Murderers, Scoundrels and Ragamuffins

by Richard Sullivan

  They quickly downed their beers at Austin Crowe’s place and one of the young men pulled out a nickel and slapped it on the bar.

  “‘Night,” he said.

  “Wait a minute there, you owe me 15 more cents!” the saloonkeeper bellowed. Crowe was a large powerfully built man, age 38, unmarried, one of ten children. He was known to neither take any guff from anyone nor ever to back down from a threat. He was tremendously well-liked in the ward and had not a single enemy. He was fair and kind and dependable. He gave money to charity. He helped his brothers and sisters whenever his aid was requested and often even when it was left unsaid. He had an interest in local politics. He had never been arrested nor even suspected of any crime.

  “Just try and get your 15 cents!” challenged one of the young men.

  “All right, then go, get outa here, and don’t never come back!” Crowe bellowed.

  For whatever reason the young men did not leave, provoking Crowe to remove them forcefully. He came from behind the bar to escort them out when revolvers were produced and shots were fired. Crowe shouted for help as he fell to the floor. Three of the four intruders immediately skedaddled, closing the door behind them. A fourth hesitated, and not wanting to leave any witness that might identify him, he bent over the groaning Austin Crowe lying injured on his back, inserted the barrel of his .38 into the corner of the victim’s mouth and pulled the trigger. Teeth and brains flew in all directions. Then, for some unknown reason, as the closed door was not locked, the shooter dove head first right through the plate glass and there became stuck. Across the street witnesses stood in their doorways transfixed. Only one electric street light illuminated the dark night. The stuck youth kicked himself free and with pistol smoking and seeing no sign of his accomplices, accosted Owen Keefe who was standing in the street.

  A number of people were outside enjoying the warm Saturday night. No one recalled seeing the foursome enter Crowe’s. The clearest account was given by Keefe.

  “I noticed nothin’ ‘til I heard a shot fired, followed by cries of ‘Help! Help!’ Then there was the sound of scufflin’ fer two or three seconds. Then more shots. A moment later three men burst through the door and the fourth sprang through one o’ the front windows. Three o’ the men run up Chicago Street toward Perry. The fourth, the one who got himself stuck, started in another direction, but soon turned, and shouting said, ‘Which way did those fellows go?’ It looked to me like he mighta thought the other three had done him up, so I pointed their direction and he followed ‘em. I did not go into the saloon at once as I was somewhat gun-scared. But after a few minutes I entered the place. Crowe was lyin’ there on his back in the middle of the floor in a pool of blood. He lived for twenty minutes afterwards but at all times he was unconscious.”

  ◆◆◆

  It was one o’clock in the morning. The telephone rang at Detective Jim Sullivan’s house. He had already long been asleep. Hannah startled at the intrusion. “I should have known,” she groaned. Jim had been cuddled up to her back and she had been sleeping like a baby. “Sorry,” he said. “Go back to sleep.” Jim padded out to the front hallway and picked up the phone.

  “Sullivan here,” he said while yawning.

  “Jim, it’s me, Pat. It’s serious. Austin’s been shot. He’s dead.”

  “Fucking Christ!” he exclaimed softly. “Austin Crowe? Are you sure?”

  “Sure as death. We need you. Meet us at his saloon.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Jim went back to his bedroom.

  “What is it?” asked Hannah groggily.

  “Austin Crowe got shot. He’s dead, Hannah.”

  “Oh no! My God! What happened? Who would ever shoot such a lovely man?” Hannah and Austin had attended school together.

  “Don’t know. But I intend on finding out.”

  Jim showed up at Crowe’s saloon to find Chief Pat Cusak and Detective Kennedy inspecting the scene. There was such a huge pool of blood that every last drop most assuredly had drained from poor Austin Crowe’s body. A nickel lay in the puddle. $65 in cash was secured inside his vest pocket. Based on Keefe’s descriptions of the four suspects and the fact they escaped up Chicago Street in the direction of the railroad tracks it was at first assumed they had hopped a freight to get out of town. Their physical descriptions were immediately sent to all Western New York communities surrounding.

  “First little Marian Murphy, and now the very next day, Austin Crowe,” Jim mourned. Between the two cases, the police were sent scrambling.

