by Brad Ricca
“So far as I was able to observe,” Helen said, “Mrs. Cocchi was a faithful and devoted wife and a good mother. She was an exceptionally good housekeeper and always kept her home in a clean condition, and was always interested in the care of her children.”
Since the first trial, Swann’s investigators had found a record that Cocchi and his wife had consulted with someone at the court of domestic relations on September 24, 1915. The probation officer they saw was named Rose McQuade. Though her memory was fuzzy, McQuade’s notes revealed that the couple had been fighting. On McQuade’s advice, the Cocchis agreed to return home and live together. In her notes, McQuade wrote that “no formal complaint was made by the wife against the husband.”
“I am unable to say whether or not she is the same woman,” McQuade said, “because of the lapse of time, and the fact that I have interviewed many thousands of women in similar cases since that time.”
Swann was confident that he had enough testimony to refute Cocchi’s claims about neighbors and secret abortions. But there were a few people left to talk to. When Cocchi’s trial had been suspended three years ago, one of the reasons was the enigmatic letter from J. J. Lynch, whose letter to the Italian court during Cocchi’s original trial ground the proceedings to a halt. Swann found him easily.
“I am an accountant by occupation,” said the fifty-eight-year old Lynch, with an Irish accent. “I am employed by the City of New York and have been so employed for the past 20 years.” Swann showed Lynch the letter that he had sent to the Italian courts three years ago. Lynch admitted it was his handwriting.
“I had a young daughter,” Lynch said, quietly, “who died.” He went on to explain that he thought her death had been caused by the same criminal agencies that killed Ruth Cruger.
“From my personal investigations,” Lynch said, “I was of the opinion that the said Alfredo Cocchi was in some way connected with the persons responsible for my daughter’s death. I thought that if he were brought back to America, the prosecution against him would be helpful to me in bringing to justice those responsible for the death of my daughter.” He wiped his eyes. He admitted that he had no facts to connect them.
Swann made him say it again, though he took no pleasure in it.
“I am personally in possession of no facts and no information in any way directly or indirectly connected to the disappearance of the death of Ruth Cruger by the said Alfredo Cocchi; I never knew Ruth Cruger in her lifetime. My daughter never knew, to my personal knowledge, Ruth Cruger in her lifetime. I never knew Alfredo Cocchi.”
The Reverend Gaspar Moretto testified on February 9. In his forties, he was still a young, strong, and good-looking man. He had a soft smile with some gray at his temples. Cocchi named the priest as the man who harbored him as he waited in New York before escaping to Italy. When questioned by the police and Helen Cruger during that time, Father Moretto had only intimated at things, avoiding them directly. He was more forthcoming now.
“I am a naturalized American citizen,” he said with gusto. He explained how he was ordained in Italy but came to the United States in 1903. He was still attached to the Saint Raphael Society, an Italian mission. Reverend Moretto visited Ellis Island every day, he said, to help the Italians with their spiritual needs as they arrived under the shadow of a giant, expressionless woman who had been hammered from copper.
The reverend knew Cocchi through Ernesto Bregagnolo, a member of the society who had a motorcycle. “In the fall of 1914,” Moretto said, “I remember one occasion when Mrs. Cocchi called at the Mission.” She asked Moretto to talk to her husband because he was being unfaithful to her with other women. “This, however, I never did,” said Moretto. “I had not seen her husband before this occasion except the early summer of 1914. The next time I saw Alfredo Cocchi was in the early evening of the 15th of February, 1917.” Moretto had been on Ellis Island, leaving on the late afternoon ferry for home at four forty as the sun rolled west. The reverend had arrived back at the mission around 5 o’clock.
“When I arrived there,” Moretto said, “Alfredo Cocchi was waiting for me. I was informed by one of the sisters attached to the mission that he had been waiting for two hours. He spoke to me and requested me to hear his confession. I then heard his confession according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Under the rules of the Roman Catholic Church and under my vows as a priest, I cannot disclose any part of the confession,” said Reverend Moretto. Swann stared at him.
“I never saw Alfredo Cocchi after this day,” Moretto said. Then he stopped as if he had remembered something.
