The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

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The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes Page 10

by Wilkes, Roger


  Actually, there was no direct evidence to connect Mary Rogers’s murder with Mme Restell’s illegal practices. But whenever there occurred an untimely death in New York, especially one involving a fashionable or beautiful female, there were immediate whisperings against the portly and wealthy English-born Madame. Her record, to be sure, was unsavory. She had been an immigrant dressmaker, had wedded a dispenser of quack medicines named Lohman, and, it was thought, had disposed of him for the inheritance. Thereafter she had lent her talents to birth-control.

  Mme Restell’s mansion of Greenwich Street was visited by a steady stream of unmarried expectant women, many the mistresses of millionaires and Congressman. At the time of Mary Rogers’s death, the Madame’s shuttered establishment, nicknamed “the mansion built on baby skulls”, had netted her earnings upwards of one million dollars. Shortly after Mary’s burial, public feeling against Mme Restell ran so high that crowds gathered about her doorway shouting: “Haul her out! Where’s the thousand children murdered in this house? Who murdered Mary Rogers?” On that occasion, violence was prevented only by the quick intervention of the police, who undoubtedly found the mammoth Madame too lucrative a source of income to trouble with such trifles as the corpse of a onetime cigar-counter employee.

  The police had just about exhausted their inquiry into Mary Rogers’s movements when a new and sensational bit of evidence suddenly came to light. Two young men, the sons of a Mrs Frederica Loss, who kept a public inn a mile above Hoboken, were beating about the bush near Weehawken on 25 August. In the thicket they found a small opening that led into a cramped tunnel or cave. They explored further, and discovered inside the cave four stones built into a seat. Draped on and about the seat were a silk scarf, a white petticoat, a parasol, a pocket-book, a pair of gloves, and a mildewed linen handkerchief initialled in silk “M.R.”.

  Mrs Loss’s sons immediately gathered up the feminine apparel and brought the find to their mother. She went directly to the Hoboken police, who excitedly contacted their colleagues in New York City. At once the press was filled with woodcuts and stories of Mrs Loss, her inn, and two of her three sons who had made the discovery, and the opening in the thicket near the cliffs of Weehawken.

  This publicity flushed forth a new witness. A stage-driver came forward. He dimly remembered transporting a girl of Mary Rogers’s description and a tall “swarthy” man to Mrs Loss’s inn on 25 July. This recollection succeeded in stirring Mrs Loss’s own memory. She vaguely remembered the couple. They had had cakes and drinks. Then Mary, or someone like her, and the “swarthy” man had gone off together into the nearby woods overlooking the river. Some minutes later Mrs Loss had heard a woman’s scream from the vicinity of the woods. She had paid no attention. On Sundays the area was filled with gangs of rowdies and loose young ladies who were often vocal.

  With the find at Weehawken, all the tangible clues were in. Since the case had not been broken in fact, it could only be solved on paper. Police authorities and amateur sleuths of the city room were soon busy formulating and publishing theories. The overwhelming majority were in accord on Weehawken as the site of the crime. But on the subject of the criminal’s identity there was a great passionate diversity of opinion.

  Who killed Mary Rogers? In the months after her death, almost every literature contemporary was certain he knew. The authorities seemed to lean towards Mrs Loss and her three sons. Justice Gilbert Merritt, of New Jersey, devoted much time to questioning Mrs Loss. He believed that she practised abortion, or permitted her inn to be employed by physicians for that purpose and that Mary Rogers had died during an operation in one of her back rooms and had been disposed of in the Hudson by her sons. The effects in the thicket, he felt, were only a red herring to divert suspicion. “The murder of the said Mary C. Rogers was perpetrated in a house at Weehawken,” Justice Merritt announced, “then kept by one Frederica Loss, alias Kellenbarack, and her three sons, all three of whom this deponent has reason to believe are worthless and profligate characters.”

  Sergeant McArdel, of the New York Leatherheads, interrogated only the three sons, and found them as undelightful as had Justice Merritt. They were sullen and they were contradictory. But they steadfastly denied that their mother had practised abortion. When one of them was asked if visitors ever paid their mother fifty dollars for any purpose, he replied: “I never have known any sick person brought to my mother’s house to be attended upon.” McArdel, too, concluded that Mrs Loss was guilty of manslaughter, and that her sons were her accomplices in removing the body.

