Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

by Brad Ricca

  “Your testimony gives me the impression you are honest,” Wallstein said. That night, he sent Woods a similar request to bring McGee up on charges, but in a more forgiving tone. Wallstein was feeling pressure and wasn’t any closer to the truth. He began extending the hours of his hearings and started to call more and more witnesses. He called Reverend Pattison, who testified that he had baptized Ruth last Easter and that she was a wonderful girl.

  Reverend Pattison revealed that when Ruth first went missing, Henry Cruger asked him to accompany the police as his proxy on a mission to chase down a clue. The police were going to visit a midwife’s house somewhere in the Fifties after a tip said that Ruth was there. Reverend Pattison rode there with two detectives. As they approached the house, the slimmer of the pair winked to the reverend that the entire building was given over “to treating girls.” “It was too bad to see a girl like Ruth Cruger in a place like this,” said the other detective. When they found the girl, in the back of the building, the detectives said she was very good-looking. But she wasn’t Ruth Cruger. The reverend told Wallstein that if he wanted “any proof of the good character of Ruth Cruger he could have it from the lips of 600 people, the congregation of the Washington Heights Baptist Church.”

  Captain Cooper, the former head of Fourth Branch, was called up again. He seemed to have taken the hint from Lagarenne when Wallstein asked him about the day Ruth was reported missing.

  “I can’t recall,” he answered. “I don’t remember.”

  Cooper told Wallstein that he sent two motorcycle men that night to Cocchi’s. The cops said they knew Cocchi, so they offered to go fetch him. When he heard this, Wallstein exploded, as much as he could.

  “Captain Cooper,” Wallstein demanded, “I want answers. It is inconceivable that a man of your experience and age should remember so little of a very important part of this investigation. I don’t think you want to help me.” Cooper left, his mouth still shut.

  When Edward Fish finally walked in to testify, the crowds made it difficult to see. His name had been part of this investigation from very early on, but no one had been able to find him until now. Mrs. Cocchi had accused Fish, a former cop and friend of her husband’s, of breaking into her house while she was in prison. Fish guffawed and told Wallstein that he had been in Bloomington, Illinois, the whole time. He was short of cash and had to write home for railroad fare to come home to New York. That’s why he had been so long in appearing. Once that was out of the way, Fish denied ever seeing Ruth Cruger and denied being a go-between between Cocchi and the cops in the alleged ticket scam. Fish was accompanied by his lawyer.

  But, yes, Fish admitted. He was a friend of Cocchi’s.

  Swann, meanwhile, had been in touch with the State Department about a possible extradition. The people in Washington recited a very sobering statistic handed down from Frank Polk, the same man who had been shot in the cheek all those years ago in the attempt on Mayor Mitchel’s life. He still had the scar. Polk related to Swann that “of twelve Italians tried in Italy for crimes committed in the Unites States, during the past four years, not one has been convicted.”

  While Swann’s office still held out hope that they would be able to put a living, breathing Alfredo Cocchi on trial on American soil, Commissioner Woods quietly tried to work his own angle. Judge Zucconi had turned down any official police envoy, so Woods sent a man named Joseph Grigg to report on Cocchi and any other evidence the Italian police were finding. But Grigg was not a cop; he was a reporter for the Sun. Woods deputized him in secret and gave him his orders. Having done work in London, Italy, and France, Grigg was perfect for the job, and Woods hoped that Grigg could keep an eye on the case for him.

  Once Grigg arrived in Italy, he was threatened almost immediately. He was soon named in papers as Woods’s personal detective. Within days, Grigg received Black Hand letters that told him he would share the fate of Petrosino if he didn’t abandon the case forever. Woods considered pulling him back but did not.

  By early July, Wallstein was thinking about calling Inspector Faurot, Captain Costigan, and even Deputy Commissioner Scull himself to testify. Readers who were following the hearings in the papers were anxiously awaiting upcoming witnesses as if they were hitters coming in to face Bob Shawkey. For though grand jury records were confidential, quoted testimony from the Wallstein hearings was reprinted almost daily on the front page of the Sun. Readers were especially waiting for July 6, when Grace was scheduled to at last tell the whole story of her successful search for Ruth Cruger’s body. To prepare, Wallstein planned to work through the weekend.

