“You will have to excuse me. I have made a solemn vow to Inspector William Murray not to open my mouth to representatives of the press until this case is concluded,” Hilton told reporters in late December.
The reporters put to him in detail various points of fresh information they had gleaned and asked him whether they were true.
“Do you know what you are asking me?” Judge Hilton queried. “You say that all the hounds are on the scent, and ask whether they will catch the fox? You cannot expect me to answer?”
“But suppose they fail to catch the fox?” one reporter suggested.
“What!” Hilton exclaimed. “With the hounds on the scent and the fox in sight, and they near him, and not catch him? There is no such word as fail in this case.”
It was, by all accounts, the single biggest police investigation in the city’s history. Law enforcement watched all the ferries and railroad stations, stopping and questioning every suspicious-looking character. Police officers and newspaper reporters staked out St. Mark’s Churchyard. Throngs of curiosity seekers riveted with macabre fascination flooded to the robbery site. The police tried as best they could to keep the gawkers at bay, fearing they might disturb some evidence or worse, stumble on some clue the police had overlooked.
Hilton increased the number of Pinkerton agents he hired and spent much of his time in and out of police headquarters. He relied heavily on the advice of his son-in-law, Horace Russell, who was a New York City assistant district attorney. Together, they kept a constant vigil at police headquarters, and evenings were spent with trusted advisors and Pinkerton detectives, sometimes police detectives, going over the investigation in an attempt to pinpoint any minute detail they might have missed.
Without any real information to go on, newspaper reporters resorted to publishing speculation and innuendos. Neither the police department nor Henry Hilton would divulge any details about the investigation, determined not to leak anything to the press that would hinder their apprehension of the ghouls. Superintendent Walling grew especially impatient with newspaper reporters hounding his officers and even more so with papers publishing stories that had no basis in reality. He firmly believed that the entire investigation would benefit if his department was able to work without the press looking over its shoulders.
When reporters were unable to get any information from the police department—Walling had given strict orders to his men to maintain a code of silence—they sought out Judge Hilton, who had been known in the past as a good source of candid information, but they were frustrated too by Hilton’s reluctance to talk.
Because of the sensitive nature of the case and because of A. T. Stewart’s prominence, the police department relied on direction from Hilton. The department did not want to overstep its bounds or undercut Hilton’s desires in the case. Walling’s general silence to reporters stemmed from his well-founded belief that even if the police were able to find those responsible, proving that the suspects did it would be difficult. On one occasion, Walling told reporters, “How could you prove that they went into that graveyard and took the body? Nobody saw them and no jury would convict them without some evidence of their guilt.” He was right.
Without a verifiable ransom note, a motive for the Stewart grave robbery remained elusive. The police developed several theories, including the idea that the robbery was the ghoulish handiwork of the Washington, D.C., “resurrectionist,” Dr. George A. Christian. Christian, who was not a medical doctor, was a government clerk employed in the Surgeon General’s Office in Washington.
Newspapers in Washington described Christian as a short man, well under six feet tall, weighing approximately 120 pounds. He had high cheekbones, long, dark hair, and a sallow complexion. His face was highly recognizable to anyone. According to the newspapers, Christian had an annoying habit of rolling his large, dark eyes, and he also had a disfigured mouth; his lips twisted down on the right side, and he spoke out of the left side of his mouth, which gave him the appearance of someone who might have suffered a stroke and whose face had been immobilized on one side. Because of this anomaly, his face was unforgettable.
According to newspaper accounts, he was always stylishly dressed, especially for a government employee. How could he afford such fashionable attire? Reports said that his abundant supply of clothing was stolen from corpses in his other, more lucrative line of business—grave robbing. Christian had been a medical student at Georgetown College, although he never finished. He had shown great promise and was especially adept at dissection. He had been questioned on several occasions while in school about his involvement in robbing graves from Potter’s Field in the District of Columbia and selling the cadavers to the medical school for research. He, of course, denied any involvement in such undertakings. But in point of fact, Christian and four partners, two men and two women, ran a grave-robbing operation out of a small shack where they kept bodies and valuables taken from graveyards. Christian and his colleagues stole bodies to sell to hospitals and doctors across the country for the study of anatomy and research. The bodies were injected with a variety of preservatives, including whiskey; packed into wooden barrels, soaked in whiskey; taken to the Army Medical Museum; and from there shipped to various medical schools and doctors. Christian and his gang made forty to one hundred dollars per body depending on the demand.
Christian’s downfall came in 1873, in no small part due to his fondness for the whiskey he used to preserve the stolen bodies. Driving back from one of their grisly deeds, the gang’s wagon was stopped by an alert Washington, D.C., police officer, who noticed the vehicle veering from one side of the road to the other. When the officer pulled the wagon over, he found a highly intoxicated Christian at the reins. After charging him with being drunk and disorderly, the officer searched the wagon and found the newly exhumed body of a man concealed in a sack, along with chemicals used to preserve bodies. More damaging was a diary found in Christian’s possession in which he had detailed much of the skullduggery he and his gang had undertaken. They were all charged with grave robbing and selling bodies. Christian was dishonorably discharged from his government position, and he was sentenced to one year in jail and a thousand-dollar fine. Because of Christian’s diary, excerpts of which were published in the Washington Evening Star newspaper, Christian became known as the country’s leading “resurrectionist.”
