by Brad Ricca
Missing from the hearings was Grace Humiston, who would not make her evidence public. “That evidence has,” she said, “in part, been turned over to Commissioner Woods by me. I shall give the remainder to the authorities as soon as I consider it wise to do so.” But just as Grace seemed to be willing to retreat into the background, another detective stepped forward to trash the police work on the Cruger case. William J. Burns was still the most popular detective in America. His detective agencies bore his name with a shield and eagle, and he boasted offices in “the principal cities of the world.” He was also a successful author of several dime-store versions of his most famous cases. He was still being referred to as the American Sherlock Holmes.
Burns blustered accusations against the district attorney, claiming negligence and inefficiency equal only to the police department itself. Burns declared that District Attorney Swann’s staff refused to listen to his own (correct, he said) theory of the murder, which sounded, to the reporters, much like the theory put forward months earlier by Grace Humiston. Burns claimed that the DA’s office told him months ago to back off, presumably to stall his correct conclusion. When reached for comment, Swann shook his head. “I had nothing to do with having him removed,” Swann said. “These statements are false. It is not true that I was urged to dig up the cellar by Burns.”
“I was retained by the Cruger family when the girl vanished,” Burns revealed. “We traced Cocchi to West New York and had evidence which we believed connected him indubitably with the disappearance of Miss Cruger. One thing we firmly established was that Ruth Cruger never left Cocchi’s shop. We even asked for a permit to search it, which was denied. He told us to lay off. Soon afterward we were put off the case.”
Burns detective James Downing said they had found a neighbor, a Miss Goldberg, who went to hire a motorcycle from Cocchi. She went to a small back office to sign a receipt. Once there, Cocchi became greatly excited. His eyes gleamed, and he grasped her around the waist. She screamed and struggled, but he held her fast. With a quick upward movement of her hand, she struck him under the chin and then twisted his nose and face. She then got away. When reporters finally asked Henry Cruger about Burns’s role in the case, Henry said that he fired him within a week because he failed to do anything other than cash his checks.
As the testimony was winding down for the day, more whispering could be heard among the crowd, causing Wallstein to look toward the back row disapprovingly. Information was spotty, but it seemed that a series of cables from the United Press station in Rome said that Alfredo Cocchi had finally been arrested in Bologna and was being held on the charge of murder. Earlier that month, Maria Cocchi had written a letter to her brother in Italy, asking that he deliver it to her husband.
“Tell Al,” she wrote, “that when he went away I was penniless. I struggled along the best I knew how until I sold the shop. Then I was beginning to be happy. Then they found the girl’s body and since then I have been a prisoner and my babies have been taken from me.
“Get from Al all he knows about the murder,” his wife wrote. “Tell him to send me everything, particularly the names of anyone who was in it with him. Ask him who aided him in escaping, who gave him the money to go back to Italy, and for the new clothes he wore. Please tell him to give me everything he knows so as to clear his conscience and also the names of his babies and their mother. If Al does this they will let me return to my babies.”
After Maria wrote the letter, Judge Wadhams in the Court of General Sessions issued an order transferring her from the Harlem prison she was in to an institution where her one-year-old baby girl, Georgette, had been cared for since Maria’s arrest. The baby was ill, and Mrs. Cocchi, who was very worried over the child’s condition, was approaching a state of nervous collapse.
Back in the hearing, the rumor was confirmed. The Italians had arrested Cocchi.
* * *
At the end of the long stone corridor, cell 68 felt very far away from the rest of the world, and not just because it was in Bologna. Monks had lived here once, in this tower of darkness, but coming down the hall now were Italian detectives. When they reached the cell, they looked through the bars. The prisoner was huddled in the corner, seemingly asleep. He was still, just like the bars set in the powdery stone. When the guard let them in, the prisoner’s legs suddenly began to scramble. He struggled and kicked as the men pushed him up against the rough, cold wall. There was shouting and moving as the men pushed their faces in front of him, spitting fast questions. Fists and arms moved in the darkness. When they were done, they let him sink to the floor. The men would return many times that very same night, often only minutes apart, to repeat their interrogations.
