by Gary Krist
Assistant recorder David Hollander then approached the wounded man. “Chief, you know who I am,” he whispered. “Do you wish to make a declaration?”
The question was veiled but unambiguous. If the chief had recognized or could give a description of any of his assailants, now was the time to make a statement—a dying declaration that would be admissible evidence in court. But Hennessy stubbornly refused. “No, I don’t think I am that bad off,” he said. Then he asked for a glass of milk—a request that was gently refused by his doctor.
Over the next few hours, between periodic examinations by Dr. Bloom, several of Hennessy’s friends and colleagues attempted to elicit a statement from him. But the chief, who was now resting more comfortably under a heavy dose of opiates, continued to insist that he would recover. Toward dawn, however, Hennessy’s condition worsened noticeably. Messengers were again sent to fetch his mother. Before she arrived, Captain Beanham tried a last time to coax a statement from the dying man. “Captain, I tell you I am going to get well,” the chief insisted, and when Beanham persisted, Hennessy bluntly dismissed his concerns: “Your alarm is unnecessary,” he said. “These people can’t kill me.”
This bit of bravado, however, proved empty. After spending a few more minutes with his mother, going over his financial affairs, the chief began to sink rapidly. He held on for a few more hours as friends gathered around his sickbed to pay their last respects. By now, he was incapable of making a declaration even if he wanted to. He died at ten minutes past nine on Thursday morning.
BY midday, virtually everyone in the city had heard about the “dastardly deed” perpetrated on Girod Street the night before. Evidence that the murder had in fact been the work of Italians was hardly conclusive, but the shocked citizens of New Orleans were fully prepared to think the worst of a group they had long regarded as threatening and undesirable. And so outrage against the city’s Sicilian population was growing by the hour. A quickly composed editorial in the Daily States echoed the opinion of many New Orleanians in condemning “a class of foreigners who infest this city, known as Dagos”—a term that no one seemed shy about using, even in print. “Heretofore these people have confined themselves to murdering each other,” the paper observed, “and hence, except that these terrible deeds reflect upon the good name of New Orleans, there has not been much for us to complain of.” But now that the city had finally begun taking them to task for their outrages, they had struck back in a manner that was utterly intolerable: “They have had the audacity to murder the Chief of Police,” the States wrote, “because [he] had ferreted out some of their crimes and had become a lion in their path.”
Several notices, signed by prominent members of the community, appeared in the late editions of the morning newspapers, urging citizens to attend mass meetings and form committees “to assist the officers of the law in driving the murderous Mafia from our midst.” Forty-two Italians had already been arrested, many on the flimsiest of evidence, and more were being rounded up every hour. Police were ransacking homes in the Italian quarter and elsewhere. Anyone remotely associated with the Matranga family was considered a suspect, no matter what the person’s alibi. Many residents kept to their houses all day, knowing that they might be stopped on the street and arrested on the mere suspicion of being Italian.
At the Central Police Station, a shrouded portrait of Chief Hennessy now stood in a window overlooking Common Street. Telegrams expressing sympathy and outrage were pouring into the station from all over the country. The city’s commercial exchanges were closed, as were many government offices and private businesses. Makeshift memorials to the chief were being put up everywhere—at the Grand Opera House, in the department-store windows on Canal Street, and at police stations and firehouses all over the city.
At four o’clock that afternoon, a contingent of uniformed police assembled at Francis Johnson & Sons undertakers to carry Hennessy’s coffin to his house on Girod Street. Crowds were already surrounding the little shotgun cottage as the officers carried the silk-lined mahogany casket into the front parlor, which was filled with floral arrangements that had been arriving all day. While the grief-stricken Mrs. Hennessy looked on, the casket was opened and its lid replaced with a pane of glass to allow visitors to see the chief’s face, which had been heavily made-up to conceal his wounds. Over the next hours, hundreds of people came through the house to view the body. More were still waiting outside at ten o’clock when, seeing Mrs. Hennessy’s exhaustion, a group of Boylan men closed up the house and asked the bystanders to leave. Only the mother and a small number of intimate friends remained inside, keeping vigil overnight—until six A.M., when the doors would be opened again to allow the flow of mourners to resume.
