by Alan Hynd
Phillips was pleased and so was his boss, Landvoight. After years of undercover work, they were now close to busting Petrillo. But when two weeks went by with no further communication, Phillips began to worry that Petrillo might have flown the coop. He asked. Meyer to try and find out what was going on. Petrillo had vanished.
Meyer decided to first check on Ferdinando Alfonsi, the man Petrillo wanted dead. He drove to the man’s home. A middle-aged woman opened the door and informed him that her husband was very ill and could not get out of bed. As quickly and politely as he could, Meyer took off.
Agent Phillips felt ill when Meyer explained the situation. They had failed to protect the prospective victim. Phillips called together several other agents and a small posse, posing as insurance representatives, went to check on Alfonsi’s condition. When they went inside his home, they were shocked. His pupils were bulging and he could neither move nor speak. The agents then contacted the Philadelphia police. Alfonsi was moved to a hospital.
On the same day, Petrillo contacted Meyer and told him he had the counterfeits. A meeting was arranged at a nearby bus stop. Meyer and Phillips met him there. Petrillo gave the man an envelope, which contained 40 counterfeit five-dollar bills.
Philips was happy to finally get the money, but was also voiced interest about Alfonsi. “You still want that guy killed?” Phillips asked. Petrillo laughed.
“Don’t worry about it,” He said. “He’s in the hospital and he ain’t coming out.”
In the hospital, Philadelphia investigators ordered a urine specimen from Alfonsi’s doctors, which later revealed large quantities of arsenic. So now the case bounced back to Vincent McDevitt, the district attorney. McDevitt had the cops arrest Petrillo on charges of attempted murder. But when Alfonsi died a few weeks later, the prosecution hit the jackpot. The charge was upgraded to homicide.
Needless to say, the arrest of Petrillo was all over the front pages of the Philly papers. Among those who saw Little Herman’s picture in the papers was the Prudential insurance doctor who, after having examined Little Herman as Lorenzo the roofer, had thought the fellow looked somehow familiar when he later turned up as Petrino the janitor.
So the wise doctor also went to McDevitt. The A.D.A. found some detectives he could trust and put the wives of the roofer and the janitor on the griddle. Thus they found out about Paul Petrillo, the wolf, who figured large in the whole operation in more ways than one.
When Vincent McDevitt questioned Herman Petrillo, he was skeptical that he would walk away with anything he could use. After all, this was the same man that the Secret Service had worked for so many years to arrest. But a surprising thing happened. Petrillo sang like a canary, almost proud of his life’s work. He provided the D.A.’s office with a mind-boggling list of victims and conspirators, ratting out his cousin, Paul Petrillo, along with Morris Bolber, as the masterminds behind the entire operation. Petrillo said that all but three of the victims had been killed with arsenic. He also recounted how the arsenic was often passed off to a victim as a “love potion,” complete with fattura or “hexing” qualities drawn from Italian folklore.
But McDevitt’s office now had the problem of proving Petrillo’s allegations. The only way they could get solid proof would be to exhume every victim. McDevitt already had Ferdinando Alfonsi’s medical records and decided to proceed with that case. He knew that he could always file other charges later.
The Petrillo cousins, knowing the law finally had them, began to sing in unison. Stories about Doctor Bolber, the faith healer, and the Witch emerged from the vocalizing. The Witch was arrested at her home before she could grab her broomstick and beat it. She began to talk, too. But when the cops went around to the brick house on the corner of Moyamensing Avenue and Ninth Street. Doctor Bolber had vanished. It was months before the law caught up with the doctor in Brooklyn, New York running a delicatessen.
Then Bolber, too, decided to sing. Everybody was singing his own tune, to save the flesh around his vocal chords. A whole raft of faithless wives were caught in a dragnet as a result of the confessions of the master plotter and his associates.
Herman Petrillo’s trial began on March 13, 1939 in Philadelphia’s City Hall. The presiding judge, Harry McDevitt, no relation to the D.A. Vincent McDevitt, was a defense attorney’s worst nightmare. The judge was known in legal circles as “Hanging Harry.” Petrillo’s lawyer, Milton Leidner, was a close friend of the judge, but the defense attorney did not expect any leniency.