At daybreak, Alfredo Cocchi, Prisoner 15,372, weakly asked for a physician. His eyes were red, and he was shaking. The physician examined him and said he was fine. A guard gave Cocchi some bread. He ate it quickly.
When Cocchi first arrived at the prison of San Giovanni at Monte, they scratched his name in ink across one of the pages of its thick books. They first put him in cell number 5, up in the tower itself. Cocchi had a cellmate there who asked questions during the hot days and nights. But Cocchi wouldn’t speak. After the other prisoner disappeared, Cocchi was moved to a solitary cell somewhere belowground. A church stood at the foot of the tower. Inside the church was a colorful painting of Saint Cecilia, her head looking up as she listened to invisible music. Somewhere on the altar was a relic, a white knucklebone belonging to Cecilia herself, who, once married, asked her husband to respect her holy virginity. When Cecilia was later martyred, she survived for three days after being struck three times in the neck by a sword.
In his dungeon cell, Cocchi knew he was beneath all of these things. One day, hours after the detectives left, someone else made their way to talk to Cocchi. His steps were slower and heavier. Judge Zucconi, the assigned magistrate for Cocchi’s case, nodded at the guard to open the cell so that he and his law clerk could enter.
The judge was determined that this trial go according to the Italian way. Cocchi, sitting down in the corner, tried to compose himself as a gentleman. He ran his hand over his dry hair and straightened up. Cocchi’s eyes looked as if they had been hollowed out. The judge asked Cocchi about his life in America.
“My machine shop gave me a satisfactory position,” Cocchi said, slowly. “I earned sometimes $100 a week.” Cocchi spoke very matter-of-factly. The clerk transcribed his words.
The judge then asked what happened on the day in question in New York. Cocchi said that his wife and he had quarreled, but that was it. “I had never seen Ruth Cruger before she came to my shop to have her skates sharpened,” he said.
On the second day the judge came in, Cocchi looked even more pitiful. Cocchi reiterated that all he did was sharpen this poor girl’s skates. He mumbled something about some Italians in the store when she was there, but, when pressed, he didn’t repeat it. Cocchi was always looking elsewhere. No one had gotten a really good look at him yet.
“I had never seen Ruth Cruger before she came to my shop to have her skates sharpened,” Cocchi said again during Zucconi’s next visit, or maybe even the one after that. Cocchi looked away at the wall or at something else. He was shaking again. The dungeon cell was cold.
Judge Zucconi started to push from his chair to leave. Maybe another day passed. Interrogations, long ones, took time. There was no clock in the room. Zucconi kept visiting Cocchi but never got any further. “From the very beginning Ruth did all in her power to attract my attention,” Cocchi finally said. “I felt something strange when her dark penetrating eyes were fixed on mine.”
The judge sat still. Cocchi had said “Ruth.”
“I was still more disconcerted when she came again February 13th to get her skates,” said Cocchi, now trembling even more. “An overpowering attraction for the young woman seized me. What happened afterwards seems like a dream.” Cocchi looked at the wall. “My memory at this point fails me utterly.” He kept speaking, but the sh
aking cut off his words. Almost like it was laughter.
“It must be true I attacked and killed her,” Cocchi said. He looked at the judge, almost as if he wanted confirmation. “But God help me I didn’t mean to.” Cocchi said she must have fallen and hit “some vital spot.” Cocchi said it must have been an accident.
Cocchi started to tremble and shake even more, to the point that sweat began pouring from his brow. The guard was summoned, and they at first thought Cocchi was having an epileptic fit. No one in the prison had ever seen anything like it. They called for the doctor.
On June 25, 1917, the same day in New York City, Helen Cruger, Ruth’s sister, arrived in Wallstein’s interrogation room. She wore a black-and-white checked suit, a brown straw toque hat trimmed with brown leaves and flowers, and low-cut black shoes. People stood up when she walked in. Wallstein asked that she not be photographed, in accordance with her wishes. The press photographers, who had been scrambling for any new photo to print, put down their hollow cameras and watched her with their eyes.