FRIDAY dawned sunny and bright, with only a few high clouds lingering as reminders of the midweek rain. A detail of police arrived at the Girod Street cottage at ten A.M. to carry the chief’s coffin on to City Hall. A hearse had been provided by the funeral home, but the pallbearers insisted on carrying the chief the entire way to Lafayette Square, through streets lined with grieving spectators. At the broad marble stairway leading into City Hall, the procession was met by a company of city officials; they took the coffin and carried it into the bright, flower-strewn main council chamber. Here the pallbearers lifted it onto a bier draped with a large black bearskin in the center of the hall, a few feet from where the remains of another honored son of New Orleans—Jefferson Davis—had lain just a year earlier. The chief’s hat, truncheon, and belt were placed on the lid of the coffin. An honor guard of police was stationed at its foot. Only then did police allow the crowds of waiting New Orleanians to enter and pay their last respects, twenty-five at a time.
The solemnities went on all day. At three, after the singing of a De Profundis in the council chamber, the coffin was carried out to the street again. There it was placed in a hearse, which then joined a mile-long procession to the cemetery, led by the chief’s riderless jet-black horse. After a stop at St. Joseph’s Church, where Rev. Patrick O’Neill led a funeral service to overflowing pews, the procession continued up Canal Street. Twilight had just set in when the hearse crossed the bridge and passed under the stone arches of the Metairie Cemetery. Here Hennessy’s casket was set down inside a white-painted brick vault luxuriantly entwined with honeysuckle vines.
Father O’Neill said a few last words of benediction. As a tribute to their slain chief, scores of New Orleans policemen came forward to throw their badges into the vault. And then a single man stepped up to close the tomb with a makeshift wooden tablet—a temporary marker that would eventually be replaced by a carved marble slab. The man was Thomas C. Anderson, described by the Daily Picayune as David Hennessy’s “bosom friend,” a short but powerfully built figure with penetrating blue eyes and a lush, reddish-blond mustache. No one present could possibly realize it at that moment, but this young man honoring the first victim of New Orleans’ war against its underworlds would someday find himself at the very center of that war. Over the next thirty years, in fact, Tom Anderson would come to be regarded as the principal symbol of lawlessness in New Orleans—the enemy of the city’s better half, the nemesis to all of their aims, and the main target of their efforts to reform and control the city. Nor could Anderson himself have known that his next act would in a sense mark the beginning of that era of turmoil in New Orleans, a time that would see his own star as leader of the city’s underworlds rise and fall precipitously. For now, he was just memorializing his old friend Dave Hennessy, a symbol of law and order cut down too soon in the line of duty.
Anderson stepped up to the wooden tablet, took a pencil from his vest pocket, and wrote out the chief’s simple epitaph: “David Hennessy, died Oct. 16, 1890”—the date that would mark the beginning of New Orleans’ civil war.
FRIDAY—the day of Chief Hennessy’s funeral—had been the time for mourning the dead. Saturday was the time to act, and city officials were ready for battle. The man chosen by respectable New Orleans to lead their cru
sade had been killed before he’d even had a chance to strike the first blow. Now others would have to take command.
At 12:35 on Saturday afternoon, a still-irate Mayor Shakspeare strode into a special council session at City Hall. The room was filled to capacity with the city’s aldermen, members of the police board, and other city officials. Reading from a prepared text, the mayor formally announced the death of David C. Hennessy “by the hands of despicable assassins.” Four of the five supposed gunmen were already in custody, and police were reportedly closing in on the fifth. But these five men represented just a small fraction of the enemy they were facing. “It is clear to me,” the mayor stated, “that the wretches who committed this foul deed are the mere hirelings and instruments of others higher and more powerful than they. These instigators are the men we must find at any cost.” Then, pointing out that he himself had received death threats in the days since Hennessy’s shooting, he called upon the assembled aldermen to take action. “The people look to you to take the initiative in this matter,” he said. “Act promptly, without fear or favor.”
