by Brad Ricca
“I was talking to the signorina,” Cocchi said, pointing to the clerk in front of him. Cocchi told how Ruth Cruger had come into his store to have her ice skates sharpened. Cocchi was, to all present, a glittering fool, talking and waving at ghosts.
Cocchi turned swiftly. He motioned to the lawyer on the other side of the room. “Then my wife struck her on the back of the head with one of my tools.” The gallery of people froze.
“It was not I who struck the fatal blow,” said Cocchi, “it was my wife. I hid the body to protect my wife.”
As the courtroom rose as one, the enormity of Cocchi’s words reached the judge. Not only had Cocchi just retracted his confession, but he had just claimed, in front of the entire court, that his wife, Maria, was the real murderer of Ruth Cruger.
Judge Bagnoli roared for order. He instructed the prisoner to finish his story.
“Not I, but my wife, in an excess of furious jealousy, killed Miss Cruger,” Cocchi said, his hand on his chest. “I had accused myself in order to save the mother of my children Athos and Georgette, but as I knew from the documents of the lawsuit that she is very adverse to me, I thought it would be better to tell the truth. And as an action was brought against her in America for this murder, I wish to know how she could escape the condemnation.”
The prosecutor asked what happened next.
“I took the body,” said Cocchi, “and tried to conceal it in the cellar but the door was not large enough.” The prosecutor asked, pointedly, how he made her fit. Cocchi paused. “I sawed the body in two,” he said.
As the room again erupted into loud shouting and finger-pointing, the judge kept his eye on Cocchi, who had the same steady stare that he always did. As order was called, the prosecutor shouted, “Was she already dead?”
“Yes,” said Cocchi. “Yes.”
When the room quieted down, Cocchi produced a new laundry list of witnesses that he wished the prosecution to investigate. A number of them were known to prosecutors, but a number of them were not.
The next day as court began, Signor Venturini, now seventy-seven years old, stood before the judge. His client, Cocchi, stood on the prisoner’s platform, quiet and remote. He was on full view for anyone who dared risk eye contact with him. Everyone in the room was still thinking of yesterday. Prosecutor Mancuso said that Cocchi’s display had ruined any sort of sympathetic angle. “He gained nothing by his dramatic presentation,” Mancuso told the press. “Of course, it is certainly his plan to have his trial postponed again and again so that he will be entitled to receive his friends and his meals in prison instead of suffering solitary confinement. Cocchi knows that he is a doomed man. That is why he is playing for delay.”
Venturini approached the bench with a letter. He explained to the judge that he had received this some time ago and had thought it the work of a crank. But recently, he had been in contact with the writer, who confirmed that every word was true. Venturini thought it might be important to share with the court now, especially in the wake of yesterday. The judge wondered how much of a surprise that was to Venturini.
The judge took the letter in his hands. It had a postmark from New York. He looked at it, and his expression changed. He handed the letter back and asked Venturini to read it. The old man held it up, adjusting it to his eyes.
Room 850 Municipal Building
New York City
August 18, 1917
EXCELLENCY:—However much I may desire the extradition of Alfred Cocchi, and the meting out to the monster of the extreme penalty for his crime in the country of its committal, I think it would be a great and grievous mistake to deliver him to the American authorities for the present.…
I, for one, do not believe that Cocchi’s confession is the truth—at least not the whole truth. There is not one iota of proof how, when, where, why, or by whom, the Cruger girl was slain. There is no certainty as to whether her body was buried in the cellar before or after Cocchi’s flight. It is almost a moral certainty that Cocchi’s shop was one of the stations of the White Slave System: that the Cruger girl had fallen into the hands of the slavers while at school; and that her death resulted from attempted abortion. I take no stock in the findings of an autopsy or post-mortem on a decayed body over four months in the grave and especially if the autopsy be performed by an employee of the prosecutor, and there is proof that the prosecutor is a shielder and shelterer of White Slavers.
