THOMAS BYRNES
Sworn to before me this 19th day of November 1878, B. T. Morgan, Police Justice.
Captain Byrnes had arrested Burke at his home at 402 East Twelfth Street. Byrnes, who had made a reputation for himself as a relentless law enforcement officer, would later go on to become the chief of New York City’s detective bureau and then superintendent of the force. Byrnes had expected to also apprehend Vreeland, who reportedly lived at the same address, but Vreeland was not there. Byrnes and several police officers laid a trap for Vreeland, once Burke was in custody, and finally two days after the arrest of Burke, Vreeland showed up at 402 East Twelfth Street where he was placed in custody.
Burke was no stranger to the authorities. In 1872 he was convicted of burglary and sentenced to prison for five years. Vreeland, who had gone under the alias of Frank Whelan, had served three years in Sing Sing prison on pickpocket charges. According to the police, no sooner had Vreeland been released from prison than he was arrested again, this time for stealing a pair of shoes. He was ordered held for six months and had only been released from the Crow Hill Penitentiary in late October. The police all agreed that Burke and Vreeland did not have the capacity to plan such a bold and daring grave robbery and that they must have been hired by the real masterminds of the gruesome theft. That left the real thieves still at large.
CAPT. BYRNES CORROBORATES THE
TIMES’ STATEMENT
Where The Hitch Is In Clearing Up The
Mystery—Further Details Of The
Conspiracy—A Sensational Court
Scene—A Search For The Body
Described—A Day Of Extraordinary
Developments.
The TIMES reporter ascertained yesterday what the hitch in the Stewart matter is. The robbery was the result of a conspiracy in which five men were engaged. These men are neither thieves nor crooked men of any kind. They are, on the contrary, men occupying respectable social positions. More than that, they are no “ordinary men” of their class. These men had nothing to do with the practical side of the outrage. They hired other men, like Burke and Vreeland, to do the work of despoiling the grave and concealing the remains, paying them large sums for their services and promising them continued percentages in case everything turned out well. These five men were to have been arrested on Saturday night. Three of them either were arrested or are in such a position that they cannot escape. … Two succeeded in bribing private detectives employed to shadow them and were permitted to escape. The country is now being searched for them and they cannot remain long concealed. As soon as their whereabouts are discovered they will be immediately apprehended and the body of Mr. Stewart will be produced and the entire story of the conspiracy and the chase will be given to the public.
—New York Times
November 19, 1878
During the second Burke and Vreeland hearing, held before Judge B. T. Morgan at the Jefferson Market Police Court on November 18, Captain Byrnes testified that an unidentified man had approached him with information that Burke had come to him and said, “I can put you in something where you can make some money.” According to Byrnes, this unidentified man accepted the offer. Judge Morgan asked Byrnes if he would provide the court with the name of the man.
“If the court thinks right, I would rather, for the present, not,” Byrnes said.
Byrnes told the court that the unidentified man asked Burke what the job was.
“Well, I can’t tell you about it now, but it is a job where there is going to be a good deal of money,” Burke reportedly told him.
“It ain’t the bursting of another bank?” the man asked.
“Bank! Why a bank ain’t a circumstance in this. This matter will astonish the whole country,” Burke said.
Following the discovery of the Stewart grave robbery, the unidentified man concluded that Burke must have been talking about the robbery. Based on this scant bit of evidence, Burke was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the Stewart grave robbery.
Byrnes told the court that at first Burke denied being involved in the case, but that later at police headquarters, following further questioning, he admitted to knowing something about the robbery. According to Byrnes, Burke confessed to being a party to the theft, “after the body was stolen.”
“I was to get a percentage for what I did. The man who was with me when I was arrested was the man who put up the money and did the whole job. His name is Hank Vreeland,” Burke reportedly told Byrnes.
According to Burke, Vreeland had stolen the body, taken it to a hiding place in New Jersey, and buried it. According to Burke, Vreeland had subsequently rented a horse and wagon in New Jersey and had gone back to the spot where he initially buried Stewart’s body and removed it to another hiding place. If the police went to Orange, New Jersey, and found the place where Vreeland had rented the horse and wagon, he was sure, they would be able to find where Vreeland had buried Stewart’s body the second time.
Byrnes told the court that he, Burke, and another police officer went to Orange, New Jersey, where they interviewed a livery stable owner named Harrison, who immediately identified Vreeland as the man who had rented a horse and wagon from him the weekend before. According to Harrison, Vreeland had hired the wagon only for a short time but kept it out all night. He returned it the following morning.
Then, according to Byrnes’s testimony to the judge, Burke offered to help locate the spot where Vreeland had buried the body. Although Burke showed them several places where he thought Vreeland had taken the body, Byrnes could not find any location that looked as though it had been freshly dug. After several futile attempts led by Burke, Byrnes halted the search.
“You don’t know where that body was buried,” Byrnes said to Burke. “And there is only one that does. That is Hank Vreeland. We have got to get him.”
According to Byrnes, with Burke and Vreeland now in custody, both men talked freely about the grave robbery.