During the trial, Herman Petrillo didn’t offer much of a defense, other than to claim that Bolber, the faith healer, had mesmerized him with “the evil eye” and forced him to do all that bad stuff. The jury wasn’t buying it and neither was Hanging Harry.
On March 21, 1939, the jury foreman, 42-year-old Margaret Skeen, read the verdict to the court. Guilty, with a recommendation for death, she announced.
“You lousy bitch,” Petrillo snarled as he lunged toward the jury foreman. However, guards quickly restrained him and the judge banged his gavel in an attempt to bring order back to the courtroom. When the courtroom settled down, Judge McDevitt congratulated the jurors.
“You can see how mean and vicious this man is,” he told the jurors. “You now realize that was the only verdict you could have returned.” He then sentenced Herman Petrillo to die in Pennsylvania’s electric chair. Following the verdict, defense attorney Leidner stood up and apologized to the court.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wouldn’t have defended this man had I known he was such scum.”
Further inquiry would follow. Upon the conclusion of the trial, investigators announced that 70 bodies would be exhumed and examined for signs of arsenic.
But Little Herman wasn’t finished. In an effort to escape the electric chair, he agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. By May 21, 1939, 21 more arrests were made in connection with the poison ring. As the investigation continued, detectives discovered that Herman Petrillo and Bolber also had a matrimonial agency, which was apparently created in order to find new husbands for widows of their victims. Upon finding a new mate, the recent widows would marry and then take out life insurance policies on their new spouses. Afterwards, it was up to the members of the ring to do away with the insured and collect the money.
On May 25, 1939, Morris Bolber pled guilty to murder, possibly hoping that his plea would earn him a lesser sentence. His plan worked and he was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment. A few months later, in September 1939, Paul Petrillo also pled guilty.
Nevertheless, Paul was not quite as nimble as Bolber and was sentenced to die in the electric chair. But the last major player in the poison ring, the Witch, Maria Favato, also drew a life sentence. In the end, 13 men and women besides Bolber and the Petrillos were either convicted of or pled guilty to first-degree murder. All of these convicted killers served long sentences, the shortest being not less than 14 years in prison.
Paul Petrillo died in the electric chair in April 1941.
Seven months later, Herman Petrillo, who was involved in maybe a hundred murders, died like a coward. When his rubbery legs failed him, guards dragged the weeping man to the death chamber, forced him into the chair and forcibly bent his arms in order to strap him in. He made several attempts to stand up and had to be held in place while other guards fastened the straps.
“Gentlemen, you don’t want to see an innocent man die!” he cried. “Give me a chance to prove my innocence. I want to see the governor.”
They didn’t and turned on the juice.
Thirteen years later, on February 15, 1954, Morris Bolber died of natural causes while awaiting his third parole petition. The Witch got off with life in prison, but also died within prison walls. Some of the wives went to prison; others got off for testifying for the state against Bolber, the Petrillo cousins and the Witch. The last of these lovely ladies passed away in the 1960’s, bringing to an end the episode that is still known in South Philadelphia as “Arsenic Incorporated.”
The Case of the Philandering Family Doctor
…in which a Romeo loves ’em and leaves ’em… dead.
Doctor Henry Meyer practiced medicine in a comfortable, middle-class German neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side in the dying years of the nineteenth century. A better than average general practitioner, Doctor Meyer might have rounded out his life cycle in a fairly normal manner but for one thing. He was an incurable woman chaser.
The doctor’s wife, Lena, like himself a native of Germany, was a docile, self-effacing hausfrau who had been his childhood sweetheart but who had for some years now been a sort of unnecessary appendage to her husband’s amatory progress. Mrs. Meyer never complained about even the more brazen infidelities of the doctor, though if she wasn’t aware of what was going on, she had one of the worst cases of undiagnosed astigmatism in medical history.
