, the NAACP listed monthly expenditures of $243.65—including one hundred fifty dollars for six weeks’ salary for a secretary, forty dollars for two months’ rent, and just under ten dollars for postage and office supplies. In the same period, the group raised just over $311—two hundred of which came from Villard and his family. The NAACP had exactly $66.55 in cash on hand, plus ninety cents’ worth of stamps.
By the next meeting of the executive committee, the cash reserve had built up to over $260, but that was still far short of the two thousand dollars needed to pay for the group’s second annual convention in May 1910.
One month after the convention, the NAACP ran a deficit. Villard asked all the members of the Committee of Forty to help raise funds and contribute at least five dollars each. At one point, Villard’s mother chipped in fifty dollars for expenses. There were times when Villard feared his ambitious new project would completely collapse.
It survived, but continued to struggle. Villard himself became the disbursing treasurer, and W. E. B. Du Bois started a monthly association magazine called The Crisis. Its mission was to “set forth those facts and arguments which show the dangers of race prejudice,” and it took its title from “The Present Crisis,” a poem by James Russell Lowell:
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the Strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
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