  “What is happening here in our city?” alarmed citizens asked.

  In the following hours and days indiscriminate arrests were made. That any of those apprehended were the murderers was by no means certain. Four men were arrested in Attica where they were taken from an Erie Railroad freight train. Word was sent to Buffalo that the men were being detained there and Detective Sergeants Kennedy and Sullivan were sent after them. The arrestees were brought to the headquarters and locked up. Dirty and dressed as the hobos they were, they bore no resemblance at all to the descriptions provided. No matter. Soon dozens of suspects were crowded together in the freezer, loudly protesting their unwarranted arrests. The police felt perfectly within their rights despite the U.S. Constitution’s strongly suggesting otherwise.

  A patrolman was detailed to watch the Crowe property. A crowd of morbidly curious persons congregated on the opposite corners and craned their necks to get a glimpse of the interior of the place, hoping for blood. There was a small placard pasted to the window of the store and saloon which said, “Closed on account of the death of Austin Joseph Crowe.”

  Mildred Sullivan

  ◆◆◆

  It had been a difficult pregnancy; the birth even more so. Alderman John P. Sullivan’s wife was rushed to the General Hospital when the bleeding could not be thwarted by the midwife. Annie had lost confidence in Dr. Dooley from Louisiana Street for reasons she would not explain. The Alderman had chalked it all up to hormones. Annie insisted on birthing at home as she had always. “The hospital seems such an undue place to give birth,” she said. “Pushing out the life that had been conceived in the very same bed was only the natural thing to do.” Concerned, JP conducted a wide search for a midwife of spotless repute. He was immediately suspicious of the one most highly regarded. “She’s a goddamned Cossack, for Christ’s sake!” the Alderman protested. She turned out to be a good choice regardless. She knew just what to do when Annie got into trouble.

  Annie’s mother Jane Saulter was present. She had attended all her daughter’s previous births. Jane could not handle upset or difficult situations at all well. She habitually manipulated the heavy crystal rosary beads permanently wrapped around her fingers. Her Driscoll brothers were undertakers. She loved them. They repulsed her. She regarded them as vultures in waiting. But towards her they had always been kind and generous. Now came that old Russian. Oksana was her name. She rubbed Jane the wrong way. “My goodness! Wrappin’ infants tighter in swaddle than sausages! It’s a torture!” exclaimed Jane. She didn’t approve of it. “I’m tellin’ ye Annie, that foreign woman’s all cockeyed!”

  Annie loved her mother. She just laughed.

  Oksana had convinced Annie that a little laudanum might help her through. Annie told this to her sister-in-law Hannah, wife of the Detective. Hannah was alarmed. “If you’re doped up you mightn’t be able to properly push!” Hannah fretted. Annie decided, having already birthed seven, each one just as large and difficult as the previous, that she would sample it anyway. None of her babies had weighed less than eight pounds. Daniel had weighed in at nearly ten. She was sore for weeks after that one. Hannah wondered sometime later hearing Annie’s account if perhaps the drug had masked the warning signs. She didn’t want Annie to suffer the same losses she herself had.

  Annie already decided to name the little girl Mildred.

  “Mildred?” exclaimed Hannah. “Whatever on earth for? We don’t even know anybody named Mildred.” The Al
derman didn’t care. He didn’t give a hoot anymore. He had insisted on naming the four oldest, but as babies continued popping out of his wife like Swiss clockwork he’d lost interest in their designations.

  Brass Buttons, Blue Coat

  ◆◆◆

  The cops hadn’t a clue. Marian Murphy’s mother and father insisted the family had no enemies. Their neighbors agreed. So the Buffalo Police did the only logical thing; they began arresting Negroes.

  James Wright, age 22, was arrested at The Front. Patrolman Connolly of the Niagara Street Station found the Negro haunting the woman’s shelter house in Niagara Park. This arrest was only one incident in the general Negro hunt throughout the city. Wherever a black man was seen who appeared in any degree suspicious he was questioned. Unless he could give a good account of himself the order was to arrest him.

