by Brad Ricca
Grace sat down across from King. He was tall (over six feet) and dirty, but his clean-shaven face was self-assured. Grace nodded to Larkin. She wanted him to ask the questions so that there would be no question of impropriety. She had ridden with King in the car all the way from Buffalo just to get a read on him. King seemed surprised that she actually had some power here.
“Do you know what the statement you are making is?” Larkin asked.
“Yes,” King replied.
“Do you know what it might mean?”
“I do not know whether it will be the electric chair or life sentence.”
Larkin paused. “Knowing that this might mean the electric chair for you, will you still make this statement?”
“Yes, sir. I have got to a stage where I do not care.”
“Would you just as soon make this attempt if you knew that it meant the electric chair?”
“Yes; I feel that I ought to.”
“Is it the truth?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Has any one threatened you if you did not?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you had anything to drink to-day?”
“Not a drop.”
“Are you ready to make a statement in regard to the Phelps murder at West Shelby?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now go ahead and tell us what you know of this murder.”
“I got up to Medina on a Sunday around toward 4 o’clock, and went into Kelly’s Hotel and got to drinking,” King said. “I was drinking beer and something else in this hotel, on the back sitting room, as the bar was closed. No one was there but the bartender. I was there two hours, or perhaps longer. I do not know just what time it was when I left, but it was dark and the lights were on. I met O’Connell on the corner of Main and Centre Streets and he said that he wanted me to take a ride with him, and I said all right.”
“Where was his rig?” asked Larkin.
“It was over in Rundell’s alley,” King replied. “He had a light spring buggy. I got in with him and we started up Centre Street, going toward Shelby Basin. We just got out of town and he presented a quart of whiskey and we drank quite a little. When we got near to Shelby, he said ‘I want to do a job and want you to help me, I know where this is a lot of money. I will get the money and split with you.’ And I was fool enough to go with him. I said to O’Connell: ‘Do you think that we can get this without much trouble?’”
King continued. “When we got pretty near to Shelby, he stopped in a hollow of the road and hitched the horse, but he drove on the grass for quite a ways before he stopped and hitched the horse. When I went to get out of the rig I almost fell out because I was so drunk. When we started up toward the house I said ‘Why this is Old Man Phelps!’”
King said that he could see from the window the old man sitting in the middle room. He could not see anyone else. So he circled back around to the kitchen door and went in from the back way. From inside the door, he picked up an old broom. He pulled it outside and hacked off the end with an old axe that stood there. King and O’Connell then went up to the back door and rapped on it with their fists. Their breath hung in the icy night air.
“Yes?” They heard the old man get up, his footsteps making their way to the door.
Phelps opened the door, and the men walked right in.
“You both get out of here!” Phelps yelled.
O’Connell hit Phelps with the stick. But Phelps had a hold of the doorknob, and he reeled around and fell toward the stove. He collapsed in a heap on the ground.
O’Connell started to look for the money when a woman in her nightdress fled by, leaving through the door they came in. The door swung shut, but not tightly. O’Connell shot once through the door.
“Did you hear her holler?” asked Larkin.
“I thought I heard a noise, but I did not look.”
“What did O’Connell do next?”
“He turned around and shot Phelps three times, I think,” said King. “All the shots hit him.”
“Did he groan?” asked Larkin. They needed to prove Phelps was still alive when O’Connell shot him.
“Yes,” replied King. “He made a little noise and moved his leg a little. I do not know what O’Connell did with the gun, but he went into the next room and came out with the money. I do not remember of seeing any purse, but he came out in the kitchen with the money. I thought that I heard a noise outside, so I said: ‘Let us get out of here.’ He handed me $100 and I put it in my pants pocket. It was all in bills and he had quite a wad in his hand, it was all paper money, and I did not see any silver. When we came out I said to him: ‘You go your way and I will go mine.’ He took his rig and drove away. I went up the road quite a way, pretty near to Reynold’s hotel: then I cut across to another road and went to Alabama Centre and then to Alabama Station.”
He continued. “Just as I got in front of the Dry House I met a farmer driving, and I asked him where he was going. He said he was going to Akron, and I asked him if I could get there quicker by riding with him than waiting for a train, and he said yes. I do not know who he was. He had one horse and a buggy.”
“Where did you go?” asked Larkin.
“I rode from the east side of the railroad back to Akron, to the American Hotel. The farmer tied his horse under a shed there, and I asked him if he would not go and have a cigar; but he said no, he was in a hurry to get back home, and he went up the street. I went into the hotel.”
“How long did you stay in Akron?”
“I stayed there all day, drinking a little.”
“Where did you stay?”
“I stayed in Parker’s livery stable,” King said.
Grace pulled up to King, and she read him the letter from Ethel Stielow claiming her father was innocent. The one with the drawn signature of “fifty kisses.” When Grace was finished, she stared at King. He was weeping softly.
“I’m the one that killed Phelps and Mrs. Wolcott—not Charles Stielow,” King said. He then—at Grace’s insistence—repeated it to the sheriff and then to the judge.