Helen sat down and told Wallstein that she had tried to meet with Chief Inspector Faurot three days after Ruth disappeared. When Wallstein asked why, Helen said that she had information to share about her sister’s disappearance. Helen had strongly suspected Cocchi after their brief but strange encounter at his store. But she couldn’t get in to see Faurot. She even had a letter of introduction that her father had helped secure. Wallstein looked at the letter—which was perfectly customary—dated February 16, 1917, and addressed to Faurot. Since Helen was told that Faurot was out, she talked to Lieutenant William Funston instead.
“I told the whole story from the beginning,” said Helen, who spoke in a low-pitched, agreeable voice. The people in chairs could see the resemblance to her sister. “I tried to point out that this was not one of the ninety-nine cases that the police said girls always were found in,” she said, holding on to her tone. “I told him that was the line they were working on and I argued the point with him,” Helen said. “I told him all the reasons why they should not regard this as one of the ninety-nine cases.” Helen told the lieutenant that Cocchi had ready answers to her questions and that they sounded almost rehearsed. She also said that all the policemen she had talked to—and she paused because this was important—had called him “Al.”
People looked at each other and understood. Wallstein’s inquiry wasn’t just meant to understand how the police had failed. His questioning was meant to determine, just as an early rumor had suggested, if the police had possibly been involved in the very crime itself.
14
The Man Who Laughs
The Italian doctor took Cocchi out of the cell and gave him a glass of clean water. When Cocchi returned, he was much calmed. As Cocchi’s words stopped and started in his mouth, he still shook slightly. He continued with his story.
“When I returned home I was like a person in a trance. I remember speaking of this peculiar mental condition as though I was ill.” Cocchi paused. “I had been constantly quarrelling with my wife. This day, the 13th, when I ate my mid-day meal at home, I drank five glasses of California wine to make me forget my trouble.” He paused to drink more water.
“In a nervous condition I went to my shop about 1:20 o’clock, when there immediately entered the girl who before noon had left her skates for sharpening. She was very beautiful and I lost my head. When she went to the rear of the shop to get her skates without seeing me, I barred the street door with a block of wood. Then I started to embrace the girl, but she was very strong and threw me backward. I tried again and succeeded, despite her resistance.
“I picked her up and dropped her into the repair room,” said Cocchi, matter-of-factly. He stopped for a moment. “She fell about twelve feet below, striking a motor cycle sidecar on her side, but she was not hurt. All the while she was screaming ‘Police! Police!’” He stopped again. “When I joined her in the lower room, my head was gone. I tried again to embrace and kiss her, but again did not succeed; she was so strong. I said ‘Please don’t say anything, I have two children,’ but she would not listen.” He seemed to be seeing it play out before him. Cocchi looked away again. He said the next part slowly, while still shaking. “Finally, exasperated by her resistance, I grabbed in my left hand a stick of heavy wood a yard long and struck her twice or thrice across the back of the neck, holding her with my right hand. She groaned and sank down.
“I swear before God and man that I did no carnal violence to the girl,” Cocchi said earnestly. “If she had pardoned my first offensive act and listened to my prayers to tell nobody I would have let her go without touching a hair of her head. This is my first offense, but it is of such a nature that I cannot believe it to be true. The greatest punishment is to think what suffering and agony my wife and children are undergoing, as notwithstanding our misunderstandings, we love each other most tenderly.”
Judge Zucconi listened as his clerk wrote furiously. The story had obviously changed, but his ears had missed something. The judge pressed Cocchi for specific details about Ruth’s death. After admitting hitting her with a block of wood, Cocchi had ended his story there. Cocchi collected himself, then continued.
“After I had seized her and tried to throw her down I got scared,” Cocchi said. “I remembered my wife.”
The judge pressed him, but that is all Alfredo Cocchi would say.
The judge ordered the clerk to show Cocchi his confession. The clerk scrambled to complete it, then handed it over. It was dated June 25, 1917. Cocchi signed it.