  The local children who’d played with Marian were interviewed. They were frightened. One by one they claimed no perceived threats by anyone in the vicinity.Until the police asked Siobhán Lambert.

  She said, “Maybe the Chinaman done it.”

  At the same moment a milkman reported to police something suspicious. Arthur Goatsey’s route included the street where the Chinese laundry sits. He reported on July 1st that back on June 18th, the day after Marian disappeared at 4 o’clock on that morning he saw a Chinaman in night clothes look cautiously out of the door of the Wei Laundry and then run and deposit a bundle in a garbage can. Chief of Detectives Pat Cusak brightened at finally having a solid lead to follow. He was determined to see where that clue might take things.

  He set out from the Niagara Street Police Station accompanied by Detectives Sullivan and Lynch. News reporters tailed after them. Passing Pennsylvania Street they encountered Detectives Coughlin and Cornish and motioned them to follow. They all met up at 285 Hudson St. The Wei laundry was located on the ground floor of a two story frame house. Cusak decided they must act quickly. The list of unsolved and mishandled crimes and insinuations of police misconduct had cast a pall over the city. People no longer trusted the police to protect them. Cusak concluded that such a dangerous public opinion might be reversed by clever and decisive action regarding the Marian Murphy case.

  The neighborhood children had a long history of visiting the Chinaman Wei, even when there was no laundry to be take there. He gave them gifts of nuts and straight pins and told them stories of whence his people came. Strange sounding places: Peking, Nanjing, Chonqing. He was kind. He rarely had a cross word for the children unless disrespected, such as when his accent or gait were cruelly mocked.

  Ed Stanton was at the patrol wagon’s reins along with his dog Mush. Stanton was the department’s most expert driver and one of the founding members of the Mutual Rowing Club. He pulled tightly on the leather restraints. The locking wheels screeched, sending dust and Mush flying. Mush shook it off with a single yelp. Stanton scolded, “Hush, Mush,”and laughed at his little rhyme. The dog obediently maintained silence. On the heels of Cusak and the Detectives arrived the gaggle of newspaper reporters. The police stormed the laundry. They had no search warrant. They just burst in. Owner Charlie Wei asked Cusak what was wanted. Cusak did not tell him. Charlie Wei assumed they had found out about his harboring of illegal Chinamen and said, “I know what you police want. These two Chilee up stair, just from Canada, they run away.” This was an admission of guilt of violation of the federal law pertaining to the smuggling of alien nationals into the United States. Specials were called in to assist. Wei was detained. The detectives fanned out, the reporters in hot pursuit. Jim Sullivan bounded up the stairs. There he saw the smuggled Chinamen looking scared. They had paid a large sum to enter the United States. It was an uncomplicated operation in fact. The runners enjoyed a very high success rate crossing the narrow end of Lake Erie from the Point Abino lighthouse in Ontario in some unassuming fishing craft. The human bounty was boldly offloaded in South Buffalo at the Lehigh Pier in full view of the Sullivan Ice Company facility on the Hamburg Turnpike. Canadian lakefront dwellers made a lucrative sum conducting this operation. These new arrivals to Buffalo could find safe refuge close by in Michigan Street’s little Chinatown.

  Sullivan searched the upstairs rooms, his crafty instincts at a high pitch. He discovered a valise made of imitation leather. He opened it. Two revolvers. Some familiar-looking rope. A piece of cloth that struck him as appearing much like the cloth found wrapped around Marian Murphy’s body. There were spots on the cloth that looked like the remains of blood that had been washed out. Jim studied it. The cloth also had stains of marking ink, just as did the cloth wrapped around the child. He was excited by the similarities in the evidence. However, the cloth appeared very dirty, so if blood had been washed out wouldn’t also have been the dirt? Maybe not. Maybe it got dirty after the blood was washed out, he speculated. They all discussed it. A bed was torn apart. In order to examine the mattress in the dusk of the room a match was lighted. A spot of some reddish liquid was found on the wallpaper back of the bed dribbling down in two streams to the top of the mop board. The stains were dried. They resembled blood. “There was where that poor child was killed!” stated Detective Cornish definitively in an awed tone. The other officers lit matches and studied the stain attentively. It was maroon, the color of blood about a week old. “That’s blood all right,” exclaimed Chief Cusak. They ripped the wallpaper off the wall to take with them as evidence.