The doctor was about forty. He was a frail-looking undersized man with a wizened face and thinning cinnamon-colored hair. It was his eyes and his clothes that got the women. His eyes were blue, with just a tinge of violet, and when, from behind silver-rimmed glasses, they focused on a current object of the chase, the lady’s better instincts, if she had any, usually went out the window.
Women, at a loss to explain the physician’s hold over them, used to sigh and say that they guessed Dr. Meyer had hypnotized them. Without knowing it, they had discerned a considerable portion of the truth.
Meyer had, after his graduation from medical college in Leipzig, studied hypnotism in Chicago under Professor Herbert Flint, one of the celebrated hypnotists of the era. So far as is known, he never utilized hypnotism as a therapeutic agent, but reserved it for his personal use. It must have been a potent force in combination with the persistent single-mindedness of a self-centered person in gaining what he wanted, for Dr. Meyer, far from ministering to the ailments of humanity in an unselfish spirit, was a vain and mercenary practitioner. He had one of the most spectacular wardrobes in the Middle West. He owned enough haberdashery to open a shop, and his collection of walking sticks anticipated every, possible whim.
It was the Inverness cape, however, that really set the little man apart. Meyer had a dozen Inverness capes, the only difference in them being the color of the lining. Some were lined in white silk, some in black, some in deep blue and still others in various shades of red. It would have been possible for an alert observer to have guessed the physician’s mood from the color of the lining of a given Inverness as Meyer minced through the streets of the North Side on a winter night, his last patient out of the way and some woman waiting for him.
The doctor engaged in occasional potation in a neighborhood saloon—an establishment owned and operated by a big man named Henry Geldermann. Herr Geldermann’s principal claim to renown was that he could slide a foaming stein of beer father along a mahogany bar, without spilling a drop, than any other bartender on the North Side. Geldermann was also a pioneer among users of the whisky glass with the false bottom, and partly as a result of such path finding, he had long enjoyed a cordial relationship with the receiving tellers of a local German-American bank. His fortune, in fact, was known to be in the neighborhood of $75,000.
Geldermann’s wife, Ida, was a middle-aged blonde. In the normal course of events, it is highly improbable that Dr. Meyer would have looked at Ida a second time, for she was not attractive. However, the fact that Meyer was badly pressed for money—a normal state with him, since he bought lavish gifts for his women—coupled with the fact that Mrs. Geldermann would, in the event of her husband’s demise, come into a handsome competence, threw a different and highly intriguing light on the woman.
When, in casual conversation with Ida Geldermann in the tables-for-ladies section of her husband’s saloon, the physician learned that Mrs. Geldermann was restless because her spouse was more interested in his bank balance than in her, the first faint shadows of coming events began to fall. Dr. Meyer suddenly appeared to be solicitous of Henry Geldermann’s health. Geldermann insisted that he felt wonderful. Meyer shook his head doubtfully and said he would not be responsible for the consequences if Geldermann didn’t come to his office for a thorough examination. Meyer found so many things wrong with the saloonkeeper, by way of beginning treatment, that Geldermann wondered how he had ever reached the age of forty-five. In two months Henry Geldermann was dead from what his physician described as “complications.” Dr. Meyer permitted a respectable length of time to elapse and then declared his love for Geldermann’s widow.
“But you are married,” said Ida Geldermann.
“I won’t be much longer,” said the doctor. He explained that his wife’s health had for some time been deteriorating, despite his utmost professional efforts, and that the end was not far off. Nor was it. Lena Meyer passed away one night with only her husband at her bedside. After the funeral, her brother, who had always held the doctor in something less than esteem, called at the Meyer home to have a talk with the physician. The brother wanted to know why, if his sister had been so sick, her relatives had not been advised until after her death. Getting no response to his summons at the front door, the brother forced his way into the house. He discovered Dr. Meyer and a pretty young lady in the very bedroom where Lena Meyer had died seventy-two hours before. Such behavior on the part of the doctor hardly squared with his protestations at the graveside that life without Lena would be hardly worth living. In the meantime, several brothers and sisters of Henry Geldermann were just recovering from the shock of having found themselves specifically excluded from the saloonkeeper’s will. Dr. Meyer, it developed, had prevailed upon his patient to have a new deathbed document drawn up. Everything, it now developed, was left to the widow. It was inevitable that the brother of Mrs. Meyer and the kin of Henry Geldermann would get together, compare notes, and become suspicious. When they relayed their suspicions to the Cook County State’s Attorney, exhumations were ordered.