  Just before the July Fourth holiday, Wallstein called Henry Ankenmann, one of Cocchi’s errand boys, who had worked at the shop until August. Ankenmann gave Wallstein the names of a number of motorcycle cops whom he had seen rub elbows with Fish. Ankenmann also said that he did not think that the source of Cocchi’s supposed clout was anything other than friendships with the local motorcycle policemen who worked in his neighborhood. After all, wouldn’t it make sense that the Harlem motorcycle shop owner knew all of the Harlem motorcycle cops?

  Ankenmann did admit that he helped Cocchi dig under the sidewalk pavement outside the shop. Cocchi had told him it was part of some plan to bring motorcycles into the cellar more easily. Cocchi said it was because he needed more dirt to fill in the floor of a path under the sidewalk. Ankenmann also remembered how Cocchi once boasted that he did not need a motorcycle license because he knew the police so well.

  When Independence Day came, New York City was ablaze with red-and-blue streamers and portraits of the new symbol of America, a fictional character called Uncle Sam, who had white hair and stern, glittering eyes. On July Fourth, Governor Whitman ordered Wallstein’s investigation finished. Without any warning, Whitman asked that all evidence and paperwork be delivered to District Attorney Swann for the transition to a grand jury investigation. Summons were served that same day on several officials at police headquarters and at Fourth Branch. As the feared envelopes slid across desks, into mailboxes, and into shaking hands, policemen looked up in anger and disbelief. Whitman assured everyone that shuttering Wallstein’s inquiry would be only temporary and that it would resume sometime in the future.

  Wallstein gathered every square inch of paperwork he had and sent it down the line to District Attorney Swann, the Tammany Hall man. Wallstein, who was the chairman of the same Humanitarian Cult that had helped Charlie Stielow years before, worried what might happen to his case now. Mayor Mitchel was equally furious. “We were attempting, and I think succeeding in our attempt, to make a complete investigation of police methods,” he said.

  As Wallstein was leaving the city to take a delayed vacation, he commented on the astonishing ease with which his investigation had been shut down. He told a reporter that he had been asked “to fade out of the case … and that he was now in the act of fading.” “I have stopped dead in my tracks,” Wallstein said. New Yorkers understood his tone. Many felt the same way. They felt like pieces on a gameboard dwarfed by large, invisible players.

  “The issue in this case,” said Wallstein, “was boneheadedness vs. criminality. Boneheadedness was proved. Criminality has yet to be proved.” This meant that for all of the finger-pointing and outright tampering of evidence, there was a good chance that no one would be punished. As Wallstein left the stage, Assistant District Attorney John Dooling and Alfred J. Talley picked up the grand jury investigation, which would be presided over by Judge McIntyre. Instead of working on their golf game over the holiday, as they had planned, the staff was recalled to look over legal transcripts. They laid out their papers on tables in places emptied of their usual workers. They read and searched for answers.

  In Italy, Judge Zucconi was equally frustrated by the presence of outsiders in his business. He had read about Joseph Grigg, the man sent by Woods to keep an eye on things in Italy. Zucconi called him in; he wanted to explain a few things about the Italian judicial system. American newspapers were starved for news
from Bologna. The transcripts had already been unofficially leaked; rumor and news were becoming the same thing.

  “I understand how great is the interest in America,” Zucconi said, “to find out if possible, through the Cocchi case, whether any connivance existed between the American police and the series of so-called elopements of girls under age that have occurred frequently, without, as a rule, the men culprits being discovered.

  “The law is equal for all,” Zucconi explained. “As long as the investigation lasts, no one can be allowed to interfere with it, directly, or indirectly. I hope America will not take offense if, while we are not allowing even the accused’s lawyer to see the papers in the case or interrogate the prisoner, we also forbid the representative of the American police having any such privilege.”