  A Chinese coat shirt was pulled from a nail on the wall. The right sleeve was polka-dotted with small red dots and a large red smear. The Detectives examined the spots closely. “It’s blood,” was their verdict. Captain Kilroy of the Niagara Street Station arrived at this point and Chief Cusak greeted him with the announcement, “I think we have the right man, Kilroy! As sure as fate!”

  The search continued with renewed intensity. Sullivan headed for the cellar. A spade leaned against a wall there. Jim paced the cellar in a grid pattern. His eyes stayed glued to the ground which explains how he knocked his head on a beam. “Ouch.” Then once more. “Ouch! God damn it! Look where you’re goin’, Sully!” he berated himself.” At one spot the soil had been newly disturbed. He took the spade and began digging. Down he went until he hit an ash deposit. The gas in the stoves was turned off to safely search the ashes for traces of the dress and shoes worn by the child.

  “Look at this!” he shouted. Fragments of burned cloth excited the Detectives. They assumed these were Marian’s clothes, burned and buried to hide evidence of the horrible deed. At 5 o’clock the search was discontinued temporarily and the officers went to headquarters to report. “Looks like you got the right man,” Superintendent Bull proclaimed once the officers had summed up their theory. Bull was quite sure that he’d have the whole deal wrapped up in a jiffy.

  The news spread. Huge crowds of curiosity seekers showed up at the Wei laundry that evening, July 1st. Police said the throng numbered at least 4,000 people. At first, in the afternoon, the police detail was able to keep order. But when quitting time came, workers abandoned the streetcars they were riding home on when the trolleys passed the laundry. Seeing the place crawling with cops and looky-loos the passengers were told that this was the place little Marian Murphy was murdered. Most got off to investigate for themselves. After Charlie Wei had been arrested the police allowed news reporters to scour the property. Newsmen crowded the laundry, going over every inch, picking up and examining every rag and scrap. They were given one hour to freely search, touch and disassemble. After this they were asked to leave. Chief Cusak then resumed his search for evidence, finishing up whatever investigating he had left to do. It didn’t seem to occur to police that allowing reporters to free-range through a possible crime scene might compromise things just a bit. Upon Cusak’s finally leaving the laundry, a police detail was assigned there to guard the premises against souvenir hunters. Their orders were to not allow anyone inside. This duty proved a difficult one considering the huge crowds milling about. Additionally the original detectives themselves milled ab
out: Sullivan, Lynch, Cornish and Coughlin surveying the scene, scrutinizing faces in the crowd.

  “I’ve read in the Police Gazette,” stated Jim Sullivan,”how the detectives in New York City have a proven theory that the criminal always returns to the scene of his crime. We need to be vigilant of everyone out there.”

  He didn’t say so, but he also scanned the crowd for anyone fitting the descriptions of the killers of Austin Crowe.

  Four little neighborhood girls approached Sullivan as he stood just inside the door. “You can’t come in here,” he told them.

  One asked, “Mister, can you tell me why all these people are here for?”

  Jim responded, “This is where little Marian Murphy may have been murdered.” The little girl began to cry.

  “I know. It’s too bad,” Jim said, “but she’s in Heaven with Jesus now.”

  “I hope so,” sobbed the little girl, “she’s my sister.”

  Jim’s heart plummeted. “What’s your name?” he asked gently.

  “Angeline Murphy,” she responded.

  “I’m so sorry Angeline. I know how upset you must be.”

  “Yes sir. We all are.”

  “Come with me, sweetheart, will you? Are you all right now?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Jim brought her inside the house. He asked her to look around the place and identify anything she might recognize that belonged to her dead sister.

  “If there’s a stocking or a skirt or anything of hers here, I’ll be able to tell it,” she assured him as she was led through. After a few minutes’ search Angeline said, “I don’t think that Chinaman did it.”

  “Oh? Why not?” Jim asked curiously.

  “Because he is such a nice man. We used to come here. He used to give us pins and things like that. Charlie wouldn’t kill my sister. He’s nice. I just know he wouldn’t.”