Thus it was found that each body contained a suspicious amount of strychnine.
Preparations for the nuptials of Dr. Meyer and the widow Geldermann were rudely interrupted, when both were indicted for murder. Meyer was charged with the death of his wife and of Geldermann. Mrs. Geldermann was charged with aiding Meyer in the fatal poisoning of her husband.
The physician had a visitor an hour after he was clapped in jail—a sharp-eyed, white-haired gentleman with a strong breath and dandruff on the collar of his blue serge suit. The caller was a lawyer who was known far and wide as “Habeas Corpus” O’Brien. He was a clever legal hawk with an unerring eye for a loophole.
O’Brien gravely listened to Dr. Meyer protesting his innocence, and that of his bride-to-be.
“I’ll take the case,” he said bluntly, “for a down payment of five thousand dollars.”
“I don’t have that much money,” said Dr. Meyer. The barrister glared at Meyer.
“Get it,” he advised, “from Mrs. Geldermann.”
O’Brien, his retainer pocketed, excavated ancient, obscure and interpreted statutes and fashioned habeas corpus proceedings of them. For weeks, no judge in Chicago could feel safe in banging his gavel for the opening of court without running the risk of having to listen to a motion by Meyer’s solicitor.
When the air was finally cleared of oratory, argument and foolscap, the case against Ida Geldermann, not too strong in the first place, had been nol-prossed. Dr. Meyer was released on moderate bail.
Dr. Meyer and Ida Geldermann promptly married. Now O’Brien obtained delay after delay in Meyer’s trial. His game, found sound by many a criminal lawyer, was that the more time that could be put between the commission of a crime and the trial of the person who committed it, the greater the chance of prosecution evidence weakening through fading memories or a switch in public sentiment. Then there was always the chance of that happiest of all events: the death of a prosecution witness.
O’Brien, who possessed the instincts of a public-relations counselor, now decided to make Dr. Meyer a hero instead of a villain. Since all of Chica
go was thoroughly convinced that the little medico was dripping with guilt, O’Brien’s job was not an easy one.
O’Brien asked Meyer, “Are you any good at treating kids?”
“I’ve never treated children,” said Meyer.
“From now on,” said O’Brien, “you are specializing in them, especially crippled kids. Treat them free of charge and see that everybody knows about it.”
A curious thing happened. Meyer seemed to have an almost supernatural touch with children. Several boys and girls who had been crippled for years walked again after he manipulated their joints. In a matter of months, his renown spread the length and breadth of the city. Other doctors brought difficult cases to him, often with highly satisfactory results. Superstitious folk in the foreign neighborhoods looked upon the little man who stood accused of murder as a great healer, a sort of miracle man. Some days the halt and the lame were lined up for half a block from his office.
Dr. Meyer arose, phoenix-like, from his own ashes. Fellow physicians interceded for him with the State’s Attorney’s office, asking that the indictment against him be dismissed. Sentiment on the part of parents whose children Dr. Meyer had treated free of charge was crystallized by O’Brien. Large delegations camped in the corridors of the Cook County Court House and picketed the homes of assistant state’s attorneys. They chanted poems and catch phrases, demanding that Dr. Meyer be cleared.
The State’s Attorney’s office, carefully considering the problem, realized that the chances were slim indeed of drawing a jury that would convict a man of Dr. Meyer’s new status. It was considerably more difficult to prove a poison charge then, than it has been in recent years. So, the murder charge against Dr. Meyer was dropped.
Dr. Meyer had gone to considerable trouble to reach a position whereby he was married to a wealthy woman. But while he had been a success publicly, he had been a dismal failure privately. His second wife, it turned out, had decided to hold onto her money. He had tried everything he could think of, including hypnotism, to pry her loose from it. But he met with nothing but rebuffs.