Vreeland agreed to take the police to the site in New Jersey where he had hidden the body. On the way there, Vreeland told the authorities, “The stiff stunk so that I had to get out and run behind the wagon.” He also told Byrnes that once they had dug Stewart’s body up, they would have to put it on top of the coach for the long ride back to New York because the smell would sicken them all.
Vreeland led the police to Chatham, New Jersey, eight miles out of Orange, to a deserted mill in a secluded spot just off the main road. There, he claimed, was where he buried the body.
“Where the body is planted we will have to do some digging and we can’t do it with our hands,” Vreeland told the police.
The police entourage, with Vreeland in the lead, walked past the old mill, up along a dam, and across an open field. They traipsed through the woods for nearly an hour without Vreeland stopping. Finally, when they reached a large stone sitting by itself in the middle of an open field, Vreeland stopped.
“Is this the place?” Byrnes asked him.
Vreeland said no and then turned to Burke.
“What will they give a man for this job?” Vreeland asked his friend Burke.
“One stretcher [meaning one year] and a $250 fine,” Burke told him.
Vreeland turned to Byrnes.
“I don’t know anything about this thing. I don’t know where any body is buried,” he blurted out.
Byrnes could barely contain his anger. He had been led on a wild-goose chase, and Vreeland and Burke had made a fool out of him and the entire police force.
From the moment Vreeland knew he could get only one year he wouldn’t open his mouth. I asked him what he meant by taking us there. He said it was all a put up job; that he fell into it supposing that Billy was in trouble and he could help him out. The result was that we returned to New York.
—New York Times
November 19, 1878
According to trial transcripts, the following testimony transpired:
JUSTICE MORGAN: Did Vreeland confess that he was one of the parties to the removal of the body from St. Mark’s graveyard?CAPT. BYRNES: No.
JUSTICE MORGAN: That he was one of the parties to the robbery after it left the cemetery?
CAPT. BYRNES: Yes. He said that he went there for the purpose of selecting that place. One thing that I omitted was this: Burke said to Hank two or three times “Why don’t you find the place? We have got to get away from here quick.” Hank retorted: “Why don’t you find it? You know it as well as I.”
JUSTICE MORGAN: Have Burke and Vreeland confessed that they had the body in their possession?
CAPT. BYRNES: Yes; in Burke’s room in Twelfth-street. They told me they would show me where it was if I would give them the reward. I told them they could have the reward; I didn’t want any of it. They both told me that they had a nigger in the job. They couldn’t stomach the carrying of the body or the other dirty work and they got the nigger to do it.
JUSTICE MORGAN: That’s all your statement?
CAPT. BYRNES: Yes, except that Burke told me on Saturday or Sunday—three or four times after the search—that the body had been removed and that he thought the others wanted to beat him out of his share. He told this to two or three other parties besides myself.
COUNSEL: Didn’t they make a statement subsequently that it was all a hoax; that they were getting you on a string?
CAPT. BYRNES: No, Sir.
—hearing testimony, Jefferson Market Police Court, Judge B. T. Morgan presiding, November 18, 1878
Attorney Joseph Stiner told the court, “Your Honor, we don’t dispute the removal of the body. We simply deny that our clients did the removing.”
Stiner made a motion to dismiss the charges against his two clients based on Byrnes’s hearsay evidence, but Judge Morgan would have nothing to do with it. The two men had made a mockery of Byrnes’s investigation and wasted the court’s time. That alone would garner the two men some jail time. Judge Morgan ordered Vreeland and Burke held on the charges issued in Byrnes’s complaint. Morgan set bail at five thousand dollars each and remanded them to the Jefferson Market Prison.
Burke continued to taunt the police captain by telling reporters that the whole incident was a charade to embarrass the mighty Thomas Byrnes. According to Burke, they wanted to give Captain Byrnes, using the vernacular of the times, “the kid to his heart’s content.”
Byrnes was considered one of the most brilliant up-and-coming officers in the New York City Police Department. He had risen quickly through the ranks by solving several sensational crimes, including the murder of the flamboyant Wall Street speculator Jubilee Jim Fisk by one of his partners, Edward Stokes, who shot and killed Fisk in a New York City hotel on January 6, 1872. Byrnes was instrumental in apprehending Stokes. Byrnes had also developed a reputation as an innovator in crime detection and in his free and frequent use of the “third degree” (physical abuse) to coerce confessions out of criminals. The very public humiliation caused by Burke and Vreeland drew Byrnes’s ire. Guilty or not, Byrnes decided to prosecute the two jokers regardless of their lack of involvement in the Stewart case.
THE BODY SAID TO BE UNDER GUARD
Information was received in Jersey City last evening which strongly corroborates the statement that the New-York Police, or some other of Judge Hilton’s agents have succeeded in fixing the location of the body of the late Mr. Stewart. The story, as detailed to the reporter, was as follows: Last Saturday night at a somewhat late hour a New-York detective, whose name was not given, went into one of the telegraph offices in Jersey City and sent a dispatch to Inspector Walling, at New York Police Headquarters, stating that the body had been found, and advising that the detectives who were elsewhere engaged in hunting it be called off. … The detective allowed it to be understood that the body was under Police guard, but vouchsafed no reason why immediate possession was not taken of it.