The council responded with a standing ovation as well as a plan. The time had come, Alderman Brittin said, for the city to call upon her best citizens to rise to her aid. He proposed the formation of a “Committee of Fifty,” its members to be selected by the mayor. The committee would investigate the matter of secret Italian murder societies and to devise “the most effectual and speedy measures for the uprooting and total annihilation of such hell-born associations.”
The resolution passed unanimously, and Mayor Shakspeare promptly announced the eighty-three names he had selected in advance for the so-called Committee of Fifty. They amounted to a collection of New Orleans’ wealthiest, most prominent, and most powerful men—a clear sign that what was to come would be, at root, a class war on behalf of the city’s native-born elite. The real crime to be avenged here was not just a brutal assassination, but the assassination of a representative of that elite, by a class of citizen considered beneath their notice. “A shining mark have they selected on which to write … their contempt for the civilization of the new world,” the mayor said in conclusion. “We owe it to ourselves, and to everything that we hold sacred in this life, to see that this blow is the last. We must teach these people a lesson that they will not forget for all time.”
IT WAS HARD TO IMAGINE WHAT WAS CAUSING THE delay. In the main courtroom at St. Patrick’s Hall, all eyes were on the door to the upstairs deliberation room, where the jury in the Hennessy murder trial had been sequestered for over eighteen hours. Most of the spectators who’d crammed into the courtroom’s gallery at ten A.M. had expected an immediate verdict. According to that morning’s Picayune, the jury had supposedly reached its decision very quickly last night, before retiring to bed. But even now, two hours after the scheduled start of the morning session, the door to the jury room remained stubbornly closed.
For many in New Orleans, it had already been far too long a wait for justice. The lesson that Mayor Shakspeare had promised to teach the enemies of law and order had ultimately taken almost five months to unfold—five months of late-night raids, wild accusations of citizens against citizens, and blanket arrests of Italians of all stripes. The morning after the Hennessy outrage, there had been talk of immediate violent action to punish the alleged assassins already in custody. But ultimately the law—such as it was in New Orleans—was allowed to run its course. The Committee of Fifty, led by YMDA leader W. S. Parkerson—who served as liaison between the committee and the mayor’s office—had conducted a vigorous investigation of the alleged conspiracy. Under the committee’s often heavy-handed “guidance,” the police had ultimately arrested more than a hundred Italians. Most had subsequently been released for lack of evidence, but the grand jury did end up indicting nineteen defendants. Nine had been charged with direct involvement in the shooting; the rest—including prominent Italians like Joseph P. Macheca and Charles Matranga—were held as accessories before the fact. Did these nineteen men constitute the entire extent of the conspiracy against Chief Hennessy and the city of New Orleans itself? Few believed that to be so, but bringing this group to justice would at least be a start.
Once the trial began on the morning of February 16, 1891, however, it became immediately obvious just how difficult it would be to secure even this small measure of justice. For one thing, this trial would be only the first of two court proceedings for the Hennessy murder. District Attorney Charles Luzenberg, worried about the unwieldiness of a prosecution against nineteen defendants at once, had asked for and been granted a severance; thus only nine of the defendants would be tried now, leaving the other ten for a future action.
And even this first trial soon proved to be maddeningly complicated and drawn-out. More than 1,300 potential jurors had to be examined simply to find 12 who did not have a “fixed opinion” about the case, either from local gossip, newspaper reports, or else their own prejudice against Italians. Once a jury was finally impaneled, it had to hear evidence from more than 140 witnesses—over 60 for the prosecution and over 80 for the defense—much of which was contradictory and of dubious reliability. Two key police witnesses—including Capt. William O’Connor himself, who had said good night to the chief just moments before the first shot—were for unknown reasons not even called to testify. And arguably the most important witness for the state (a painter named M. L. Peeler) was, according to some convincing defense testimony, quite likely drunk when he supposedly recognized the shooters.