When they were done, Cocchi seemed relieved. “I feel myself acquitted morally, but I am ready to undergo the legal penalty of my country,” he said. Cocchi had two requests. He wanted to see his father so that he might relate a message to his wife in America. He also wanted to see the newspapers of the day. The judge refused both. Once he and his clerk left, Cocchi stood up and walked to the far end of his cell. Readying himself, Cocchi took a breath. He ran as fast as he possibly could and launched himself, headfirst, into the opposing stone wall.
* * *
In America, news of Cocchi’s confession was met with towering black headlines. People wanted him deported directly to the chair at Sing Sing with no stops between. As soon as Cocchi’s confession was made public, Maria Cocchi announced that she had more to say. This time, she was questioned by the assistant DA, John T. Dooling. She had not been arrested following the discovery of Ruth’s body, but she had been detained. She was not sure what the difference was. Her eyes were dark and heavy from not sleeping. Her husband, for he was still that word to her, had been found halfway around the world. The first time she tried to testify, she was too agitated. She fainted and had to rest. Maria was still being held with her one-year-old daughter and it was taking its toll. She was going to “tell everything.”
For four hours, Maria talked in a loud, rapid pitch. She was in a greatly excited state. She told of her husband’s many love affairs, both perceived and real, and his flirtations with the girls on the street. When Dooling pushed her on her husband’s whereabouts on the day Ruth Cruger disappeared, Maria remembered that Edward Fish had begged her to let him stay in the bicycle shop alone after Alfredo had fled to Italy. Maria told him no. Maria also told Dooling that within forty-eight hours after her husband’s disappearance someone had forcibly entered the motorcycle shop at night. She thought it was Henry’s Cruger’s private detectives, but now she wasn’t so sure.
In Italy, Cocchi was recovering from his head injury in his cell. His jailers took away any towels, suspenders, bedsheets, and utensils left in the room. They threatened him with a straitjacket. His guard detail was increased. There were also rumors that certain factions of Cocchi’s family were going to try to help him escape. There had been only one escape in the fifty-year history of the prison. Just three years ago, a lone prisoner succeeded in twisting free the iron bars in his window. The prisoner got to the roof and leaped to the nearby church tower, where he concealed himself in the confine until he
could slip away into the Italian night.
Because of Cocchi’s suicide attempt, the judge had ordered Professor Augusto Murri, Italy’s famous nerve specialist, to gauge the prisoner’s fragile mental state. Murri subjected Cocchi to an extensive examination. “The prisoner is now physically in a bad condition and mentally weak,” Murri concluded. But his conclusions were clear: “Although he has spoken of suicide, he hasn’t the courage to commit it,” said Murri.
As Cocchi lay in his cell, dazed and slowed, taking turns mumbling to himself and singing out loud, his friends and family in Italy started a fund to halt his extradition. Cocchi had earlier confessed to a friend that he was terrified of the American electric chair and all the souls it had sucked dry. Some wondered if his fear of the chair might have been the cause of his detailed confession in the first place. If found guilty in Italy, he would face a long imprisonment, but he would remain alive.
In the wake of Cocchi’s confession, the Bologna police began a thorough investigation of his mysterious life. When Cocchi left Italy ten years before, he was in love with Maria Magrini, a servant to the Cocchi family in Bologna. Alfredo promised Maria that he would marry her if she followed him to America. Cocchi left, and she eventually did follow, with a female friend in tow. Alfredo and Maria were married soon after, on October 3, 1907. Days later, Maria Cocchi accused her new husband of cheating on her. Cocchi wrote a long letter to his family confessing to numerous vague misdeeds, but he promised to mend his ways. “She’s so jealous,” he wrote of his new bride.
There was also some uncertainty as to how Cocchi had even made it back across the Atlantic. Cocchi said that he sailed on the French ship Manchester, under the name Louis Lerdi. No one asked for his passport. Other evidence put him on the Giuseppe Verdi from Jersey City using someone else’s passport, though the picture was of Cocchi, taken at a New York photographer’s office a week after Ruth disappeared. Cocchi supposedly made efforts to escape from the ship at several ports but finally succeeded at Naples. All of these different stories claimed to be true.