Murderers, Scoundrels and Ragamuffins

by Richard Sullivan

  The Trial Of Young Charles Green

  ◆◆◆

  As Detective Jim Sullivan sat in the jam-packed courtroom anxiously awaiting the verdict, he recalled the beautiful trip he’d taken out West that first week in August. The children had begged to come along.

  “You know very well I cannot bring you with me on police business!” he responded.

  He had sat hypnotized and wide-eyed for hundreds of miles as the train climbed through the Alpine meadows and awe-inspiring canyons of the colorful Colorado Rockies. So completely different was it from Buffalo, especially in contrast to the grimy, smoky, swarming First Ward. He fantasized uprooting his family and beginning anew in the clean mountain air in a cabin by a clear-running icy stream.

  Flowers bloomed for as far as the eye could see. It was early August, yet snow still covered the mountains’ peaks. He stayed riveted to the window for hours. His mission in Colorado was to take into custody a seventeen year old boy named Charles Green who had been arrested in Denver. Green was believed to be the murderer of saloonkeep Austin Crowe. Jim thought it only right and proper that he be the officer chosen to drag the little bastard’s ass back to Buffalo to face the consequences of murdering his friend and neighbor.

  Green had been released from the Reform School in Rochester the morning of the murder and immediately headed for Buffalo. His parents and siblings lived over on Cherry Street but he did not visit them. He had been incarcerated in Rochester for absconding with a tray of diamond rings from a jeweler on Genesee Street while his two accomplices distracted the proprietor.

  Charles Green was the youngest person ever indicted in Erie County on a charge of murder in the first degree. Justice Kenefick stated that the only parallel case that had been recorded in his memory was the trial of Sadie McMulIen, who in a fit of menstrual insanity threw two small children seventy feet into Murder Creek from the West Shore Railroad trestle in Akron. One child, age six, survived to testify against her at her trial. Sadie was not fully 18 years of age at the time of the crime. She was decreed insane due to the innumerable congenital marriages of her forebearers. She was locked up in a mental institution for barely more than two years before being released scot-free. Her emancipation papers had been validated by a rubber stamp at the top in bold red ink announcing victoriously, “Reason Restored.”

  Green was exceptionally good-looking. His blond, blue eyed features were as delicate as a girl’s. All the newspapers described him in that manner. His personality was engaging and forthright. His looks and personality easily won him both friends and defenders. Students of character by the wildest stretch of imagination could not class the boy’s face as a bad one. On the contrary; his open countenance and his apparently sincere effort to answer directly and in a straightforward manner every question that was put to him in the merciless cross-examination conducted by Assistant District Attorney Ticknor impressed favorably everyone in the courtroom.

  Green cheerily took the stand in his own defense. He testified over two days. He was gently, carefully led through his testimony by his attorney Mr. Fennelly.

  He testified that he was 17 years old and that on June 28th after he had been in the reform school at Rochester for four months, he was discharged. He said that he left the school between 9 and 10 o’clock in the morning. He had been supplied with a suit of clothes from the institution and $1.50 in cash. With this he bought a ticket for Buffalo, arriving in this city between 1 and 2 p.m. He went at once to the Newsboys’ Home on Franklin Street, where he met two boys of about his own age, named Hardy and Curry. All three went out to meet another boy by the name of O’Keefe. They stood talking for a time in Main Street and then went swimming at the foot of Georgia Street. They went back to the Newsboys’ Home between 5 and 6 o’clock that evening. Curry went home and Hardy and Green went to Foley’s restaurant and had supper, Hardy paying for both.

  After leaving the restaurant they sat in front of the Crystal Water Company’s place next door to the Newsboys’ Home. They remained there until about 7 o’clock, at which time they were again joined by O’Keefe. They went then to a restaurant in Pearl Street where O’Keefe bought ice cream for all. They accompanied Hardy into a tailor shop at No. 16 Court Street where Hardy bought Green a pair of pants. All of the party then went back to the Newsboys’ Home and later went to the Academy of Music where they witnessed a performance of “Hoodman Blind.” Hardy bought tickets for himself and his companions in the gallery. There they encountered Charles Weisenfelter, who asked Green how Wiesenfelter’s brother was getting along at the reform school. Green lied that he was doing well and said he was likely to be soon released.