January 3d 1873 B. and C. went out and got two cadavers tonight.
April 4th Dr. C. and I went to the Washington Asylum Cemetery tonight and confiscated two sets of extremities and one head.
—excerpts from George Christian’s diary, Evening Star, Washington, D.C., December 15, 1873
Body snatching was big business in America during the nineteenth century, and resurrectionists, people engaged in robbing graves for medical research, were kept busy meeting the needs of medical schools throughout the country. According to Suzanne M. Shultz in her book Body Snatching: The Robbing of Graves for the Education of Physicians in Early Nineteenth Century America, the term resurrectionist came from the belief that a burial ground was a sacred place and that the removal of a body from it was “interference with the plan of Providence and the great Resurrection. Thus resurrectionists and body snatchers became synonymous terms.”
And my Prentices now will surely come
And carve me bone from bone,
And I who have rifled the dead man’s grave
Shall never have rest in my own.
Bury me in lead when I am dead,
My brethren I intreat,
And see the coffin weigh’d I beg
Lest the Plumber should be a cheat.
And let it be solder’d closely down
Strong as strong can be I implore,
And put it in a patent coffin,
That I may rise no more.
—“Surgeon’s Warning,” poem by Robert Southey, 1799
How George Christian came to be a suspect in the Stewart case was merely a matter of conjecture. There was no real proof he had been involved at all. The Washington, D.C., police surmised that the Stewart grave robbery had to be the handiwork of professional grave robbers because it appeared to be so well planned. Christian had acquired the dubious distinction of being the most professional of all grave robbers. For years the police had tried to connect Christian with the infamous failed attempt to steal President Abraham Lincoln’s body in 1876. However, there was never any substantial proof linking him to the deed.
On the night of November 7, 1876, a gang of counterfeiters, led by “Big Jim” Kinealy, attempted to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln from his tomb at the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. The grave robbers were able to dismantle Lincoln’s sarcophagus and pull out the unopened coffin before Secret Service agents surrounded the tomb and scared the ghouls off. Subsequently, a Springfield grand jury indicted Terrance Mullen and Jack Hughes, charging them with the attempted theft. “Big Jim” Kinealy and Chicago teamster Herbert Nelson were arrested as accomplices, but both men were never formally charged. Mullen and Hughes were found guilty and sentenced to a year in Joliet Penitentiary. At no time was George A. Christian ever linked to the case, but since he had been highly successful in this endeavor—that is, until he was arrested—Christian’s name was forever associated with high-profile grave-robbing attempts.
According to the Washington, D.C., police, if New York City detectives could locate Christian, they would find Stewart’s body. It seemed as likely as any story detectives had heard.
Since getting out of prison in September 1874, Christian actually had been involved in a series of grave robberies. Just two months after his release, he was arrested for stealing two bodies and trying to ship them to a medical school in Ohio. Christian jumped bail on the charge and did not resurface again until May 1876, when he was arrested on a train heading from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Although his bail had been revoked, Christian somehow managed to escape from the police again and disappeared.
When news about Stewart’s grave robbery hit the newspapers, the police in Washington were certain that Christian was back at work.
GRAVE-ROBBER CHRISTIAN.
HE TURNS UP IN THE STEWART CASE.
Dr. Douglass Of East Fourteenth
Street, Positively Identified As The
Notorious Washington Resurrectionist—
The Body Said To Have Been
Found Five Days Ago—A Sketch Of
Mr. John J. Clare Of Orange.
The mysterious “Doctor” alluded to in yesterday’s TIMES as the alleged chief conspirator and organizer of the robbery of Mr. Stewart’s grave was yesterday positively identified as George A. Christian, the notorious Washington resurrectionist, who was arrested on suspicion of being one of the parties who attempted to break into ex-President Lincoln’s tomb. The Boarding house spoken of as his abode previous to the robbery is No. 306 East Fourteenth street and the landlady’s name is Campbell. Christian’s alias was Dr. George Douglass.
—New York Times
November 21, 1878
According to newspaper accounts, Christian had been positively identified by several guests at Campbell’s boardinghouse at 306 East Fourteenth Street in New York City. A dentist, Dr. George Evans, was one of those who reported to the police that Dr. Douglass and George Christian were one and the same. Evans told authorities that, after reading a newspaper description of Christian, he decided that Dr. Douglass fit the description perfectly.
