We Is Got Him

by Carrie Hagen

  we ask for time

  THREE MONTHS AFTER THEY WERE HIRED, PINKERTON HADN’T produced any substantial leads on the case. The private detectives had frequently been meeting with the men who had hired them, but they weren’t frequently communicating with the police. Instead of working together to find Charley, the two groups were competing against each other for recognition and reward monies.

  At home on Washington Lane, Sarah Ross did what she could to run her household and keep the press from her five children without the help of her husband. In mid-November, the number of visitors had subsided. Letters still arrived daily, but the family didn’t come into contact with as many strangers or gawkers on the property as they had in the early weeks of the investigation. Still, the police continued to patrol the street regularly.

  Sarah’s neighbors did notice one particular man lurking on Washington Lane. Privately, they wondered what he was doing there. He didn’t seem to speak with anybody. They thought he could be either stalking the Ross house, or connected with yet another string of robberies in the area, or both. Sarah noticed him also. She waited until she saw him more than once before contacting Officer Frank Eldridge. Eldridge spoke with Sarah’s neighbors and developed a clearer picture of the man and his haunts. Before long, he made an arrest. When Eldridge took the suspect to the Germantown station house, he learned that the man’s name was R. W. Petty. Petty identified himself as a Pinkerton detective.

  The Lewis brothers, meanwhile, wanted to protect their sister and her family from further harassment and fear. In Christian’s absence, they attempted to turn the case back into a private family affair, just as the kidnappers had intended. They informed Sarah and the authorities in New York and Philadelphia that whether or not the advisory committee approved, they would be contacting the kidnappers according to the instructions in the latest letter.

  But the kidnappers did not see a message addressed to them in the paper on Tuesday, November 10, as they had asked. Because both parties involved could not agree on exchange details, Walling and Heins had more time to convince the family not to make a trade. Walling especially welcomed yet another delay, confident that the kidnappers were running out of options and would soon get caught. He told Captain Heins that he hoped Douglas would betray Mosher in exchange for leniency.

  November 12, 1874

  The parties are hard up and have come to the end of their tether. We are pushing them so hard that they dare not get out to do anything. I don’t think Douglas will squeal unless we can get hold of him.

  Yours, etc.,

  GEO. W. WALLING, Superintendent

  Walling refused to believe that he had spent his contacts, time, and funds in vain. He summoned Westervelt and questioned him once again, this time mentioning the kidnappers’ latest contact name—Saul of Tarsus.

  If Mosher and Douglas show up on the day the family names, Walling told him, they will receive their money.

  Walling then tried postponing this “day” by encouraging Heins to intimidate the family.

  DEAR SIR.—Please see Mr. Lewis and say to him that I think it dangerous for parties to meet relative to any negotiations for the child, with a large amount of money, unless they have some officers within call, as the parties might be disguised, and in case the villains were to fail in making terms, they might take desperate chances to obtain the money.

  GEO. W. WALLING, Superintendent

  The Lewis brothers waited a few more days for the police to make an arrest. On Monday, November 16, they placed an advertisement in the Herald.

  Saul of Tarsus. Fifth Avenue Hotel, Wednesday, the 18th inst. All day.

  F.W. LINCOLN

  Henry Lewis and his son Frank took the train to New York on November 17. They arrived at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in the afternoon and registered under the name F. W. Lincoln. They held a satchel carrying $20,000, divided into one- and ten-dollar bills. Neither man left the room that day or the next. The night of the eighteenth, they walked another personal advertisement to the Herald office.

  New York Herald. November 19.

  “Saul of Tarsus. We have performed our part to the letter, you have broken faith; we will have no more trifling; action must now be simultaneous.”

  Walling sent an officer to arrest Westervelt on Thursday, November 19. He confronted him in a private room at police headquarters on Mulberry Street, reminding him that he had staked his reputation on his faith in Westervelt’s cooperation. Walling accused Westervelt of double-crossing him by using police intelligence to warn the kidnappers of a possible ambush at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

  Westervelt maintained his innocence.