  The Americans had questions for Cocchi, but they were not allowed to participate in any process—even discovery—of Cocchi’s trial. Zucconi, and Italian law, had frozen them out. Zucconi then added that they could submit their questions through the magistrate, though this would take much longer than they were usually accustomed to.

  “What must be put clearly before the American public and its authorities,” the judge said, “is that so long as the investigation lasts absolutely no one can have official information regarding the developments in the case, nor be allowed to communicate directly or indirectly with the prisoner. This prohibition extends even to the members of his family. His old father, whom I understand is heartbroken for what is occurring, cannot visit him, and his wife, if she were here, would not be allowed to see him.

  “I can foresee that it will last several months,” Zucconi said, confirming the Americans’ fears. “In fact, while awaiting with keen interest the American newspapers containing the descriptions of how the body was found, we cannot conduct the examinations on such unofficial reports, but must receive the official, legal evidence from the American authorities. This means a long delay.” The judge had closed the door, for the most part, on any American involvement. Cocchi would be tried as a son of Italy.

  * * *

  On July 10, Zucconi once again made his way into Cocchi’s small cell. This was his eighth visit in more or less as many days. He was carrying something in his hand. Zucconi had tried to eliminate distractions because he still had work to do. Though Zucconi had refused to share information with officials in New York, they had certainly shared it with him. Cocchi had been able to smuggle out a note to a relative that read, “Get them to leave me alone and not try to make me talk. I am suffering too much. I am ready to serve my sentence in prison, but wish to do so in Italy, my beloved country. I do not wish to die in a foreign land in the dreadful electric chair.”

  Zucconi had just gotten the official physician’s report from New York City. He and his clerk were let into Cocchi’s cell again. The judge began reading some of the grisly details.

  Compound fracture of skull.

  Wound on left side of abdomen severing descending colon.

  Left ureter & small intestine.

  On the report, Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, the coroner’s physician, ended his summary with a single word:

  Homicidal.

  Cocchi looked trapped and anxious. Zucconi told him that, according to the report, Ruth’s watch had stopped at 2:10 P.M.

  The silence that followed in the cell felt like a stop as well.

  “I was in terror,” Cocchi said, quietly. The judge stared.

  “I hit her with my fist and cried: ‘You promise to keep quiet!’ She clawed at me with her hands and screamed again. Then I struck her and she fell, still fighting, to her knees.”

  The judge nodded as the clerk began to write.

  “She got up,” continued Cocchi, almost oblivious to their presence. “I jammed my fist against her mouth. I tore her clothes. She was so strong and resisted so much I could not rip her dress from her. She screamed.

  “I was scared. I struck her again and threw her to the floor. Her head struck the floor. She was dazed, but not unconscious. I grabbed a wrench and hit her. Dazed as she was, she kept fighting. I feared every minute that someone would rush in. I dragged her to the hole in the floor (a heat register) and threw her into the basement.”

  The cell was quiet. Cocchi continued, his eyes on fire.

  “Her head struck the concrete and she was still. I jumped down after her. She still tried to struggle. I grabbed a round stick of wood in my right hand and struck her over the head. She moaned and rose to her knees. Three times I struck her. She moaned again and sank to the floor.”

  He continued. “The blood was coming. I put on a pair of rubber gloves to keep the blood from my hands. I dragged her to the coal hole with a rope around her body. She was still warm.”

  He added, “It was not difficult.”

  The judge stared at him. He knew Cocchi was not finished.

  “Then I attacked her,” said Cocchi.

  There was more silence in the stone cell.

  “Afterwards, I dragged her to the coal hole and pushed her in head first and doubled her body up. I covered her with a box. I left things that way until after the police came the next day. The body was in the coal hole covered with a box, but they didn’t see it.

  “They didn’t see it,” Cocchi repeated.