  Of all the authorities, Dr Richard F. Cook held most heartily to his original theory that Mary had been gang-raped and then brutally killed. Again and again he told the press that he was “confident” she had been “violated by six, or possibly eight ruffians; of that fact, he had ocular proof, but which is unfit for publication.”

  The majority on newspaper row supported Dr Cook’s theory. Murder after murder had been committed by roving bands of rowdies in the New York metropolitan area and among the outing-sites of New Jersey. The weekly Saturday Evening Post saw signs of gang violence in the disorder of the thicket, and the Journal of Commerce saw the handiwork of street ruffians in the fact that no men’s handkerchiefs had been used to strangle Mary. “A piece of one of the unfortunate girl’s petticoats was torn out and tied under her chin, and around the back of her head, probably to prevent screams,” remarked the Journal of Commerce. “This was done by fellows who had no pocket-handkerchiefs.”

  For weeks the New York Herald, which had been crusading against vandals and butcher boys, also championed the gang-rape notion. The Herald theorized that Mary and her “swarthy” escort had indeed visited Mrs Loss’s inn for refreshment, and then proceeded to the woods for further refreshment. In the brush they had been set upon by a waiting gang of roughnecks. Mary’s escort had been assassinated immediately, and Mary herself slain after she had been attacked. Then both bodies had been shoved into the river. But if this held any probability, what happened to the remains of the “swarthy” escort? As a matter of fact, the body of an unidentified man was found floating in the Hudson five days after Mary’s body was recovered. But the man was neither tall nor dark.

  The New York Herald flirted with one other intriguing possibility. It recalled Mary’s first disappearance, three and a half years before the murder. “It is well known that, during the week of her absence … she was in the company of a young naval officer much noted for his debaucheries. A quarrel, it is supposed, providentially led to her return home. We have the name of the Lothario in question … but for obvious reasons forbear to make it public.” The New York Herald was suspecting someone Mary had met through young Keekuck, possibly a superior on the USS North Carolina. Or possibly it was still making allusions to Keekuck himself.

  Brother Jonathan was the first of several journals to subscribe to the idea that Mary Rogers had not been murdered at all. Its editors argued that a body in the water only three days, or less, would not be “so soon afloat” and that it would not be “so far decomposed”. The corpse fished out of the Hudson at Sybil’s Cave must have been in the water “not three days merely, but, at least, five times three days”. Therefore, the body could not have been that of Mary Rogers.

  On the other hand, if the body had actually been that of Mary Rogers, then Brother Jonathan’s choice for the murderer was Alfred Crommelin. “For some reason,” said the journal, “he determined that nobody shall have anything to do with the proceedings but himself, and he has elbowed the male relatives out of the way, according to their representations, in a very singular manner. He seems to have been very much averse to permitting the relatives to see the body.”

  Daniel Payne fared better than his rival boarder. While there were murmurings about his motives, and about his addiction to drink, all sources agreed that his affidavit concerning his activities on the fateful Sunday was foolproof. Though, as a matter of fact, no original suspect completely escaped judgment in the press. Even the unl
ucky Joseph Morse, wood-engraver and commuter to Staten Island, had his backers. The New York Courier and Inquirer had received anonymous letters which made its editors regard Morse as quite capable of “the late atrocity”.

  Only one publication advocated Mme Restell as a candidate for the Tombs. The National Police Gazette doggedly waged a campaign against her. As late as February 1846 the Police Gazette was editorializing: “The wretched girl was last seen in the direction of Madame Restell’s house. The dreadfully lacerated body at Weehawken Bluff bore the marks of no ordinary violation. The hat found near the spot, the day after the location of the body, was dry though it had rained the night before! These are strange but strong facts, and when taken in consideration with the other fact that the recently convicted Madame Costello kept an abortion house in Hoboken at that very time, and was acting as an agent of Restell, it challenges our minds for the most horrible suspicions.”