“I am informed,” Moretto said, “that Alfredo Cocchi was married on the 3rd day of October, 1907, at Ellis Island, and that I was the officiating clergyman. This is undoubtedly true, but I have no distinct recollection of the marriage. I do recollect that when Mrs. Cocchi saw me at her husband’s shop in 1914, she recognized me as the priest who had solemnized her marriage at Ellis Island.”
The next witness was a young blond woman who turned heads when she walked in. Her name was Mary Probst. She had also been named by Cocchi as a possible witness, and when she spoke, it was all business. “I am employed as a packer in the candy factory of D. Auerbach at 640 Eleventh Avenue,” she said. Mary Probst told the story of how she lived with her parents in the same house as the Cocchis and helped out with paperwork and cleaning. “I frequently made out statements and bills for Alfredo Cocchi,” she said, “because he could not read and write English.” Her father was the janitor of the building. It was on 301 West Eighty-third Street.
“One day while I was dusting the house and helping my father,” Mary said, “Mr. Cocchi met me in the hallway.” She paused and looked at the judge, who nodded. “He opened his trousers and exposed his private parts. Mrs. Cocchi immediately followed him out of the apartment after this occurred and called me back into her home. I told her what occurred, and she told me not to tell my mother or anyone else. I promised that I would not.”
Mary then recalled how, several weeks later, she went to the motorcycle shop with a friend to get two bicycles to go for a ride. Cocchi was always happy to loan them bicycles. When Mary returned on her own, Cocchi put his arms around her and embraced her. Mrs. Cocchi entered the store and got very angry with me. “She told me to leave the store,” Mary said, “and not to come there again.” The court asked Mary her age. “I am nineteen years of age,” she said. At the time of the events she was relating, she had been fourteen.
Several more girls whom Cocchi named as witnesses were also summoned. Francesca Triolo was twenty years old, dark haired, and very quiet. “He never made any improper advances to me,” she said. Florence Leonetter was seventeen and worked at a tea store. She said that Cocchi would sometimes give her and her brother rides in his motorcycle sidecar. She paused. “I frequently saw Cocchi in front of his shop; he always used to smile at girls when they passed by.”
Agnes Powers was older, married, and had two children. Her husband was an inspector at the New York Globe. Powers told Swann that in late 1916 she visited Cocchi’s shop to have a baby carriage repaired. She liked his work, so she went back six or so times after. The last time she went, on a Sunday, she had to leave the carriage for an hour or so.
“I returned at two o’clock,” she said, “and he took the carriage to the back part of the store, and he asked me to come in the back and sit down. I sat by the baby-carriage, and my baby started to cry. I bent over the baby and Cocchi came over behind me and embraced me and acted in a disorderly manner. He asked me to kiss him and he tried to kiss me. I had 35 cents in my hand which I was offering to him, when he took my hand and tried to place it on his private parts; he also placed his hand on my breast; at the same time he attempted to kiss me. I kept pulling back. I succeeded, however, in tearing myself away and making an outcry. When I released myself from him he said to me: ‘You don’t owe me anything.’”
Mrs. Powers ran out of the store with her baby and the carriage. When her husband got home fr
om work, she told him everything. He went over to Cocchi’s in haste. Cocchi said it was all a misunderstanding. It was his helper, not him who had done this outrage. Her husband returned with a policeman, but the store was closed. So she let it go. When she was shown her testimony, Mrs. Powers signed below the line that read: “The acts related above by me were not done by any helper, but were done by the defendant, Alfredo Cocchi.”
Swann also summoned a number of men whom Cocchi said would speak to the quarrelsome nature of his wife. Joseph Caggiano would sometimes help with the billing at the shop. One day, Maria Cocchi took him aside and told him that her husband was running around with other girls. Caggiano remembered one time when the couple was arguing, Cocchi told his wife to be quiet. Maria then tried to grab at one of the tools lying around the shop. Caggiano couldn’t remember if she actually swung it at him, but he did remember one time when she threatened it.
“This is what I have to put up with,” Maria Cocchi had told him. It was sometime late in 1913 or early 1914. Frank Bauer was another machinist who similarly worked on and off for Cocchi. “I personally never saw him act improperly towards any women who came into his shop,” he said.