  Walling demanded to see a memo pad that Westervelt kept on his person. Previously, he had seen the name “Saul of Tarsus” written on one of its pages.

  Westervelt handed it over.

  Walling flipped through the little book. He found no incriminating evidence. Instead of releasing Westervelt, he stalled by inviting him to dinner. As he ate, Westervelt complained that he was going to be fired from his job as a driver on the Eighth Avenue line because he had been arrested at work. Walling agreed to write to his employer and ask for leniency on Westervelt’s behalf.

  PART THREE

  “dead men tell no tales”

  (DECEMBER 1874)

  dead men tell no tales

  ON THE EVENING OF DECEMBER 13, JOSEPH DOUGLAS WALKED toward a cemetery on Second Street, blocks away from the Bowery in Manhattan. For nearly four months, the police forces of two cities, the Pinkerton Agency, and hundreds of amateur detectives had attempted to track his movements through these misty streets. Plainclothes officers drank in Douglas’s favorite saloons, ate at his favorite restaurants, and watched the lodging places of his rumored associates. They often saw him. Several men could have apprehended him several times but for Superintendent Walling’s orders. Again and again, Walling had repeated instructions to inspectors, who carried them to captains, who told sergeants, who informed their men roving the area around the Five Points in groups. Douglas must not be touched. Douglas must be left alone until he takes us directly to Bill Mosher. The location of the child is secondary to the arrest of Mosher.

  For nearly a decade, Douglas had accompanied Mosher on enterprises both criminal and legitimate. They had even gone to prison together for the botched burglary in Red Bank, New Jersey. The arrest scared Douglas, so after Mosher cut through a prison wall and escaped, he had separated himself from his mentor, finding a respectable job as a streetcar driver in Brooklyn. Two and a half years later, two years before the kidnapping, he had learned that a man with a funny nose had been asking for him at his workplace.

  Mosher began coming around so often that Douglas’s colleagues nicknamed him “Nosey.” The boss noticed Nosey and Douglas whispering when they were together, and soon, Douglas, one of his finest workers, quit. Douglas moved to South Philadelphia, where Bill and Martha Mosher had rented a home under the name “Henderson” on Monroe Street. Mosher took odd jobs and handled the room rentals, and Martha took care of the children. Once Douglas came to live on Monroe Street, the men spent days driving around the suburbs and the Pennsylvania countryside in a wagon painted red. It was full of Bibles, moth preventative, roach poison, secondhand furniture, bedbug poison, picture frames, and a stove polish that Mosher had concocted. One June day, they visited the oak-lined streets of Germantown to peddle their products. A few weeks later, they returned to steal Walter and Charley Ross from their father’s front lawn.

  Douglas arrived at the cemetery before 9:00 P.M. on December 13. He stepped into the shadows. Another cold winter had hit New York, and Philadelphia still held a $20,000 bounty over the kidnappers’ heads. So far, hatred of the police had kept the lips of bartenders and rival criminals shut, but Douglas knew somebody would talk soon, and he was far from his promised ransom cut. After thirteen ransom letters and two botched meetings, Mosher hadn’t made the exchange with Christian Ross’s family. He had almost made the exchange nearly a month before,
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on November 18, but Westervelt had warned him away. Walling had told Westervelt the kidnappers would get what they wanted if they made the exchange on the day appointed by the Ross family; reading between the lines, Westervelt thought he recognized a police trap and warned Mosher to abandon the meeting. Since then, neither party had scheduled another meeting, and now Walling suspected Westervelt.

  On the one hand, Douglas could cut his losses and flee the country, but on the other, if he wanted to maintain his reputation in the criminal community—the only community that would give him work once this was finished—he couldn’t sell Mosher out. Douglas waited in the shadows of the cemetery. Even if he had wanted to turn himself in, it was too late to strike a financial deal. Gil Mosher had snitched on his own brother back in July, and he still hadn’t received any of the reward money. Douglas knew he had to continue following Mosher’s advice, roam the streets alone, and steal to pay for food and lodging until he could figure out his own escape route. He could potentially convince the police to offer him immunity in exchange for Mosher, but Douglas couldn’t openly ask for favors. He needed a broker: somebody the police already trusted, somebody he could maybe blackmail into protecting him. At 9:00 P.M., he saw a figure coming toward him. Douglas stepped from the shadows and joined William Westervelt for a walk along the Bowery.