“King,” she said, “just raise your right hand.”
They had a full confession. They were all celebrating inside because nowhere in that story—nowhere—was Charlie Stielow’s name. Once everyone was notified, the feeling was equal parts exhaustion and elation. Even King himself seemed relieved. When asked why he had confessed, King said he wanted “to do a manly thing.” He was then taken back to the jail. After King’s confession was finalized in shorthand after midnight, the authorities mobilized. District Attorney Knickerbocker sent his car over to convey King to the jail at Albion.
The next day, Grace found out that King had retracted his entire confession.
“This is a malicious, absurd, evil lie!” Grace shouted. “King couldn’t make a declaration of that kind of his own free will!” She was fuming in her own way. “It’s amusing, really,” she said, “to think that those who are so determined to get Stielow into the chair must stoop to charges of this sort.” Grace immediately got on the phone with Knickerbocker. Grace asked to see a copy of the retraction.
“I wasn’t in the room when King made his statement,” Knickerbocker replied. “I haven’t seen a copy myself.” Grace was stunned. How could the district attorney not know if there was a copy? Was King being held as a legal prisoner? She asked if there had been a warrant sworn out against King on the murder charge. On the other end of the line, Knickerbocker hesitated.
“Wait a moment,” he said. Two minutes passed before a strange voice came on the line.
“Hello?”
“Why, I was talking to Mr. Knickerbocker,” Grace said.
“He has gone out,” the voice said. The line clicked dead.
That afternoon, Erwin King, who had done a good job of disappearing after the murders, took to the newspapers to make his case as visible as he could.
“That Little Valley story was a lie,” said King. “I wish I had never seen that gang at Little V
alley. I would be all right now. This lady, Mrs. Humiston, I did not know who she was; never saw her before.
“I was not introduced to the lady,” King said, almost proud of himself. “We got out of the city and they talked about this trial of Stielow. They wanted to know what I thought of it. I told them they had the guilty man, and she told me she thought she was going to get some information from me. I told her I did not see how.”
King then said that Grace had offered him a bribe. “If you will confess that you did this crime you will never be locked up long, I have it fixed with the governor,” is what King said Grace allegedly told him. “It will be down in black and white. There is $4600 in Albion and I will see that you get $3000 of it.”
King admitted that sounded good. So he said he lied and told Grace that he and O’Connell did the deed. But now he felt that was wrong.
“I told her we done it and I told her the wrong story,” he said.
“You now say this is entirely untrue,” asked the reporter.
“Yes, sir,” said King.
As Grace made a direct appeal to Governor Whitman, the case—and her defense team—was all a scramble. Kohn and the others were convinced that King’s turnaround was purely political. Kohn and Sophie began working again on an appeal for Charlie. Inez had left for a speaking tour but was checking in regularly over the telephone.
Grace knew that the only way to fix this was to talk to King again, who was still in jail. She knew she could reverse his course, but her every request was denied. Grace had no court order so the sheriff couldn’t let her speak to him. But a thought occurred to Sheriff Bartlett. He went over to King’s cell and asked him if he wanted to see anyone.
“I wouldn’t deny myself to anyone,” King said.
Bartlett brought in the visitor. She was dressed entirely in black.
“I’ve expected you these three weeks,” King said, unsurprised. Grace had to admit that King looked better and didn’t smell of booze. They held the interview in Sheriff Bartlett’s bedroom because the lawyers feared his cell might be wired with a Dictograph machine.
This time, Grace had no time, nor tolerance, for pleasantries. She sat down right in front of King and asked the questions herself.
“King, do you still say I gave you money to make the confession? You’re an honest man, King. You can’t look me in the eye and say I gave you money.”
“I can, too,” King said, looking away from her. “I’d never be here today if I hadn’t met you and been offered money to confess.”
“King, that’s a lie,” said Grace. “You know I never offered you money. Before this case is settled you’ll admit it. Look me in the eyes and tell me you were given money by me.”
King refused both requests.
A month later, Charles Stielow was denied a new trial and was given an unprecedented seventh version of his original death sentence, to be carried out on December 11, 1916. They were running out of hope. Meanwhile, Inez was still in California on a speaking tour. She was riling up a packed suffrage rally in Los Angeles when she keeled over from exhaustion. Consigned to the same rest that doctors had prescribed to Sophie Loeb, Inez called her old friend from her bed to check on the case. When Sophie told her that Stielow was still on the Last Mile and that the governor was debating a commutation, Inez was furious. She talked to her father and made him promise to stay in contact with the Stielow team and render them any assistance they needed. “You will see to it, won’t you,” she finally asked Sophie, “that every effort is made to cheat the electric chair of this innocent man?” Sophie agreed, catching something different in her voice. Inez died on November 25, 1916.