One of the last names on the list had been a difficult man to find. Victor Blady still lived in Jersey and was a chauffeur now, though he was not presently employed.
“I remember reading about the disappearance of Ruth Cruger,” said Blady. “Sometime around Lincoln’s birthday.… I have no recollection of having seen him either on the 14th or 15th of February, 1917.” Blady knew Herbert Roemmele, Cocchi’s helper, too. Blady’s next words were chosen very carefully, and almost rehearsed:
“I have no distinct recollection of having taken Herbert F. Roemmele, Alfredo Cocchi, and the latter’s own Athos in an automobile driven by me, from Cocchi’s shop to Manhattan Street,” Blady said. “I will say, however, that I have on several occasions driven Alfredo Cocchi and his son and Herbert F. Roemmele from Cocchi’s shop to 75 Manhattan Street, but I cannot say that I did so on the afternoon of February 13th.” Blady had been suspected of being the mysterious driver. Blady claimed to know of no difficulties within the Cocchi marriage, though he did remember one time when Mrs. Cocchi told him that her husband had a girlfriend. Blady said he didn’t want to get involved.
Leah Brinckmann, German, was married with five kids. For the past nineteen years, she had also been the janitor of the house adjoining Cocchi’s motorcycle shop. “I never talked with him except to bid him the time of day,” she said of Cocchi. “I know his wife; I frequently saw her in front of the premises. She used to sit outside of her husband’s store with the children, and I often talked with her.”
Brinckmann told a story how Maria Cocchi had accused one of her daughters of spying on her at the park, presumably on the orders of her husband. Maria Cocchi asked Brinckmann, and she refuted it, but when the daughter in question came home later, she was crying. She was eight or nine. She said that Mrs. Cocchi had slapped her. “I did not speak to Mrs. Cocchi after that day,” Brinckmann said. “I believe this occurred in July, 1916.” She paused a moment. “Mrs. Cocchi always appeared to me to be a hard-working woman,” she added. “Neat and clean, and took good care of her children.” Leah’s daughter remembered nothing of the incident.
John Lagarenne came as the next-to-last witness. He was wearing his police uniform. The man who stunned the room with his terse, one-word answers three years ago finally seemed ready to help. “I am now,” he said, “and since the 16th of October, 1905, a member of the Municipal Police Force of the City of New York with the rank of Sergeant.” He didn’t mention his conviction at the end of the Cruger inquiry or his time away. He still lived in Brooklyn and made a point to say that he had been assisting the DA in locating the witnesses on Cocchi’s list. The only person he couldn’t find was a Miss Wells, though he searched the post office and rode up to Middletown, sixty-eight miles away, where she had lived in 1916.
The next witness was very well-known to Swann, though he had not seen her in some time. Maria Cocchi walked in and sat down.
“I reside at 37 Old Broadway in the borough of Manhattan,” she said. “I am the wife of Alfredo Cocchi, now waiting his trial for the murder of Ruth Cruger in the County of New York. I have been shown the documents where he said it was me. I, his wife, in fit of jealous fury. I desire to say that this statements are false.
“My husband states that he accused himself in order to preserve a mother to his children,” she said. Calmly, Maria Cocchi proceeded to refute her husband’s claims against her. Swann asked her about her husband’s claim that she had attacked him with a hammer.
Mary Probst, as her own testimony had said, lived in the same house as the Cocchis with her parents. Her job in the Cocchi household was “to clean up and take care of the home and fix their bed each day.” The arrangement seemed to be working very well until one day, Mrs. Cocchi claimed, she received an unsigned letter. It read: “‘Mary Probst, instead of taking good care of your home, is taking good care of your husband.’” Maria added that the writer said they “had seen Mary Probst go into my husband’s apartment after 10 o’clock at night, also at 6 o’clock in the morning.” Maria said she destroyed the letter in a fit of rage.
Days later, Maria was getting the mail when she noticed a letter in the Probst box with her husband’s handwriting on it. Maria slipped the letter out, opened it, and read the letter. There was a five-dollar bill inside. This letter read that he wanted to meet her that evening at Seventy-second Street and Riverside Drive. Maria said that she brought the letter and showed it to Cocchi.