I lost a fine girl, 21 years of age, and, like the Cruger girl, a student, but at Hunter College, not at Wadleigh High School. I live in 115th Street, about forty feet across the street from the Wadleigh. My girl died at her home on the 1st day of October, 1916. The unaccountable suddenness of her death, and the attitude of certain people in the locality, led me to make an investigation which resulted in the discovery of a complete branch or district of the White Slave System, headed by a manager named Lawrence, whom, I am credibly informed, is the financial backer of a chain of dives and saloons, and a particular personal friend of Edward Swann, District Attorney of New York County. The various quarters of this system are located two blocks from the Wadleigh School. My girl fell a victim to the fiends, and died as the result of abortion, after suffering about a year of unimaginable agony of body and mind. I got all the evidence, with over a score of witnesses, to present the case to the Grand Jury; but Swann refused to prosecute—refused to do anything in the matter. On December 1st I appealed to the Governor, and was promised that my case would be considered, but although I have renewed this application twice since then, nothing has been done—and nothing will be done.
Now, Ruth Cruger passed these slave dives twice a day, going to and from school. Is it likely or credible that she had sufficient self-control to escape the allurements of the slavers? The ways of these fiends are too insinuating and seductive for an unsophisticated school-girl to resist them. There is the dance-hall, the suave exquisitely dressed dude, the sympathetic soda-water and ice-cream dispenser, the handy capsule of chloral hydrate in the soda-water—and the sleep! Even an automobile was not lacking as part of the apparatus of this slave gang for whisking the victims about the city—the very mobile so often seen in Cocchi’s shop. The Cocchi-Cruger case is, of course, no concern of mine; but if my surmise is correct, that both girls were victim of the same gang, it is of prime importance to me that Cocchi be preserved alive in Italy until he is exhaustively examined by the Italian authorities regarding the matters here disclosed, and until my case gets an open hearing in New York.
There has been a regular campaign of noisy hysterics worked up by a lot of shady self-promoters in regard to the Cruger murder, and Swann was not slow to take advantage of the confession and switch the murder matter, with the adroitness of a juggler, into a police “graft” inquiry.
Your Excellency’s most obedient servant,
J. J. LYNCH
P.S.—Further and fuller details will be forthcoming if desired.
On July 24, 1919, the president of the Italian assizes issued an order to suspend Cocchi’s trial while they explored these shocking new claims.
“It seems now opportune, or better necessary,” the judge said, “after the new crimination of the said Cocchi, and to improve the actual debate—that the acts of the American judicial authority concerning the said Magrini be examined thoroughly.” The court needed to find out if Maria Cocchi could be implicated, if the letter about white slavery was legitimate, and if there were other records in America that would be necessary to continue the trial. Cocchi was now providing Italian authorities with dozens of names of people he said should be questioned in New York. Across an ocean, Swann said that Cocchi’s requests—or tactics—were “absolutely ridiculous and preposterous.” “This is merely a belated attempt to shift the blame,” he said.
What had begun two days before as an exercise in formality had spiraled into pandemonium. In the end, Cocchi was taken back to his familiar cell, under no formal sentence and free of any fear of extradition. There was no date set for his trial to r
esume. With no eyewitnesses or real physical evidence tying him to the crime, Cocchi, though still behind iron bars, was feeling free.
* * *
In New York, Julius J. Kron was running his own private detective agency out of a twelve-story building known as the Vincent on 302 Broadway. The store had previously been a gun shop, and you could still smell the powder, especially in the spring. Kron now had his own office, his own secretary, and several detectives who worked for him, including a woman. His letterhead had his name twice, first as Julius James Kron in the top center, and then in the right header above “The Principal.” He also listed himself as “Former Special Agent, U.S. Department of Justice and as the Chief Detective of the Morality League of America.” As the Morality League, the old team of Grace and Kron still ferreted out kidnappers all throughout the city. They rescued Gladys Benson of Yonkers and Muriel Flynn of Mount Vernon at 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. After the fifteen-year-old girls were taken to the Children’s Society, they told a story that led to the arrest of two men, Harry Wurzberger and Irving Breslau. Grace and Kron were finally catching not only the victims but also the perpetrators of these acts, whether they were actual kidnappers or just smooth-talking scum. They rescued Evelyn Rose, twenty, from August Wuttereich, twenty-two, an assistant engineer at an ice plant on Atlantic Avenue. The names and places of their conquests continued to appear in the papers.