  After leaving the theater they accompanied O’Keefe to a barber shop on the Terrace where he got shaved. A little after 11 o’clock Hardy and Green returned to the Newsboys’ Home. Hardy fixed it with the night watchman so that Green could stay all night. Green slept in the second bed from the window and Hardy slept opposite. O’Keefe came in later and woke them up and Green asked him for some cigarettes. O’Keefe said he hadn’t any, that he had given up smoking them. Then both boys went to sleep and did not get up until after 9 o’clock Sunday morning.

  At this point in the boy’s testimony, Green was permitted by his counsel to state that he had not visited Austin Crowe’s saloon at any time during his stay in Buffalo. He claimed he didn’t even know where in the city Chicago and Fulton Streets were located.

  Resuming his story, Green stated that the following day he visited his sister after O’Keefe had bought him his dinner. Then he went back to the Newsboys’ Home, where he met Bobby Masten, who gave him a nickel. In Seneca Street he met another boy by the name of Doyle who lived in Toronto. Doyle asked Green to go to the former’s home in Toronto and they jumped on a freight train at the Terrace and were taken there over the International Bridge. After remaining for several days at Doyle’s home on Wellington Avenue in Toronto, both boys started for the Far West. They crossed Southern Ontario to Port Huron, and from there down to South Bend. In a box car at South Bend they met Richards, who later was jointly indicted with Green for murder. They also met a fellow, Green claimed, named Gunnion. Doyle said that Gunnion had remarked something about killing a man in Buffalo. He and Doyle left the others at Omaha, boarding a passenger train, which was ditched at Phillipsburg. He learned later that Gunnion had stayed behind in Omaha. When he arrived in Denver, Green stated that he slept in a barn the first night and that he met up with Richards the following morning. He said that he went out to look for a job and while on the lookout for it he was arrested.

  As Jim sat in the courtroom listening to Green’s hours-long testimony he grew impatient. He wondered how Green, completely unfamiliar with Denver, was able to so easily locate Richards the following day after being separated, and why they separated in the first place having just arrived in a place unfamiliar to both. He assumed, wrongly it turned out, that this obvious question would be asked by the Prosecutor upon cross examination.

  Two witnesses to the shooters’ escape the night of Austin Crowe’s murder had each separately picked Green out of a lineup of five boys as the person who dove though the pane of glass at Crowe’s saloon. Other witnesses in the saloons visited by the four murderers previous to Crowe’s murder also positively identified Green. Only one witness, a female, was doubtful. She said she thought Green was younger and shorter in stature than the man she saw dive through the glass window. Green smiled an angelic smile at her numerous times while she testified on the stand. She smiled back. No mention was made of wounds or scars found on Green as would be expected for someone crashing through a glass window, then struggling to free himself from the shards.

  Jim was mystified by the generosity of Green’s friends who themselves should not have had the money to buy him his meals, take him to the theater, give him coins, get a shave, buy a new pair of pants and all the rest. The prosecutor asked about none of these kindnesses nor did he postulate where boys living in an institution like the Newsboys’ Home wo
uld get ahold of money so freely spent. Jim’s detective intuition told him the boys were procuring money by illegal means. He had plenty of opportunity to observe the comings and goings at the Newsboys’ Home since it was located at 29 Franklin Street, directly across from Police Headquarters. It was a house of four floors with a mansard roof. Mrs. Coke, an Englishwoman, ran it like a tight ship. Cleanliness was paramount. If a new homeless boy sought admission, he would be stripped of his bug-infested clothing and the items burned. Then he was put straight into the bathtub for a thorough scrubbing. The place was not free of charge. $1.75 a week was levied the boys for lodging. The strict rules did not sit well with many who had come to prefer their previous unmonitored existence on the streets. Those willing to adhere to the rules had to be in bed by 10 p.m. except on Saturdays when they could stay out until 11 p.m. They were required to attend an evening school and a Sunday school. No liquor, tobacco, or bad language was tolerated. The Home established savings banks for each resident. Deposits were optional on the part of the boy. Once $5 was accumulated, a bank account at a proper institution was opened for the boy stipulating he not withdraw the money for three months.

