Death at Tammany Hall

by Charles O'Brien

  “Smith and Palermo each had a shot of whiskey—I drank water. ‘You’ve cost Tammany enough already,’ Smith said to me. He turned to Palermo. ‘Have another for the road, Tony. It’s cold outside.’ He poured a shot into the cabdriver’s glass.

  “ ‘Thanks. Don’t mind if I do. You’re a good loser, Tim.’ He emptied the glass in one gulp, waved good-bye, and walked into the barroom. Smith and I followed him.

  “Dan Kelly stood near the door to the street. Smith nodded to him. He quickly stepped outside. As Palermo left the building, Kelly deliberately pushed him. ‘You greedy Dago,’ he growled. ‘You cheated me on my fare.’

  “Palermo grew red in the face. ‘Show me respect, you little shrimp. I’ve never laid eyes on you.’

  “ ‘Nobody calls me a shrimp and gets away with it.’ Kelly spit on Palermo’s shoe. Anger flashed in the Italian’s eyes. ‘Bastardo! ’ he shouted, and raised his hands.

  “In an instant Kelly drew a knife and slashed Palermo’s throat. He fell writhing on the pavement. Smith and I rushed up to him, followed by two Tammany guards. I loosened his collar and tried to make him comfortable, but he was unconscious. Blood pulsed from his throat. Meanwhile, someone called for the police.

  “While I was helping Palermo, I noticed Smith pull a knife from Palermo’s belt and lay it near his hand. Then he reached into the dying man’s pocket and retrieved the $5,000. Smith’s eyes met mine. At that moment, I realized that this had been a cold-blooded assassination, and he knew that I knew. I glanced at my hands and my shirtsleeves, wet with blood, and I felt as guilty as if I had killed Palermo.”

  “You weren’t aware,” said Pamela to Chapman, “that Florence Mulligan had witnessed the scene from her room across the street. Her account is identical to yours.”

  “At the time,” said Chapman, “it wouldn’t have mattered if she had witnessed the crime. She would have been afraid to protest. Horror and fear took over my mind. A policeman soon arrived, and we retreated into the barroom. He questioned several of us bystanders, and then took Kelly to the station house. An ambulance came for Palermo’s body.”

  Chapman breathed a deep sigh. “That was the most horrid incident of my life. It took place within a few minutes, seven years ago, but I remember it as clearly as if it happened yesterday. As the policeman questioned me, I could hardly speak. Tim Smith sat nearby listening, his eyes fixed on me. I knew instinctively that I shouldn’t say a word about the money and our transaction with Palermo.

  “As I was leaving the Tiger’s Den, Smith sidled up to me and whispered, ‘Never implicate Tammany Hall in what happened to the cabdriver, or you will meet the same fate. If you have any sense, you will disappear.’

  “That night I took the train to Los Angeles.”

  While Chapman checked Harry’s notes, Pamela asked Larry White what he planned to do next.

  “I’ll get a written deposition from Florence Mulligan. Two consistent eyewitnesses should clinch the case against Tim Smith. I already have documentary proof from Ambrose Norton, Frank Dodd, and Joe Meagher that Smith actually paid Kelly. Without that proof, Smith could argue that Kelly acted on his own.”

  Pamela suggested, “In that case, perhaps Kelly could be persuaded to further implicate Smith, the paymaster, in return for escaping the death sentence. Tell him how the electric chair literally fried the wife-murderer Kemmler for several minutes before he died. Some say that his body caught fire. I mentioned it once to Kelly and he turned pale.”

  Larry nodded. “Then he has probably concluded that cooperation is his only option.”

  “I’m sure the prosecutor would consider a plea bargain,” said Prescott. “It’s the most sure and quick way to close this case with the least damage to Tammany Hall.” Then he asked Chapman: “Was Judge Fawcett involved in this incident in any way?”

  “As far as I know, he had nothing directly to do with the cabdriver’s death. I’ve been told that the judge accepted a bribe and willfully covered up the crime with forged evidence.”

  Larry White cautioned, “Without clear proof, the district attorney would balk at including the judge in the conspiracy to kill Palermo for fear of offending the dignity of the courts.”

  “Nonetheless, we have to sort out the judge’s part in Sullivan’s death,” Prescott insisted.