Not every case was a headline. Kron did plenty of investigative work, which New York City had an abundant supply of. Some nights it was shadowing. Sometimes it was records work or tracing. Sometimes it was just messy. Ralph E. Woods was a civil engineer who came to Kron’s office with a blank stare. His wife had taken a new job and was getting home later and later at night. Kron went to work and, within a week, led a raiding party on an apartment at 38 Barrow in Greenwich Village, where Don Luis R. Alfaro, the young nephew of the Panamanian minister to the United States, resided. When they barged in the door, they found Alfaro in a white bathrobe. There was a red dress lying on a table, along with a pair of silk stockings. Ralph, the angry husband, found his wife, Mrs. Edla G. Woods, twenty-six, of Astoria, hiding in the dark closet. Ralph immediately demanded a divorce—and custody of their son, John, two. These cases repeated like days of the week.
Grace had survived the threat on her life, but after the Brandon case had finished, Grace had gone from the most celebrated woman in New York City to something of a pariah. But she was still trying to save the girls of her city. After a few failed starts, Grace opened the Manhattanville Be Kind Club in June. The purpose of the club was to be a place where women could listen to lectures, engage in sporting clubs, and be safe from the perilous streets. The club also had a “nursery home,” where mothers could leave their children when they were at work.
That summer, the club opened its doors with a lecture given by Grace. A welcome dance followed, which carried an admission charge of five cents to defray the rent and lighting costs. Grace knew that there were many dance halls in the area known as places of vice; she thought that her club would provide a place she could control and oversee. This was a new endeavor for Grace—and she was a bit over her head, as always—but she knew that here, on the ground, is where the front lines in her war really were. As the music played and the young people danced, a gruff man flanked with two policeman walked in her door.
The man, Captain Gargan, of the police department, asked for Grace and informed her that he was going to shut her dance down. He claimed that there were “vicious loafers” on the street corners around the lights of the Be Kind Club. He said that some of them were dancing with the girls, some of whom were no more than thirteen years old. Even worse, Gargan found out that Grace had no license to operate a dance hall. Grace was shocked. She had talked to the appropriate bureau at City Hall, and they told her she didn’t need one.
Gargan loudly ordered that the dancing be stopped. Girls and their partners stared at him from the floor. Gargan said that until a license could be procured, everyone had to leave. Dancegoers said that Gargan was very insulting to Mrs. Humiston and acted in a way not fitting a policeman. Grace was so upset that she tendered her resignation as sergeant of the police reserves—the last official link she had left to the police—right then and there. Captain Gargan gladly accepted it.
The charges against Grace for operating a dance hall without a license were dismissed in the First District Court. The court said that she was not running the hall for profit so there was no charge to pursue. Grace told the court that she would apply for a license right away even though she was still convinced she didn’t need one. She told a reporter from the New York Times that Ruth’s body had been found in Captain Gargan’s precinct. Most people knew what she meant, though some actually said it. “Apparently the police never forget or forgive,” wrote Richard Spillane in Commerce and Finance. “No Camorra or Mafia is more vindictive. They will ‘get’ Mrs. Humiston yet,” Spillane wrote. “That is, unless there is enough decency at Police Headquarters to stop it.”
Grace was also working on opening a similar club on Long Island called the Castle, but the local Beechhurst community voted against it. She had a series of properties financed by her sister Jessie and hoped to rekindle the Be Kind Club as the Grace Club, but securing a permanent location—always a problem in New York—remained an issue. Grace went to suppers and book clubs and still gave talks. And she was still practicing law when people came to see her. She wrote essays for newspapers. But she was, in the public eye, much diminished. But Grace never stopped. Located at 7 Manhattan Street, the original Be Kind Club, before Gargan shut it down, was just around the corner from the old motorcycle shop where Ruth Cruger had died. By trying to help the girls in that same neighborhood, Grace was perhaps still working that sad old case, long after Ruth had gone.