  There was yet one more theory to be put forth. And this, appearing more than a year after the crime, proved to be the most widely publicized and controversial of them all. It was, of course, the theory advanced by Edgar Allan Poe in “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” which he expected would give “renewed impetus to investigation”.

  In his thinly disguised novelette—he used French names in the body of the story, but identified each character, newspaper, and site with factual footnotes relating to the Mary Rogers case—Poe began by attempting to demolish the pet theories promoted by his predecessors. “Our first step should be the determination of the identity of the corpse,” Poe stated, obviously referring to Brother Jonathan’s conjecture that Mary Rogers still lived. At great length, and with questionable scientific accuracy, Poe pointed out that a body immersed in water less than three days could still float. “It may be said that very few human bodies will sink at all, even in fresh water, of their own accord.” As to the impossibility of decomposition in less than three days: “All experience does not show that ‘drowned bodies’ require from six to ten days for sufficient decomposition to take place.” In short, Poe had no doubt that the body recovered at Sybil’s Cave was that of Mary Cecilia Rogers.

  However, as to the exact scene of the crime Poe was less certain. That the thicket at Weehawken “was the scene, I may or I may not believe—but there was excellent reason for doubt”. Poe set down his doubts in detail. If the articles of clothing had been in the thicket the entire four weeks after the murder, they would have been discovered earlier. The mildew on the parasol and handkerchief could have appeared on the objects overnight. Most important, “Let me beg your notice to the highly artificial arrangement of the articles. On the upper stone lay a white petticoat; on the second, a silk scarf; scattered around, were a parasol, gloves, and a pocket-handkerchief… . Here is just such an arrangement as would naturally be made by a not-over-acute person wishing to dispose the articles naturally. But it is by no means a really natural arrangement. I should rather have looked to see the things all lying on the ground and trampled under foot. In the narrow limits of that bower, it would have been scarcely possible that the petticoat and scarf should have retained a position upon the stones, when subjected to the brushing to and fro of many struggling persons.” Yet, after all these observations against the Weehawken thicket as the scene of the crime, Poe, in the end, concluded that Mary Rogers must have met her end there, after all.

  In studying the roll of suspects, Poe felt that there was no evidence whatsoever against Mme Restell or against Morse. He felt that Daniel Payne’s deposition to the police vindicated him entirely. As to Crommelin: “He is a busybody, with much of romance and little of wit. Any one so constituted will readily so conduct himself, upon occasion of real excitement, as to render himself liable to suspicion.” Brother Jonathan’s editors had selected Crommelin as the murderer, said Poe, because, resenting their implications that he had not properly identified the corpse, Crommelin had gone in and brashly insulted the journal’s editors. Mrs Loss was a possibility, but, from her actions, Poe felt that she had played only a secondary part in the crime.

  Poe refuted most strongly the popular theory of gang murder. The thicket displayed signs of violent struggle, yet several men would have overcome a frail girl quickly and without struggle. There were evidences that the body had been dragged to the river. One killer might have dragged Mary’s corpse, but for several, it would have been easier and quicker to carry her. Nor would a number of assailants have overlooked an initialled handkerchief. Finally: “I shall add but one to the arguments against a gang; but this one has, to my own understanding at least, a weight altogether irresistible. Under the circumstances of large reward offered, and full pardon to any king’s evidence, it is not to be imagined for a moment, that some member of a gang of low ruffians, or of any body of men, would not long ago have betrayed his accomplices… . That the secret has not been divulged is the very best proof that it is, in fact, a secret. The horrors of this dark deed are known only to one.”