  The men stopped at a saloon for oysters. Then they walked a few blocks west to Broadway, and Douglas reminisced about his childhood days in the neighborhood. They passed rows of tall, boldly colored mansions on either side of the street. Five- and six-year-old beggar children tried to sell flowers for pennies. Young girls—many of whom were already prostitutes and blackmailers—wore old shawls and sold fruit, candies, and peanuts from oversized baskets. Douglas and Westervelt walked north on Broadway toward Bleecker Street and stopped at Hunt’s saloon for coffee. It was almost midnight. The men turned off of Bleecker Street and walked back toward the dirty, drab tenements along the Bowery. But instead of turning south toward Five Points, they continued east toward the bay. Lights vanished and shadows disappeared. Prostitutes lured customers down the dark alleys. Many mornings, the harbor police pulled floating, mangled corpses from the river. Westervelt turned to go home, but Douglas feared continuing alone. “Come down as far as the ferry,” he asked.

  Newsboys tried to pass off their last papers and walked through trash-filled yards, headed to gambling games in saloons or lodging houses, brothels riddled with venereal disease, a night’s sleep on top of steam gratings. When Douglas reached the corner of South and Catherine Streets, Westervelt mentioned that he often visited this block on Sunday mornings to buy fish. Douglas told him he could do so the next day, which was a Sunday, if he stayed with him overnight at Vandyke’s, a nearby hotel. Westervelt agreed.

  Douglas awoke at 6:00 A.M. He and Westervelt made plans to meet again in a few days, and Douglas walked down Catherine Street alone. He and Mosher had a plan to burglarize summer homes along the Long Island Sound, and later that day, they had gone over their plans. They would use a black cat-rigged sailboat that Mosher had built for a man from Bridgeport, Connecticut, when he was in prison. The man had paid the authorities $150 for it, and Mosher was so proud of his work that he tracked the boat down and stole it after he was released. The police found it in Boston Harbor and returned it to its owner, who made sure his last name, “Wilmot,” was branded in several places on the boat. Two months after the Ross abduction, Mosher stole it again. Although most river pirates would have carved off the brandings and disguised the vessel as another craft, Mosher did not. Instead, he spread newspapers over the markings.

  Douglas joined him by 9:30 P.M. The water was choppy as they steered for a half hour to Bay Ridge, a bluff covered by woods along the Long Island shore. Strong winds blew through the trees and the fields. A storm was coming. The men easily hid the black boat in one of the coves along the shore. Then they went to Winant’s, a hotel on a pier. The bartender noticed the men and their whispering. From the tavern, they walked about a mile to a group of villas next to the bay. Each man possessed a gun and a knife. They stopped at a widow’s home and jacked open a window. One man slipped through it and opened the door for the other, just before they heard voices and steps. The break-in had awakened the owner, who in turn awoke her servant and charged through the house, asking who meant to rob her. Douglas and Mosher ran through the door before she saw them.

  They quietly passed the country home of a Mr. Holmes Van Brunt. A light was on in one of the windows upstairs. The men moved across the lawn to a smaller, pretty cottage a short distance away. Around 2:00 A.M., they broke in and turned on a light. Covered furniture filled the rooms. It was, evidently, a summer residence. As Douglas searched for something worth stealing in the pantry and the dining room, he heard a key turn in the lock of the back door. The men turned out the light and ran downstairs into the cellar, pulling a trapdoor closed behind them. Douglas heard gunshots. He and Mosher pulled out pistols and waited. Somebody opened the trap door. They heard voices coming from four men on the floor above them. Gunshots rang out. Mosher ran upstairs first.