22
The Witnesses’ Revenge
Three years to the day that Ruth Cruger disappeared, the Honorable Joseph F. Mulqueen in the Court of General Sessions in New York heard the last testimony in the case against Alfredo Cocchi for the crime of murder in the first degree. It had been three long years. And no matter how much anyone involved barked to the press or the government, they all knew that Cocchi wasn’t coming back to New York. They were surprised they thought he ever would. The only good news was that the trial was finally going to resume in Bologna. Or so they were told. For three years, Cocchi had been sitting in jail—but free of sentence or threat of extradition. And with this new trial, he had the possibility of actually going free.
So much had changed in New York, as it always did. Woods was long gone; he was now a full colonel in the army. Edward Swann was hanging on as the district attorney, but the Tammany bosses were trying to push him out. Swann had tried, numerous times, to get either his assistant, Talley, or Maria Cocchi to go to Italy as his proxy. Swann thought that if he had an ironclad witness, this nonsense would finally end. But although officials in Italy assured Maria of her safety, the U.S. government could not. No matter what officials promised, Maria Cocchi was terrified that, after her husband’s story, she would be detained in Bologna for murder. Swann knew that part of his job was to explore Maria Cocchi’s role in the events of that murderous day so long ago.
Swann looked at the request from Italy for the depositions of witnesses named by Cocchi.
Swann didn’t know what Cocchi’s plan was—and he wanted no part of it—but he also knew that providing the depositions might be the only way to assist the case. He began trying to find all of the named witnesses and schedule them into the Court of General Sessions to give their testimony. He tried to locate and organize all the documents of the case, but they had been spread across many different departments. With all the overturn in personnel, some of it was missing altogether. Swann found what he could and sent it all off to Italy. It would never return to America. And then, when he was done, Swann set about answering the new questions from Italy. He was going to do his job, even if no one else cared. Even the papers would become j
aded, wondering if “perhaps our grandfathers will be able to tell us something about that ancient crime.”
Swann hung his hat on humanity. The new forensic sciences of his profession were certainly persuasive, but Swann believed in good old-fashioned testimony. “The very essential of justice,” Swann said, “is the veracity of the witnesses. Without it the true facts cannot be ascertained, and there can be no such thing as an even handed administration of justice.” Swann knew that it was now up to the very people involved in the case to put Cocchi away for good—or tell the truth at last.
Swann first interviewed Edward Fish, who had been the subject of much scrutiny three years ago. He was now a salesman for the Goodyear Tire Company. At the time Cocchi owned his cycle shop, Fish stored his motorcycle there. Fish said Cocchi and his wife fought frequently, but only in Italian, which he didn’t understand. Fish’s fiancée of ten years, Elizabeth Mitchell, repeated the same thing, and told stories of them all riding together on motorcycles in the free air of the country. Elizabeth was friendly with Maria but admitted that Maria never confided in her about any domestic troubles. She stopped and thought for a moment.
“The only subject of our conversation I recall was about her baby,” Elizabeth said. “She seemed to me to be very much interested in her children.” Helen Beck, another new witness on the list, said the same thing. She and her husband, John, had lived in the same house as the Cocchis on 75 Manhattan Street.
“Did you help secure an abortion for Maria?” Swann asked, referring to Cocchi’s claim that she had.
“It is untrue,” Helen said. “I never secured a physician on any occasion for Mrs. Cocchi.” Helen said that the first time she had spoken to Mr. Cocchi was when Mrs. Cocchi returned from the hospital after giving birth to Georgette. Helen visited her and the baby at home to help and got to know them and the boy, Athos. Mrs. Cocchi never made any complaint.