  Alfredo Cocchi’s final thousand-word sworn confession revealed that Ruth Cruger’s body was barely hidden only a few inches from where the detectives were standing when they first came to investigate. Policemen questioned the ease by which Ruth and Cocchi could have passed down the air flue, hinting that Cocchi might have removed part of it ahead of time to make the opening bigger. They also noticed that nowhere in Cocchi’s confession was there anything about digging the hole, making detectives wonder if he had done it beforehand.

  As he left the prison cell for the last time, the judge was satisfied that there was enough for a trial. He looked at Cocchi and finally saw the monster he always knew was there.

  * * *

  Swann felt that everyone in New York—every man, woman, and child who could read a story in a paper or hear it on a stoop or windowsill—wanted Cocchi to burn in the black chair at Sing Sing. Even in the absence of proof, they wanted blood. But Swann knew the reality of the moment. The Petrosino case seemed to show how little the Italian police cared about working with the Americans. To make matters worse, the war was dividing nations. At least Swann could take solace in the fact that Alfredo Cocchi was no longer surrounded by thin bicycles but by solid iron bars.

  Edward Swann had inherited the Wallstein case, but he had been working on it himself for months. He appointed James W. Osborne to take full charge of the investigation of the police. “I will go wherever the trail leads,” said the special prosecutor. As the investigation pressed on, it became clear that the phrase “go see Cocchi” was commonplace advice given to people who wanted to “fix” their tickets. For a small fee, a ticket could disappear as easily as a swipe of the eraser. Cocchi and the police, it seemed, had first developed a relationship over their machines that had grown to include other mutual activities.

  Stories began to surface that Cocchi had run a betting book on the horse races right out of his garage. The results of the New York, southern, and Canadian tracks were received by telephone at Cocchi’s. One witness told Swann of a cop who placed a 20-to-1, five-dollar bet with Cocchi and was now owed a hundred dollars. Swann told him to tell the officer not to hold his breath. Another witness said that, although Cocchi kept the book, he was not the principal person. “He had a man of means as his backer,” the witness said. A manager of prizefighters was rumored to have bankrolled the operation. Some thought it could be the Camorra itself. Swann was now asking jurors to sit an extra hour each day.

  Grace was one of the first to testify as part of the new grand jury proceedings. After her testimony, Osborne declared that it was “one of the most interesting and remarkable stories I ever heard.” The jurors then went to see the motorcycle store. They walked around in silence, especially in the
cellar.

  Grace knew that if Cocchi were to return, he would die in the electric chair. That was against all of her beliefs, but she still said that “every effort must be directed toward bringing him back to this country.” She knew that the benefits would be too great. “One case of this sort,” Grace said, “fully proved will expose much and root out a big gang in this city. I suppose I’ll get my head punched for saying that, but I believe that Cocchi knows more about these cases of young girls than any man in this city.”

  Cocchi kept issuing a flat denial of any collusion with the police. “Not only was there no connivance between myself and the police,” said Cocchi, “but it was dread of the police which caused the crime.”

  Grace disagreed. “Cocchi didn’t escape just to save himself,” she said. “I believe it was suggested to him to get away.”

  Only parts of Grace’s grand jury investigation made it to the papers. The final, tell-all testimony of Grace Humiston that had been so eagerly awaited in the Wallstein hearings had been distilled to only a few vague lines. The full story of how Grace had solved the case of the missing skater had not yet been told. So, after some persuasion, Grace agreed to do something that, unlike the other endeavors in her life, she was almost completely unsure of.

  An interview.

  16

  Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

  On the tenth floor of the building at Madison Avenue and Forty-second Street, Grace nervously arranged the roses on her desk. The half circle of reporters around her desk seemed to inch forward. Grace’s black eyes fell against her dress of purple silk. She had decided to soften her dark wardrobe as of late, if only in the form of a lacy white shirt.

  Before she answered even five questions, the telephone rang. “Yes, this is Grace—that you, mother? Tut, tut, I am not overworking myself. No, really, I’m not. Oh, mother, do you mind tucking away my gray dress; it’s on the chair nearest the dresser, and will you see that the plants are watered?” Grace hung up and smiled to the reporters when the phone rang again.