  Boys who did not want to live with their families or in the Newsboys’ Home slept on tables in the basement of the Buffalo Times and other newspapers as ragamuffins. In 1903 a survey was conducted. Buffalo had 700 newsboys at the time. 328 were interviewed. 126 of these were under the age of ten and most of these younger boys were Italians. Out of the 328 only 8 were orphans. The majority were required by their parents to work. Many of their parents had comfortable bank accounts. The Italians were the most egregious in this. Traditionally Italian fathers with rare exceptions did not work from the first of November to the first of May. They left Buffalo for the country on May first to earn enough there to support them for the rest of the year. Then on the first of November they returned to some overcrowded tenement to enjoy six months’ rest, forcing boys as young as six out onto the frigid streets to help the family make a living. It was demanded they make certain daily returns or face a beating upon arriving home. Life on the street had its exciting allure for boys; so too did its dangers. Quite a few reported having been abused sexually. Many became adept at thievery, pickpocketing and other crimes. Jim Sullivan supposed this is how Charles Green’s friends were able to be so generous to him. Sullivan sat in the courtroom surrounded by the friends of Austin Crowe of whom there were legions. All came to see justice be done. After Green’s attorney had showcased his clients inestimable qualities, Prosecutor Ticknor then took the youthful prisoner in hand and tried in every conceivable manner to confuse him as to his movements from the time he left the reform school until he was placed under arrest in Denver. He did not succeed in weakening the story of the witness a single particle. During the entire trying drawn-out ordeal the boy never flinched or betrayed the slightest symptom of being disconcerted. He was by far the best witness that has been introduced by the defense. It was over by 3 o’clock. The jury returned five hours later.

  “Not guilty,” stated the foreman. There had been three rounds of balloting. On the first ballot it was eight to four in favor of acquittal. On the second it was ten to two. On the third it was a unanimous verdict.

  The murder itself, the hunt for the killers and Charles Green’s arrest in Denver had all been headline news spread across multiple columns on the front page of the Buffalo Evening News. Green’s acquittal in contrast was relegated to page five in a single column in that same newspaper. When foreman Darius Cook announced the verdict, Green’s sister, who was in the rear of the court room, gave a hysterical shriek and embraced another young woman standing near her. Austin Crowe’s nine adult siblings were all present. They shouted their protests loudly through bitter tears. The judge called for quiet. Green himself took the verdict calmly.

  Before discharging the young man, Justice Kenefick lectured him on his bad record.

  “I have seriously considered sentencing you under the charge of burglary for which sentence is now suspended on you,” said he. “It appears from your own testimony that instead of going home when you got back from Rochester you sought out your old cronies. You roamed about this country for a month, begging a living, instead of working. I have decided not to sentence you at this time, but if word comes to me while I am in Criminal Term that you are loafing about the city I shall have you brought in and will sentence you to imprisonment. You are discharged.”

  Detective Jim Sullivan rose. It was another crushing loss for the Department. Jim knew in his gut the manipulative little charmer was guilty. Green’s accomplice Richards would surely not be tried now, as no jury would find him guilty after this. Another terrible crime would go unsolved, this one especially close to the hearts of all First Warders. Now all he wanted to do was go to the Mutuals’ clubhouse and drink three or four or five beers to try and ease his troubled mind.

  Character Assassination

  ◆◆◆

  It was the rarest kind of Sunday afternoon—Jim Sullivan had the entire house to himself. This was not necessarily a productive thing. He searched for something that might take his racing mind off all the police troubles. He wondered what life might have been like if he were no longer a cop, if he had pressured his brother the Alderman in his younger days to use his influence to obtain for him a promising situation elsewhere, in business, or perhaps in finance.