Sophie Loeb wrote a eulogy in the Evening World titled “The Example of Inez Milholland.” Loeb wrote of her “dear, dear friend” by telling readers that you could always find her not in the usual spots for women, but in asylums, Sing Sing, and political marches. “How easy it might have been for so lovely a creature as she to sit idly by,” Sophie wrote. “But no. She could not enjoy the world while it suffered … she went forth to fight and used every asset to gain something for others, even unto the very end.” Inez, according to Sophie, was
An example for the idle rich girl who is poor indeed, whose time hangs heavy because it is full of nothingness. An example for the pretty girl who believes that all life means is to smile and dress. An example of the woman of brains who hides them under her marcel wave because she has become a parasite. An example for the woman who thinks that she can gain love when she acquires a man’s bank account. An example for all womanhood.
Four days after Inez’s death, Governor Whitman agreed to chair a public hearing on the Stielow case. Grace argued vigorously that law enforcement had completely mishandled the case from the start, resulting in a fabricated confession from Stielow. She again referred to her own confession from King, which was made in the presence of several witnesses. Grace also pointed out a clue that she had noticed all the way back when she first met Charlie Stielow. Whitman listened.
A few days later, the governor came out to address reporters. He had made his decision.
“I realize that a governor,” Whitman said, “who interferes with a judgment of the courts of this state, without good and sufficient cause, is himself committing a lawless act.” He continued, even as hearts sank all around him. “I believe that Stielow is guilty,” Whitman said. “And I believe that King’s confession is a lie.” In their heads, the reporters were already making plans for the dreaded final trip to Sing Sing. Whitman said that even though he believed all of those things, the principal facts were not about his opinion. Whitman said he knew, after all his trial experience, that “no jury in this country would have convicted Stielow of murder in the first degree with the King confession before it.” The reporters almost stopped writing. “I commute the sentence of the court to imprisonment for life,” said Governor Whitman.
Soon after, Whitman conducted his own secret interview with King. When King swore up and down that he was innocent, the governor slapped down on his desk a pack of letters that King had sent from jail. They had never reached their destinations. These messy letters had been written to all manner of friends and accomplices. A November 15, 1916, letter from King to Joe Kinnie read:
Friend Joe Kinnie I hear that you Been squealing on me. Know you know that if you tell on me it would Bee the way that they would send me to the Chare. You know what I said to you at parkers Livery. Know one knows But you and you Can save me from the Chare.
As a result of his conversation with King, Whitman appointed George H. Bond to conduct a special investigation into the original murders. King eventually confessed (again) that he and O’Connell were the murderers. Newton, too, was found to have promised Stielow a special role in law enforcement if he signed his confession. The most persuasive piece of evidence though was a report that concluded that although Charlie had a working command of about 150 words, his signed confession used 369. Grace had known this all along. When she first met Charlie, she listened to his words carefully and realized how few of them there were. Stielow and Green received full pardons from Governor Whitman on May 8, 1918.
The Stielow case was so popular in the press that Hollywood filmmaker Lois Weber tackled the story in her 1916 movie The Celebrated Stielow Case, which she rushed to finish in order to sway public opinion on the case. In the film, an uneducated farmhand faces execution for a murder many believed he did not commit. After finishing the film, Weber submitted it to the National Board of Censorship. They asked that all references to Stielow be eliminated in favor of the more generic “John Doe.” Weber agreed, and the film appeared in theaters less than a week after Stielow’s death sentence was commuted. The film was considered the most influential work on the death penalty of its time in terms of its ability to start conversation and generate opinion and argument.
Grace had gone back to New York City after Charlie’s sentence was first commuted to life. She agreed to consult on the governor’s report, but she was n
ot worried about the outcome. She had more pressing concerns in the city.
A girl had gone missing.
9
The Manhunter of Harlem
June 1917
Grace Humiston stood in the street on an early summer morning and looked up at the Metropolitan Motorcycles shop. Grace didn’t know if Ruth Cruger was alive or dead, but she had a feeling that this place held the key to answering that question. She just didn’t know how. Grace was still wearing black, even in the summer. Certain lines had come to her face these days, but that’s not what she was thinking about. Her eyes were dancing around a new kind of mystery. She remembered the words she had said upon taking the case. That long-delayed rest and vacation would have to be postponed yet again.
Grace craned her neck and took in the tall glass windows that ran almost ten feet high across the front of the store. They were framed in dark wood. The white lettering read MOTOR CYCLES STORING on the left and AUTO SUPPLIES on the right. There were tin signs for Mobil Oil that hung still in the early heat. A single globe lamp hung off a pole in front of the entrance. A huge billboard for graham crackers—as big and long as the shop itself—rose off the roof and into the bluish sky. On the sign, a boy was crunching happily away, frozen in time.
Cocchi’s shop was only a story tall. The building to the right was double that. People there had already begun peeking out of windows to see what new commotion the Italian’s shop had brought to Harlem. A man in white pajamas with his hair combed over and a mustache watched from under his own heavy window, hunkered down on his elbows. His wife joined him, a mug of something in her hand. They half watched and half chattered. The inside of Cocchi’s shop was dim behind the smoked glass.