  This, then, was the essence of Poe’s theory. The crime, he insisted, had been committed by a single individual in the thicket at Weehawken. Carefully he reconstructed the murder:

  “An individual has committed the murder. He is alone with the ghost of the departed. He is appalled by what lies motionless before him. The fury of his passion is over, and there is abundant room in his heart for the natural awe of the deed. His is none of that confidence which the presence of numbers inevitably inspires. He is alone with the dead. He trembles and is bewildered. Yet there is a necessity for disposing of the corpse. He bears it to the river, and leaves behind him the other evidences of his guilt; for it is difficult, if not impossible to carry all the burthen at once, and it will be easy to return for what is left. But in his toilsome journey to the water his fears redouble within him. The sounds of life encompass his path. A dozen times he hears or fancies he hears the step of an observer. Even the very lights from the city bewilder him. Yet, in time, and by long and frequent pauses of deep agony, he reaches the river’s brink, and disposes of his ghastly charge—perhaps through the medium of a boat. But now what treasure does the world hold—what threat of vengeance could it hold out—which would have power to urge the return of that lonely murderer over that toilsome and perilous path, to the thicket and its blood-chilling recollections? He returns not, let the consequences be what they may.”

  And who was this murderer?

  He was, Poe decided, an earlier lover. He was the young man who had eloped with Mary Rogers on her first disappearance from the cigar store. Three and a half years later he returned and proposed again. “And here let me call your attention to the fact, that the time elapsing between the first ascertained and the second supposed elopement is a few months more than the general period of the cruises of our men-of-war.” He was, then, a navy man on shore leave, the very officer the New York Herald stated she had gone off with. When he came back to New York, he interrupted Mary’s engagement to Payne. She began to see him secretly. But why did he kill her? Possibly he seduced her and she became pregnant. He took her to Mrs Loss’s for an abortion, and she died accidentally. Or possibly he failed to seduce her, and, on an outing to Weehawken, he finally raped her. Then, fearing the consequences of the act, he was forced to kill. At any rate, concluded Poe: “This associate is of swarthy complexion. This complexion, the ‘hitch’ in the bandage, and the ‘sailor’s knot’ with which the bonnet-ribbon is tied, point to a seaman. His companionship with the deceased—a gay but not an abject young girl—designates him as above the grade of the common sailor.”

  Poe, like the New York Herald before him, claimed to know the name of this navy officer. On 4 January 1848, in a letter to an admirer, a young medical student in Maine named George Eveleth, Poe disclosed: “Nothing was omitted in ‘Marie Roget’ but what I omitted myself—all that is mystification. The story was originally published in Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion. The ‘naval officer’ who committed the murder (or rather the accidental death arising from an attempt at abortion)
confessed it, and the whole matter is now well understood—but, for the sake of relatives, this is a topic on which I must not speak further.”

  In 1880 John H. Ingram published a biography of Poe. In it he revealed the name of Poe’s suspected “naval officer”. The name of the murderer, said Ingram, was Spencer. He did not know his first name, or explain where he had learned his second name. Based on this bit of name-dropping, William Kurtz Wimsatt, Jr, of Yale University, in an investigation of Poe’s deductive prowess, attempted to track down the elusive Spencer. He learned that at the time of Mary Rogers’s death in 1841 there were only three officers in the United States Navy named Spencer. One was in Ohio at the time Mary vanished in New York; another was infirm; the third was active, and a definite and fascinating possibility. He was eighteen-year-old Philip Spencer, the problem son of Secretary of War John Canfield Spencer. In short, his family was sufficiently influential to hush up any bit of unpremeditated homicide and sufficiently impressive to make Poe admit that “for the sake of relatives, this is a topic on which I must not speak further”. Philip Spencer, it might be added, was quite capable of carrying on an affair with Mary and seeing her to an abortionist, or of killing her under different circumstances. Three months before the murder he had been expelled from his third school, Geneva College (now Hobart College), for “moral delinquency”. He drank too much and he absented himself from classes too often. Where did he spend his time of truancy? In New York, and with Mary? We do not know. But we do know that in the year following her death he was caught and convicted of planning, and almost executing, the only mutiny in American naval history. Returning from a training cruise to Africa aboard the brig Somers, Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer chafed at the conditions on the vessel. He conspired with two subordinates, Boatswain’s Mate Samuel Cromwell and Seaman Elisha Small, to kill his superiors and convert the Somers into a pirate ship. His plot—though the seriousness of his intention later became a matter of great controversy—was exposed in time by Captain Alexander Mackenzie, and young Spencer, hooded and manacled, was hanged from the main yard-arm with his unfortunate companions.

 

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