—New York TimesNovember 19, 1878
Unnamed police sources declared that the case was over. Although Vreeland and Burke, who had intimated the body of Stewart was buried there, had recanted their story, claiming it was all a hoax, no one took them seriously and the search went on for several days.
“Have you got the body?” a reporter asked police officials.
“Why of course we have the body, but there are two men still to be arrested,” the reporter was informed.
Judge Hilton maintained his vow of silence on the case and told reporters nothing. The only thing Hilton would talk about, of course, was money. He informed reporters that he had given Police Inspector Murray a check to defray the costs of the investigation but that Murray refused to accept the check. Hilton said he offered one thousand dollars to Captain Byrnes to cover his personal expenses during the investigation but Byrnes too refused to accept any money. Hilton praised the work of the police department and told reporters he would be “grateful to them as long as he lived.”
The residents of Chatham, New Jersey, were in a tizzy over the possibility that the body of A. T. Stewart was buried somewhere there. Police and Pinkerton detectives converged on the sleepy hamlet with shovels and wagons and began the long and laborious task of trying to find the burial spot. Any number of New York City and New Jersey reporters also converged on the small town. Detectives, police, reporters, and Chatham townsfolk searched relentlessly along the banks of the Passaic River, where it was reported that Stewart’s remains were buried. The prime hunting grounds for eager grave hunters hoping to win a portion of the reward was a small strip of land along the border of Union County and the river. It was about three hundred yards long and fifty to one hundred feet wide, situated along the sloping bank leading to the river. The searchers found nothing.
Vreeland and Burke were back before Judge Morgan on November 19, and according to the New York Times, the prisoners were on hand early under their usual strong escort of detectives. They looked haggard and nervous, according to the Times, “particularly Burke, whose natural sneaking cur-like expression of countenance would seem difficult to improve upon. He is one of the meanest looking thieves. How any person could trust him with a secret seems as much a puzzle as to explain how the sharp, pretty woman who calls him husband can possibly live with such a wretch.”
Byrnes had filed his formal affidavit, bail was set at five thousand dollars each, and both men were charged with grave robbing. Judge Morgan ordered the paperwork in the case turned over to the district attorney’s office. The complaint only contained Byrnes’s affidavit and the testimony that Byrnes gave to the court previously. It was not much to bring to a grand jury. In fact, after reviewing the case, the opinion in the district attorney’s office was that there wasn’t enough evidence to connect either Burke or Vreeland to the Stewart case. But even if Burke and Vreeland were not guilty of that crime, at the urging of Captain Byrnes, whose reputation as a hard-nosed crime fighter had been publicly tarnished by the two men, they would be found guilty of something, one way or another. That much was certain.
Holding Burke in custody was no problem for the authorities. He was a repeat offender and well known to the police as a burglar. Byrnes filed additional charges against Burke for forgery. If found guilty, Burke would face five years in prison—a stiff sentence for pulling a practical joke on the illustrious police captain Thomas Byrnes. And just to ensure that Burke would pay for the embarrassment he caused Byrnes and the entire police department, Byrnes filed charges of grand larceny against him as well. If found guilty on both charges, Burke could face ten years in prison.
No effort has been made to send the case of Baker (aka Burke) and Vreeland for alleged complicity in the grave-robbing before the Grand Jury, nor is it probable that any steps in that direction will be taken. No evidence connecting them with that transaction, beyond their own statements, is in
possession of the District Attorney, and it is not believed that either of them have had anything to do with the robbery.
—New York Times
November 22, 1878
Byrnes might not have arrested the right criminals, but he had at least arrested some criminals, and as the case dragged on—nearly two weeks had passed without a break in the case—it appeared to appease the public’s frustration and condemnation of the police department. This grace period didn’t last very long, however, and things just went from bad to worse.
Without enough evidence to link Burke and Vreeland to the Stewart grave robbery, the grand jury instead indicted Burke on charges of forgery, stemming from an unrelated incident in which he forged a four hundred-dollar check drawn on the West Side Bank. There was nothing to charge Vreeland with, and he was held until December 3, 1878, when he was finally released from jail.
HENRY VREELAND DISCHARGED
Two weeks ago Capt. Byrnes, of the Fifteenth Precinct, had Henry Vreeland, of Brooklyn, and William Burke, of No. 402 East Twelfth-street, the two men who pretended to know the whereabouts of Mr. Stewart’s remains in New Jersey, committed to await the action of the Grand Jury, on suspicion of their implication in the stealing of the body. No evidence connecting them with the offense was produced, however, and the Grand Jury did not inquire into the case. Burke, however, was identified as a man who had uttered a forged check on the West Side Bank, and an indictment for forgery was found against him. Yesterday, Vreeland was taken before Judge Gildersleeve, in the General Sessions, and discharged, Assistant District Attorney Horace Russell stating in his endorsement of the papers that there was no evidence to connect him with the offense charged. Burke still remains in the Tombs, awaiting trial on forgery charges.
Bag of Bones Page 16