Not that the defense witnesses had been any stronger. Many were called merely as character witnesses, attesting to the “good name” of one or the other defendant; others provided alibis that were difficult if not impossible to corroborate. One defense witness seemed particularly befuddled. He claimed that he saw one of the accused men at the Poydras Market, blocks away from the crime scene, at the exact time of the ambush. When asked how he could be so certain of the hour, he insisted that he had made sure to check the market clock, knowing that he would be asked about it in court (this at a time when he wouldn’t even have known that a crime had occurred).
And there had been plenty of other distractions to muddy the process of justice. One morning, prizefighter John L. Sullivan showed up to watch the proceedings, which were being closely followed in newspapers worldwide. He was given a seat of honor right next to the jury box, so that the great Irish boxer could ensure that the great Irish policeman would be properly avenged. Meanwhile, rumors began circulating that some of the jurors had been bribed by agents for the defense; private detective Dominick O’Malley, a known associate of defendant Charles Matranga, was soon arrested and accused of offering money to jurors in exchange for a not-guilty verdict. And as if all of this weren’t enough, one of the defendants—a non-English-speaking fruit peddler named Emmanuele Polizzi—had continually disrupted the proceedings with fits of real or feigned madness, stomping his feet, throwing himself on the floor, and even trying to bite anyone who came near him.
What the jury had made of these courtroom antics—and of the ocean of confused and inconclusive evidence—was impossible to say. But for many of the spectators in court on that wet afternoon of March 13, 1891—and for the “immense throng” of New Orleanians crowded on the street outside St. Patrick’s Hall—there was no doubt at all: at least some of the nine defendants had to be guilty. And though the judge had given a directed verdict of not guilty for two of the defendants for lack of evidence, the rest simply must be punished; no other outcome—according to the newspapers, at least—was acceptable.
At one thirty P.M., a knock was finally heard at the door of the deliberation room. Sheriff Gabriel Villere hurried through the door and went upstairs to consult with the jurors. After a few minutes, as nervous murmurs swept through the courtroom, Villere reappeared and crossed the room to the private office of Judge Joshua G. Baker. And when the judge himself came out into the courtroom, ordering Villere to ring up the parish prison and have the prisoners delivered to
court, there was no longer any room for doubt: The wait was over. After nearly a full day of deliberations, the jury had finally reached a verdict.
Judge Baker ordered the courtroom cleared of everyone except members of the bar and the press; all others had to join the unruly crowds waiting outside. The excitement on the street was even greater than it had been on the morning of the chief’s death. Police Secretary Vandervoort, anticipating trouble, telephoned the Central Station for an extra detail of police to control the multitudes. The police, after all, didn’t want any harm to come to the defendants—at least, not until a proper verdict had been delivered.
At around two thirty P.M., the jury filed into the courtroom. Most of the twelve members were averting their eyes. Although this is usually a bad sign for defendants (few jurors like to meet the gaze of men they are condemning), this was not necessarily the case here. The accusations of jury tampering had created an atmosphere of suspicion in the courtroom, and the jurors knew that their judgments would be met with skepticism no matter what the outcome.
The jury foreman, Jacob Seligman, handed the written verdict to the clerk, who passed it on to Judge Baker. After instructing the defendants to rise, the judge opened the folded paper and read the contents. He stared at the note for nearly a full minute—in what some reporters later interpreted as disapproval. Then he announced the jury’s findings to the room.
The verdict came as a shock to nearly everyone. With regard to three of the defendants, including the apparently deranged Polizzi, the jury had been deadlocked; a mistrial was declared, meaning that all three would have to be retried. As for the other six—everyone from the wealthy shipper Macheca to Asperi Marchesi, the young boy accused of whistling to alert the assassins to the chief’s approach—the decision was unanimous: all were found not guilty.