  Pamela pointed out, “If Kelly is charged with Sullivan’s death, he will most likely claim that Smith, at Fawcett’s behest, ordered him to do it.”

  Larry White stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Kelly’s claim might be close to the truth, but I doubt that the district attorney would charge Fawcett. The judge would contradict Kelly and claim plausibly that he merely called Tammany Hall and asked for Singleton’s cab. I can’t prove that he was more significantly involved.”

  As the meeting ended, Pamela remarked, “We really don’t know whether the district attorney would be willing to bargain at all.”

  Larry nodded. “I’ll find out when I meet him early in January.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Grand Jury and Final Verdict

  Wednesday, January 9, 1895

  Though wrapped in a fur coat against the winter cold, Pamela began to shiver. She and Prescott were riding in a cab downtown to the office of District Attorney John Fellows. He had reluctantly agreed to Larry White’s request for this meeting.

  Prescott glanced at her with concern. “Are you chilled, Pamela?” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “You feel warm.”

  “My nerves are reacting to our coming meeting with Mr. Fellows,” she replied. “This investigation and much else is at stake. We must persuade him to present our evidence against Big Tim Smith and Judge Fawcett to a grand jury. That’s a daunting task, considering Tammany Hall’s power in this city.”

  “Relax, Pamela, you’ve built a strong case against those rascals. Otherwise Larry White wouldn’t have arranged this meeting. He knows the pitfalls of the judicial process and nonetheless believes we shall prevail.”

  “Still,” she insisted, “I’m concerned that Mr. Fellows is a Democrat and politically aligned with Tammany Hall rather than with Reverend Parkhurst and the reformers.”

  “I agree on that point,” Prescott admitted. “I’ve also seen Fellows recently and he looks tired and sick. I’m sure he’d prefer that we didn’t bother him with an old, cold case of judicial wrongdoing.”

  When they entered the building, Larry White, Catherine Fawcett, and Howard Chapman were waiting for them. Patting his portfolio, Larry said, “The statements from Frank Dodd, Fred Grant, Florence Mulligan, and Joe Meagher are here—our reserve ammunition, so to speak.”

  Pamela murmured to Prescott, “Have you noticed that our chief witnesses, Catherine and Howard, look frightened and anxious?”

  “Yes,” he replied softly. “They now foresee more clearly the risks they face. Each of them could be accused of having taken part in the crimes we shall discuss. Moreover, if this legal process drags on, Tammany Hall’s defenders could blacken their reputation, harass them in many other ways, or even kill them. Let’s show confidence in our cause and encourage them.”

  After a short wait in an anteroom, Pamela and the others were ushered into Mr. Fellows’s office. With a brave smile he rose painfully from his desk to meet them. He spoke with a Southern accent—he was raised in Arkansas and had been a colonel in the Confederate army. A popular magistrate, his manner was outgoing and gracious and his appearance friendly. Pamela felt comfortable with him but remained anxious.

  Pamela and her companions gathered around a large conference table, Fellows at the head. He turned to Larry. “Please sum up the case, Detective White.”

  Larry put on his official manner and began in a plain, factual tone. “In the course of investigating the suspicious death of Mr. Michael Sullivan, Mrs. Thompson and I discovered that he had been murdered. Further investigation uncovered earlier, related crimes, including the murder of the cabdriver, Tony Palermo, as well as assaults, fraud, bribery, and criminal conspirac
y, going back seven years and even spanning the continent. The crimes all involved the same suspects—Timothy Smith, Judge Noah Fawcett, Daniel Kelly, Patrick McBride, and William Cook—and grew out of the infamous ‘Boodle’ scandal of 1884.”

  Larry gave Pamela a sidelong glance and concluded, “Our evidence shows that Fawcett, Kelly, McBride, and Cook carried out the crimes at the behest of Smith.”

  Mr. Fellows appeared fully attentive, if skeptical. Several days ago, Larry White had given him a detailed written summary of Palermo’s murder in 1887 and Smith and Fawcett’s attempts at the time to conceal the crime, as well as Michael Sullivan’s later threat to expose them and his subsequent murder. Attached to the summary were the depositions from Catherine Fawcett, Howard Chapman, Fred Grant, Frank Dodd, Florence Mulligan, and Joe Meagher that attested to the suspects’ guilt.

