Very strange.
In 1942, the Collyer brothers made the newspapers. They had defaulted on the mortgage on their home and the bank came knocking on the door. The Bowery Savings Bank began eviction procedures and a work crew was sent over to clean up the yard. Langley Collyer started screaming at the workers and the police had to be called in. The cops ended up smashing down the front door, only to encounter a wall of junk piled up to keep people out. Silently, Langley wrote out a check for $6,700 and paid off the mortgage in full.
He ordered everyone off his premises and that was the last that the world heard of the Collyer brothers.
That was until Friday, March 21, 1947, when a man named Charles Smith called police headquarters at 10 A.M. claiming “There’s a dead man in the premises at 2078 Fifth Avenue.” To this day, the true identity of “Charles Smith” remains a mystery.
A patrolman was dispatched to the scene, but he couldn’t get into the building. There was no doorbell or phone. The doors to the mansion were locked. The basement windows were broken, but protected by iron grillwork. An emergency squad of seven men had to be called in.
So, what would you do in this situation? There’s supposedly a dead body in this house and you can’t get in. The most obvious thing to do would be to break the door down, which is exactly what they did. The entranceway, however, was blocked by a wall of old newspapers, folding beds, one half of a sewing machine, folding chairs, boxes, part of a wine press, and many other pieces of junk.
It was clear that the police were not getting through the front door easily.
The policemen decided upon another approach. They got a ladder and threw it against the building. They attempted to go through a second-floor window instead.
Well, they were out of luck. The brothers had piled even more packages and bundles of old newspapers behind the window opening. The police started to pull all the junk out and throw it down to the street below. Out came countless old newspapers, empty cardboard boxes that were tied with rope, the frame of a baby carriage, a rake, two umbrellas tied together, and other stuff.
Once some of the material was cleared away from the window, a patrolman was able to step inside. Using a portable light, he shoved aside more bundles of rubbish and found Homer Collyer sitting on the floor with his head between his knees. The tiny old man’s matted gray hair reached to his shoulders. He was clad only in an old, ragged blue-and-white bathrobe.
Dr. Arthur C. Allen, the assistant medical examiner, confirmed that it was the body of Homer Langley and that he had been dead about ten hours. His proclamation was “As Coroner, 1 must aver, 1 thoroughly examined him, and he’s not only merely dead, he is really most sincerely dead.” (Well, maybe those were not his exact words.)
As the crowd outside the mansion swelled to over six hundred people, everyone started to wonder where Langley was. Could he be wandering around the city on errands? Could he still be in the house in hiding? Was he the one who called in the tip to the police? No one was really sure.
The following Monday the police began their search of the house for the missing brother. Out came more junk-gas chandeliers, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a rusted bicycle, three dressmaking dummies, a sawhorse, a doll carriage, a rusted bedspring, a kerosene stove, a checkerboard, a child’s chair, countless old newspapers, pinup girl photos, and so on.
But where was Langley?
The next day the police returned and pulled out an intricate potato peeler, a beaded lampshade, the chassis of an old car, children’s toys, and over six tons of newspapers, magazines, and wood.
But where was Langley?
On the third day even more stuff was taken out of the house. Anything deemed worthless was just tossed out the window to the ground below. Items of value were placed in storage.
But where was Langley?
On the fourth day the police continued the removal of junk from the home. In the search for Langley, they found an assortment of guns and ammunition. Near the location of Homer’s death, an assortment of bankbooks was discovered for a total worth of just $3,007.
But where was Langley?
On Saturday, March 30, a report came in that Langley had been seen boarding a bus for Atlantic City. The hunt for the missing brother temporarily shifted to the New Jersey coast, but there was no sign of him.
So, where was Langley?
Monday came around and, again, the police removed more junk from the home. This included over three thousand books, plenty of outdated phone books, a horse’s jawbone, a Steinway piano, a primitive x-ray machine, and more bundles of newspapers. By the end of the day a total of over nineteen tons of junk had been removed from the first floor of the house alone!
So, where the heck was Langley?
And the search continued. Every day more stuff was taken from the home. Old medical equipment, human medical specimens, a wide variety of musical instruments, and (of course) more bundles of old newspapers.
Enough of this garbage. Where was Langley?
On April 3, 1947, the police thought that they had found him. A body was found floating in Pugsley’s Creek in the South Bronx. The body sure looked like the missing brother, but it was later identified as a man named Thomas Lynch, who had disappeared earlier in the week.
Come on already, where was Langley?
Day after day, more and more junk was removed from the home. By Monday, April 7, 103 tons of essentially worthless garbage had been taken from the house. (Does the typical house even weigh that much?)
By now you know what the next line is going to be. And you must be sick of my asking it.
Where was Langley?
Luckily, that is the last time that 1 have to say it, because on Tuesday, April 8, 1947, the body of Langley Collyer was finally located. Believe it or not, he was less than ten feet from where his brother Homer had died. His body was partly decomposed and was being gnawed on by a big ugly rat. A suitcase, three metal bread boxes, and-you guessed it-bundles of newspapers were covering his body.