  “There they come!” one man screamed. “Give it to him!”

  Douglas heard another shot, followed by, “Give it to him!”

  “I’ll give it to him,” another responded. More shots.

  Douglas climbed upstairs and held his gun in his right hand. Mosher lay facedown on top of his gun. He had uttered, “I give up,” before falling to the ground. A man knocked Douglas’s right arm with a weapon. Douglas swore. As he took his gun with his left hand, he was shot in the chest and in the head before more bullets hit him. Douglas stumbled outside and walked along a fence. A man screamed, “Look out for that man, he has got a pistol!” Another warned that he wasn’t really hurt, just playing possum. Douglas fell to the ground. The four gunmen gathered around him. Neighbors ran outside. Blood poured from Douglas’s head and chest. Organs spilled from a wound in his stomach.

  He asked a woman for a glass of whiskey.

  “Whiskey for him!” she exclaimed. “For the man who tries to kill my husband? Oh, no! I don’t want him to live—let him die! At all events he gets no whiskey from me!”

  “It serves you right,” said a servant girl to Douglas. “It’s just good for you.”

  Douglas looked up at her. “Oh, madam, I’ve been a very wicked fellow, I know.”

  The girl smirked. People began asking Douglas questions.

  He told them he was single and without a home. He mentioned two siblings he hadn’t spoken with in years. He said Mosher was married and lived “in the city” with his five or six children. He didn’t give Mosher’s address, but asked for the boat to be given to Mosher’s wife.

  A sailor named Herkey, a neighbor of Van Brunt’s, overheard Douglas talking. He saw the bullet wounds in Mosher’s corpse, which had been pulled outside. After hearing Douglas ask again for whiskey, he brought some to his lips. Douglas couldn’t drink it. He asked for water. The sailor again helped, getting some for Douglas and pouring sips into his mouth.

  “It’s no use lying now,” Douglas said. “I helped to steal Charley Ross.”

  Herkey stared and called others to hear the confession. Someone held a lantern over Douglas’s body.

  They asked where Charley was hidden.

  “Mosher knows all about it,” Douglas responded. Herkey told him Mosher was dead. Douglas didn’t believe him. Men lifted his shoulders off the ground so he could see his dead mentor lying in the grass.

  “God help his poor wife and family!” he cried.

  Herkey again asked about Charley.

  “Inspector Walling knows, and the boy will get home all right,” Douglas answered. He asked for a minister. He asked God for forgiveness. Douglas told Herkey he had forty dollars in his pocket. “All I ask of you is that you give me a decent burial. Give me a decent burial, that’s all I ask.”

  Joseph Douglas died at 5:00 A.M., two hours after he fell to the ground. Men dra
gged his and Mosher’s bodies behind the house and covered them.

  Constable Holland of the New York Police Department arrived in the early morning and sent a dispatch to Central police headquarters informing Walling of Douglas’s confession. He had made a formal arrest of the four shooters until the coroner could make a proper investigation. Walling sent Detective Silleck of the New York force to identify the bodies. By the time he arrived at noon, the police had found sets of burglars’ tools on Mosher and Douglas, and a third set in the boat moored in the cove. Once Silleck stood over the bodies on the grass, an officer uncovered them.

  Silleck identified Douglas as “Joe” and pointed to Mosher’s body. “Take the glove off that left hand,” he said, “and you’ll find a withered finger.”

  tell C.K.R. quietly

  WINDOW-SHOPPERS STROLLED BETWEEN CHRISTMAS DISPLAYS on either side of police headquarters on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. They gazed past their reflections, scanning the candies, toys, jewelry, and carpets behind the glass. Farmers from New Jersey sold vegetables, fruits, and chickens on the pavement in front of long wagon lines and sidewalk booths stocked with holly wreaths and candles, decorations for the cedar and pine trees sold on the corner. At night, when women stepped into streetcars that whisked them to holiday parties, the silver sheen on their pastel dresses sparkled under the streetlights.