  The room grew quiet while the district attorney shuffled through his papers. Then he said solemnly, “Detective White and Mrs. Thompson, I commend your zeal and your diligence in unearthing a very serious criminal matter. I will give your evidence the attention it deserves. With the arrest of these five suspects, the newspapers are already on the hunt for other scoundrels, real and imaginary. We must deal with the case promptly, before the public is led into false accusations.”

  That’s encouraging, thought Pamela. Mr. Fellows intended to protect Tammany Hall’s reputation by quickly blaming the crimes on a few bad apples in the notorious Sixteenth Ward.

  Fellows said to the others, “I’ll now play the devil’s advocate at a grand jury hearing.” He cleared his throat and pretended to glare at Larry. “Detective White, why do you challenge the court’s decision in 1887 that Mr. Kelly acted in self-defense when he killed Palermo? Two eyewitnesses swore that the cabdriver reached into his coat for a knife.”

  “We can prove, sir, that they lied.” Larry nodded to Howard Chapman, who testified that Kelly deliberately provoked the cabdriver, and then killed him—though he had not drawn a weapon, nor was he about to. This was confirmed by Florence Mulligan’s deposition.

  Prompted by Fellows, Chapman told his story of losing the portfolio of “boodle” money, Smith’s angry reaction, followed by his plot to kill the cabdriver. Chapman seemed to relive his story as he described Smith planting the knife by Palermo’s hand and retrieving the pay-off money from the dying man, “even while blood poured from his throat.”

  At that graphic image, Fellows turned pale and gulped. He weakly suggested that a grand jury might nonetheless uphold the claim of self-defense on the grounds that Kelly could reasonably presume that Palermo would reach for a knife. In that case, Pamela retorted, Kelly could be charged with manslaughter for deliberately provoking his victim. She pointed out that Mulligan and Chapman saw Palermo merely raise his hands.

  Fellows next questioned the forged extortion letter. Larry White called on Catherine Fawcett to explain how Judge Fawcett deceived her into producing it and then justified the fraud as necessary to convict a felon.

  Again playing the devil’s advocate, Fellows claimed Catherine had come to regard Harry Miller as a rogue cop and a danger to society. “She therefore forged the letter and sent it to Tammany Hall in order to ensure his conviction, leaving the judge ignorant of her deed.”

  Pamela objected. “With due respect to the devil, sir, I’d say that is groundless speculation. Documents from Smith’s office show that he had proposed the scheme to Fawcett who devised the fraudulent letter and afterward gave a copy to Smith. We have Smith’s comments in the margins.”

  At the end of an hour, Mr. Fellows said he had heard enough. For a few moments, he sat quietly, eyes cast down. Then, he drew a deep breath and announced, “I believe we can persuade the grand jury to reopen the Palermo case as well as examine Mr. Miller’s extortion conviction, Michael Sullivan’s death, and the other related charges. We shall argue the case from your evidence. The grand jury may or may not reach your conclusions—it is extra cautious when wrongdoing touches the judiciary’s competence and integrity.”

  Sending the case to the grand jury encouraged Pamela. Still, she shared Fellows’s concern. Courts were protective of their reputation and seldom admitted or corrected serious mistakes. Even less did they acknowledge their own criminal behavior. So, she held her hopes in check.

  As the meeting was coming to a close, Fellows turned to Larry. “Detective White, why haven’t you charged the police, in particular Inspector Williams, with willful negligence in investigating the cabdriver’s death and willful complicity in Judge Fawcett’s forgery?”

  Pamela held her breath. Implicating Williams would trigger a dangerous reaction. Thus far, he had allowed Larry to proceed in the case without interfering. If Williams were to feel that his honor or his pension was threatened, he could insert himself into the grand jury’s deliberations and undermine the credibility of Catherine Fawcett, Howard Chapman, and the other witnesses.

  Larry appeared to recognize the danger. “Williams,” he replied, “might have been negligent or hasty in these cases, but it would be hard to prove that his faults rose to the level of a felony.”

  Fellows agreed, and Pamela was relieved, though she felt that Williams deserved severe punishment for his part in blackening Harry’s reputation.