In the end, investigators concluded that Langley was asphyxiated after one of his booby traps collapsed on him. They believe that he was crawling through the tunnel-like maze in an effort to bring food to his paralyzed and blind brother Homer. With no one to feed him, Homer essentially starved to death.
The brothers’ estate was valued at $91,000 in real estate and $20,000 in personal property. What was salvageable from the 136 tons of junk that had been collected sold for less than $2,000 at auction. Their once beautiful mansion was condemned, torn down, and is now a parking lot.
Now we have just one unanswered question. What was the deal with all of those newspapers? Langley provided an answer in a 1942 New York Herald Tribune interview. “1 am saving newspapers for Homer, so that when he regains his sight he can catch up on the news.”
Sadly, he never had the chance to catch up on the news. Instead, they both became the news.
Useless? Useful? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
Michael mallow
possibly history’s most bizarre murder scheme
You probably have never heard of Michael Malloy. After all, he never did amount to much in life. He was a sixty-year-old unemployed fireman in the Bronx, New York. Malloy emigrated to the United States from Ireland, but that really has little to do with this story. All you really need to know about this guy was that he was an alcoholic-a man who would do anything for a drink.
In fact, it was Malloy’s drinking problem that got him into trouble. He became the victim of one of the most unusual murders in American history.
So let’s set our watches and clocks back to January 1933 and make a visit to a speakeasy operated by a guy named Anthony “Tony” Marino. Should you ever be in the neighborhood, be sure to make a visit to its former location-3804 Third Avenue. By anyone’s standards, this place was a dump. Dingy, dirty, and raw would be the best way to describe the establishment.
A speakeasy war was taking place at this time and Marino was in need of
some quick cash. Along with a customer named Francis “Frank” Pasqua, an undertaker who spent most of his time embalming himself with alcohol, he came up with the perfect quick-cash solution. They decided to take a life insurance policy out on someone and then bump the poor guy off.
Perched at a broken-down poker table in the rear of the speakeasy, the two men peered out into the main room. Their eyes quickly focused on a guy named Michael Malloy. Malloy was the perfect choice because he was a drunk with few known relatives or close friends. No one would ever miss him.
The plan was set into action. Three policies were taken out on Malloy under the pseudonym Nicholas Mallory. The first was for $800 from Metropolitan Life. Two additional policies of $494 each were taken from Prudential Life. The policies had a double indemnity clause; if Malloy just happened to have an accidental death, then double the value would be paid.
Now all they had to do was bump Malloy off. They assumed that this would be an easy task. A few too many drinks and he would be a goner.
They figured wrong.
Their first move was to relax all credit restrictions against Malloy. He could drink all that he wanted. So, for the first week he drank like a fish from the time he wandered in until he staggered off at night. Each day the “Murder Trust,” as they would soon be known in the tabloids, would wait for news of Malloy’s death.
Instead, Malloy would wander back into the bar each day to get more drinks.
The members of the Murder Trust knew they had a problem. They had invested a lot of money in the insurance policies and the alcohol, yet Malloy seemed no closer to death.
So they decided to spike Malloy’s drinks.
The speakeasy’s bartender, Joseph “Red” Murphy, just happened to be an unemployed chemist. He was skilled at adding small amounts of chloral hydrate to drinks to knock out unwanted customers. For a $100 cut in the action, Murphy agreed to help bring an end to Malloy’s existence. The only problem was that Murphy was out of chloral hydrate. Instead, he substituted antifreeze from his 1927 Model-T Ford as the poison of choice. Night after night he added the antifreeze (poisonous wood alcohol at that time), but this had no effect on Malloy. Day after day he was back, refreshed and wanting more to drink.
The group then tried adding turpentine, horse liniment, and even rat poison at various times to Malloy’s drinks. Any of these ingredients would do the ordinary man in, but Malloy was a hardened alcoholic and he could somehow tolerate these poisons.
Through his alcoholic daze, Pasqua recalled that he had heard about a man who had died from consuming either raw oysters or clams that had been soaked in whisky (it seems to me that many people do this each day with no problem). They decided to go one better-they saturated an equal amount of oysters and clams in the deadly antifreeze broth. Malloy downed piles of this delectable meal. To their surprise, Malloy was back the next day hungry for more.
The Murder Trust then came up with what they felt was a surefire killer. They opened a can of sardines and allowed it to spoil for about one week. Once it took on a really bad stench, they prepared a delectable sardine sandwich. Of course, no sandwich is complete without minerals, so Marino ground up the tin can and added the fine shavings to the sardines. As an added measure, they threw in some chopped-up pins to this concoction.
I’m sure you can guess what happened next. Malloy downed the sandwich, licked his fingers, and left. Did he die? Of course not. He wandered in the following day looking for more.