It is a fashionable boarding house in the vicinity of St. Mark’s grave-yard. … A few days previous to Oct. 7, the date of the first attempt on the vault, the man in question, who may be designated as Dr. A—, applied for board, and asked to be shown a comfortable room. He selected a hall bedroom on the fourth floor, fronting southward, and giving a good view of the graveyard. He was decently but not extravagantly attired in a blue flannel suit and had one valise with him. He bargained before engaging the room for the privilege of advertising himself as a physician. He promised that he would do none but legitimate advertising, whereupon the landlady said she had no objection. He paid his board in advance … the landlady describes Dr. A. as a middle-aged man with a round face, brown curly hair, bright blue eyes, brown silken mustache, white smooth forehead, fine complexion, and a disagreeable looking mouth, the lower jaw being twisted to one side by an accident from a gun the Doctor said. … He appeared to be very familiar with drugs and chemicals and was continually engaged in arguments with three medical students who were also boarders in the same house about the various known processes for annihilating the odor of decomposed matter and about the embalming of dead bodies and often boasted of his ability to deodorize a human carcass, no matter how long it might have been buried.
—New York Times
November 20, 1878
A few days after the robbery, and while Douglass’ curious and coincidental disappearance was still fresh in his mind, Dr. Evans came across a printed description of Christian in one of the newspapers. It struck him at once as a perfect pen-picture of Douglass. There were the same rolling eyes, the same peculiar twitch of the left corner of the mouth and the same general appearance all over. The only thing different was in regard to the beard. When Douglass first went to Mrs. Campbell’s he wore a full beard. This he afterward had shaved off, except two little whiskers just alongside the ears, and a few days before the robbery these too, disappeared, leaving only the long, silken mustache.
—New York Times
November 21, 1878
The dentist, Dr. Evans, became even more convinced that Douglass and Christian were the same person when he learned that Christian had once been a medical student, which explained how Douglass obtained much of the medical knowledge he espoused.
Evans took his information directly to Judge Hilton and not to the police. Hilton informed the dentist that Douglass/Christian was already a suspect in the case and that Hilton was having the notorious resurrectionist followed in the hope he might lead authorities to Stewart’s body. Hilton had his Pinkerton detectives bring Evans a photograph of George Christian, which Evans immediately identified as Dr. Douglass. Other boarders at Campbell’s identified Christian as well. The elusive George Christian was now a prime suspect in the case, but like every promising lead, this one led nowhere. Despite the authorities’ best efforts to shadow him, Christian once again managed to avoid capture. He was gone and with him any chance the police had to question him about his involvement in the Stewart body snatching.
From George Christian to the flood of mysterious letters claiming to know where Stewart’s body was and who had taken it, the police worked day and night tracking down every lead they could, but the clues always led to the exact same place—a dead-end. Since the theft, so many letters and notes had been sent to the police that it became impossible for authorities to distinguish what was real information and what was not. If the grave robbers even had wanted to demand a ransom, there was no way of knowing which of the hundreds of missives came from the real culprits. The ability of the police to identify an authentic lead became a dilemma.
There was one letter that did attract police attention. It came from an enigmatic group calling itself “A Company,” no doubt mocking Stewart’s own company. The intriguing letter was sent directly to the editors at the New York Herald. In it the unnamed authors stated: “If the executors of the late A. T. Stewart will donate $500,000 for some needed public charity in the city of New York the whereabouts of his remains will be immediately divulged and not one penny will be asked for the expense we have incurred.”
The authorities reacted to it with some concern. It was well known that Stewart had not been known as a philanthropist and that his will left very little of his massive fortune to charity. A second letter signed by “A Company” was sent to the Herald shortly a
fter the first. In this one, the authors again implored Mrs. Stewart to donate the requested $500,000 to some public charity. This time, however, the letter to the Herald demanded that the donation be made soon since they were unable to conceal the body much longer. A deadline of noon on Wednesday, November 13, was set for the charitable donation to be made. If it wasn’t made, then “A Company” threatened to destroy Stewart’s remains “in order to avoid detection.”
Judge Hilton refused to respond to the demand, and the deadline came and went. After the deadline passed, a third and final letter was sent to the Herald from “A Company.” In it the authors alluded to Stewart’s fate being tied to his past desecration of the old Amity Street Baptist Church cemetery and informed readers that, since the deadline for the $500,000 charitable donation had not been met, Stewart’s remains had been carved up into “small particles,” then “wrapped separately in comparatively small bundles” and sent to “different towns in different countries.” They would, according to “A Company,” never be found.
It would not be the last time that the issue of the desecration of the old Amity Street Baptist Church cemetery had come up. In January 1887, an anonymous letter writer to the New York Herald blamed Stewart for his own comeuppance, claiming that the grave robbery was retribution for Stewart’s act of desecrating the bodies buried in the old Baptist Church cemetery. Stewart had bought the church building in 1864 and converted it into a stable. The stable housed Stewart’s fleet of wagons and horses used to deliver merchandise to customers. It was considered a very important part of Stewart’s business.
Bag of Bones Page 14