  Three weeks later, the case went to the grand jury. To Pamela’s surprise, the jury quickly found probable cause for trial on all charges and indicted Smith, Judge Fawcett, Kelly, McBride, and Cook—the press had already dubbed them the “Tammany Five.”

  At the beginning of March, Pamela and Prescott observed the trial before the state’s highest criminal court. Pamela was disconcerted that Kelly first pleaded not guilty, despite the weight of evidence against him. District Attorney Fellows then reminded him of the strong possibility of dying in the electric chair. Sobered, Kelly changed his plea to guilty and testified against Smith and Fawcett.

  When Fellows questioned Big Tim, he claimed to have paid Kelly merely to frighten Palermo. In the heat of his quarrel with the cabdriver, Kelly had gone beyond the instructions.

  Kelly grew angry. “Bastard, are you trying to shift all the blame onto me? You organized the killing of Palermo and told me to do it. You recovered $5,000 from Palermo’s pocket and gave me a measly two hundred. When I protested, you told me to shut up or you’d have me fried in the electric chair.”

  Fellows also contradicted Judge Fawcett’s attempt to blame Catherine for Harry Miller’s extortion letter to Big Tim Smith. The court agreed that the judge committed the fraud as part of a conspiracy to cover up Palermo’s murder.

  As the trial was drawing to a close, Pamela asked Prescott, “Why has no one from Tammany Hall come forward to defend the five suspects?”

  He replied, “Tammany’s leaders have blamed their November electoral defeat in part on Smith’s brutal method of getting out the vote and other crimes. They have therefore abandoned him and his companions and made our task easier.”

  Epilogue

  New York, Sunday, Apri1 14, 1895

  On a mild, bright Easter morning, Pamela and Prescott went with the Sullivan family by coach to St. Stephen’s Church for the eleven o’clock solemn High Mass. The congregation arrived in festive finery: the men in silk top hats, faun or gray frock coats, and matching fine wool suits; the women in colorful silk gowns and elaborate hats.

  The robust music of a large choir and orchestra, the clergy’s dazzling golden vestments, large banks of odoriferous Easter lilies, and pungent clouds from burning incense combined in a majestic celebration of Christ’s resurrection. The spectacle mesmerized Theresa’s son, James. The lilies and the incense released a flood of tears from Pamela’s eyes.

  Members of the Sullivan party had brought along their own reasons for celebration. Mrs. Sullivan seemed to be rejuvenating late in life. Her demented husband was securely committed in a nursing home and her daughters had restored order to the family’s finances. Larry White, his wife, Trish, and their daughters reveled in his official commendation and ra
ise in pay for work well done in the Tammany Five case. Finally, liberated from her deceased brother’s tyranny, Theresa was free to marry the man she loved, Harry.

  After the Mass, Mrs. Donavan served a splendid dinner at Mrs. Sullivan’s new, modest apartment off Fourteenth Street to celebrate Harry’s exoneration. During the meal he rose to thank Prescott and Pamela for their efforts on his behalf and announced his engagement to Theresa. She added sprightly, “We shall have a simple wedding at City Hall.”

  Theresa’s remark didn’t surprise Pamela. Harry was divorced and not a Catholic. The priest at St. Stephen’s had told Theresa that he wouldn’t marry them. Earlier, he had supported Michael Sullivan and Judge Fawcett’s attempt to separate her from Harry. Now she was skeptical of clergy of any sort and preferred a civil ceremony.

  After dinner, Pamela stood by an open window, gazing at a sky full of sunlight and breathing mild, warm air. “Would you like to walk in Central Park?” she asked Prescott.

  “An excellent idea!” he replied. “We could catch up on news while enjoying the spring weather.” He had been away to Washington, D.C., for the thirtieth anniversary of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, April 9, at Appomattox, Virginia. It ended the Civil War but left the country with much unfinished business. Prescott seized the opportunity to seek pensions for poor, aging, former comrades-in-arms.

  As he and Pamela rode in a cab up Fifth Avenue, he remarked, “When I returned yesterday to my office, a letter from Edward was waiting for me. His studies demand a lot of time but he enjoys them. He’s also practicing for the college baseball team and looking forward to playing Amherst in May.”