“What happened?” asked Swann.
“I quarreled with my husband and he struck me,” Maria replied.
“It was Christmas morning, 1914, when I found Mary Probst in bed with my husband,” Maria said. “I chased her out of my room and she was in the hallway asking for her clothes.” Edward Fish, who was her husband’s friend, was there at the time. “He saw her in the hallway naked,” Maria said.
Maria composed herself. “All of our quarrels were caused by his improper conduct towards me and my child by his intimate relations with other women. My husband frequently remains away from my bed and home on various occasions sometimes one and two nights each week. I was not dominated by jealousy,” she said, matter-of-factly.
“What about the doctor?” asked Swann, referring once again to Cocchi’s insistence that Maria had sought an abortion.
“Mrs. Beck never secured a physician for me on any occasion when I was either pregnant or ill,” Maria said. “She never secured a midwife. I never attempted to abort or cause to be aborted while I was with child.”
As the witnesses left, Swann knew that he would probably never see them again. That thought stayed with him as he himself left the building. That, and a nagging thought that he could not dismiss. How had they missed this? How had they all missed it?
Swann packed up the testimony and ordered it to be sent to Italy. He also wondered, considering how damning this all was, if they weren’t still playing right into Alfredo Cocchi’s hands. It was almost as if Cocchi was prosecuting himself, either to seal his fate in Italy, free of the chair, or to protect someone else. Swann had another piece of new information that he contemplated sending along as well but was uncertain what effect it might have.
In Bologna, the trial of Alfredo Cocchi resumed on October 24, 1920, and lasted four more days. The new testimony had been offered for the record. Though neither state nor federal prosecutors had been able to extradite Cocchi, Swann had finally been allowed to send Owen Bohan, as assistant, to testify to the new information gathered in New York. So, on the last day of the trial, the judge allowed it. Owen didn’t say much. He testified that Cocchi’s wife had been exonerated by the police upon further testimony and was an upstanding member of society. At the end of his statement, Owen also said that Cocchi’s eldest daughter, Georgette, was dead.
The room stopped as everyone turned to look at the prisoner’s fa
ce. Cocchi stood alone in the dark prisoner’s cage. He wore a dark suit and was almost completely covered in shadow. His face was nearly white. Someone took a photograph of him.
Cocchi had previously testified that he made his original confession of guilt to protect his beloved wife and children. His second confession was, according to Cocchi, to save his children from his insane wife. Judge Bagnoli scowled. The American, Swann, had affected this trial after all. Owen explained that after a long illness, Georgette Cocchi, Alfredo’s daughter, had died on December 6, 1918, of pneumonia. She was only two years old, having been born right before Ruth Cruger’s murder. Owen added, almost mercilessly, that Athos was doing well at school.
Cocchi collapsed in his cage in the courtroom.
When it was time for the verdict, the judge looked at Cocchi and spoke in Italian. The American reporters and photographers who couldn’t understand the language only knew what happened when Alfredo Cocchi collapsed. Their translators handed them sheets of paper with misspellings. Cocchi was convicted of the attempted rape and murder of Ruth Cruger in New York. In their statement, the judges said that they thought his fury was caused by Ruth’s spurning. They concluded that he killed her to avoid having a witness and getting in trouble. They also convicted him for traveling under a false name. Cocchi’s claim that his wife had done it was ignored utterly.
The Italian criminal code, the Zanardelli Code as it was known, provided strict sentencing guidelines, though the punishment decreased if the crimes were committed abroad. The code demanded 25–30 years for murder. For rape, it suggested one to six years. There were some other reductions and mitigations that had to be quibbled and negotiated over. Signor Venturini was able to take a few years off because of some discrepancies in the language. In the end, Alfredo Cocchi was sentenced to 27 years, 2 months, and 26 days for the murder of Ruth Cruger. Venturini maintained his optimism; he hoped that a future king would pardon his client outright. When Cocchi was taken back to his cell, he went on a hunger strike. For that, he was sentenced to ten years of solitary confinement. He was then allowed in the common prison population, to disappear among the killers and thieves.