  Hannah was away at her pedro club. The weekly card game with the girls offered a dependable reprieve from her enduring melancholia. She was excited today to meet the newest member, Ruth McGowan. Hannah hadn’t been introduced to the woman previously, but Mary Sweeney spoke highly of her and of her intelligence.

  Junior was up on Mackinaw Street visiting that Diggins girl. He’d taken Zeke along. Mary Ellen Diggins was not one of Jim’s favorite people. For one, she didn’t like dogs. She thought too highly of herself and resented anything that might divert attention away from her person. She treated her sibling Josephine more like her personal assistant than a sister. Jim believed his son could do better.

  Nellie had taken her baby brother David with her to her friend’s birthday party. She was delighting in having a little sibling to spoil, having lost four others. Her friends did not approve of this. They were afraid that if their mothers found out about this tag-along arrangement, they might be ordered to follow suit.

  Jim was still smarting from the most recent police fiasco previous to little Marian Murphy’s, the Burdick murder. No one had ever been charged with that notorious crime either. It was thought that Edwin Burdick’s estranged wife’s paramour Attorney Arthur Pennell “done the deed,” but Jim had his doubts—especially now after having some time to step back and consider things from a distance. He again had conjured that perhaps Burdick’s mother-in-law killed him. That she sneaked up on him as he slept on the sofa in his den and clobbered his skull with a golf club or fireplace poker or some-such. She lived in the same house with him and his children. She did not condemn her daughter’s dalliance. She had access and opportunity. After Pennell drove himself and his wife Carrie off a cliff in his electric automobile the police reckoned they’d take the easy way out and claim satisfaction at Pennell’s having been the murderer all along, despite there being no evidence. The investigation was dropped. Jim was still chafing at that. He was angry with his friend and boss, Chief of Detectives Pat Cusak, for giving in and giving up on Burdick and others previous. Officially the Department claimed that the Murphy, Crowe and Burdick murder cases all continued to be actively pursued but in reality the police had put it all behind them.

  Jim made it his policy to stop by the Murphy family house on West Street whenever he was in the area to check on the children. He wanted to be sure that the Murphy daughters remained safe. He wanted Marian Murphy’s father to know he was under Jim’s suspicion and was being monitored closely. Murphy threatened to file a lawsuit. Jim was ordered by his superiors to stay away. Yet he still drove past the house given any opportunity regardless, stopping
out front to make his message clear.

  Mayor Erastus Knight for his part was continuing to wreak havoc, not only upon the city in general, but within the Buffalo Police Department especially. He resented the police department for its endorsing of his opponent in the mayoral election. He was a vengeful sort. Vindictive. Never had the troops been so fragmented, morale so low, or the direction of the department less clear. Mayor Knight’s close association with Police Supt. Bull was worry-making. Police work under Knight’s mayoralty was the worst Jim had ever witnessed, and he’d been a cop already twenty years. The newspapers were unwaivering in their criticism and ridicule.

  The Buffalo Express headlined:

  Lately Even Small Boys Have Cast Ridicule On Administration Methods by Committing Crimes Without Capture, and the Public Harks Back to Unpunished Murders of Austin Crowe, Marian Murphy and Charles Keeler.

  Buffalo is experiencing an epidemic of crime, ranging from petty thievery to brutal murder, and with politics and political pull instead of merit the incentive for advancement, the members of the police department, usually efficient, are thoroughly demoralized and incapable of battling successfully with the problem. In the language of the “under world” Buffalo is an “easy joint.” The crooks have little to fear. The policemen and the detectives down town do not know them. The men that they feared have, through the delightful “system” of the Knight-Bull political despotism, been removed to the outskirts, where residents are few and where seldom more than an occasional “drunk” happens along to disturb the solitude. It is beyond the bounds of reason to expect that any patrolman, no matter how clever, can come in from an outlying station to a station in one of the tough districts and know the persons with whom he has to deal. A pickpocket can talk to him on the corner and he would not know that the man should bear watching. Thieves could saunter back and forth in front of him, a murder might take place, yet he would not know which way to turn nor whom to find who could throw some light on the happening.”