Most people would have given up at this point, but not the members of the Murder Trust.
Enter the fourth member of the Trust. Hershey “Harry” Green was a Bronx taxicab driver and a frequent customer of the speakeasy. Once again, Malloy was filled with alcohol until he passed out. At this point, they loaded Malloy into Green’s taxicab and took him to a deserted area of Claremont Park. They carried Malloy’s limp body out of the cab and laid him down behind a row of shrubbery. They opened up his shirt to the raw elements and poured water all over his exposed flesh. A good bath never hurt any drunk, but it just happened to be fourteen degrees below zero Fahrenheit that night. They were positive that Malloy would freeze to death.
Not the indestructible Michael Malloy. He somehow survived and wandered into the bar the next day complaining of a slight chill.
They decided it was time to get an expert. For another $100 cut, they hired a hitman named Anthony “Tough Tony” Bastone to do the job.
Tough Tony decided that they should just murder Malloy out-and-out. He had a plan that would make it look like an accident, meaning double the insurance money.
The scheme was to run Malloy down with Green’s taxi. Just like clockwork, they got Malloy drunk and threw him into the taxi, drove to a deserted intersection, and carried him out of the vehicle. Green then accelerated his taxi up to fortyfive miles per hour and raced down the street. As the cab approached, Malloy somehow managed to stumble to safety at the last moment. (This guy really did have the luck of the Irish!)
Once again, they placed Malloy back in the vehicle and drove to a more remote area. This time they carried out their plan and Malloy was crushed to death by the force of the car.
At least the Murder Trust thought that he was dead. They saw his body crushed. There was no way that they could have messed up this time. Or could they have?
The Murder Trust members checked the obituaries daily searching for Malloy’s pseudonym. They then scanned the papers for stories about a hit-and-run in the Bronx. No luck.
Well, if he wasn’t dead, then Malloy had to be in a hospital. They knew that they had hurt him badly. Red Murphy was then sent on the mission of checking all of the hospitals and morgues for his dear “missing brother.” Once again, no luck.
Clearly, Malloy was dead. Yet, without a death certificate or obituary notice, the Trust could not claim the insurance money.
So they decided to bump off another guy named Joseph Patrick Murray. Murray certainly fit their bill-he was someone they felt nobody would miss. The Trust got Murray drunk and tried the old run-him-over-in-the-taxicab routine. They ran Murray over and were about to turn around and do it again for good measure, but they were frightened away by the lights of a passing motorist.
The real trick was how they were going to pass Murray off as the fictitious Nicholas Mallory. Pasqua placed letters addressed to Mallory in Murray’s pocket. In addition, there was a card indicating that Pasqua be called in case of an accidentin which case he would identify the body as being of one Malloy-] mean Mallory.
As you can imagine, this plan also backfired. Murray somehow survived and spent fifty-five days recovering in Lincoln Hospital.
To make matters even worse, about three weeks after the initial “accident,” Michael Malloy came wandering into the speakeasy. He had somehow survived.
His “friends” showed great concern for his health. (Yeah, right.) When they questioned where he had been, Malloy said that an automobile had hit him. (Do you think they were shocked by his answer?) He had suffered a concussion of the brain, fractured skull, and a fractured shoulder. He had spent the time at Fordham Hospital, but due to some sort of clerical error, the hospital had failed to register him as a patient.
The Murder Trust was really thrown into turmoil. Tough Tony made it clear what had to be done. They had to kill Malloy ASAP. No more trying to be clever; they had to bump him off and get the insurance money.
Bastone challenged Malloy to a drinking bout. As usual, poor Malloy was given more of the dreaded wood alcohol and eventually fell into a state of unconsciousness.
Daniel Kreisberg, the sixth and final member of the Trust, was now brought in on the scheme for fifty bucks. (A measly amount for taking someone’s life.) Kreisberg and Murphy carried Malloy up to a rented room at 1210 Fulton Avenue. Red Murphy then proceeded to hook a rubber hose up to a wall gas jet and place the other end in Malloy’s mouth. But, the hose did not reach and they had to pull Malloy off the bed and drag him closer to the hose. Kreisberg turned the gas on, c
laiming during the trial that he “could hear the sizzling sound” of the escaping vapors. They had finally succeeded in doing what they had set out to do so many weeks before. They killed Malloy on February 22, 1933.
Getting rid of Malloy’s body was simple. If you remember from earlier in the story, Pasqua was an undertaker. He took care of everything from this point on. An ex-alderman named Dr. Frank Manzella was called in to write a phony death certificate declaring that Malloy had died from lumbar pneumonia with alcohol as a contributing factor. Pasqua placed Malloy in a cheap ten-dollar coffin and buried him in a charity grave in the Ferncliffe Cemetery in Westchester County. Of course, he wrote out a bill for $400 worth of services.
Clearly, this is not the end of the story. It seems that these guys started to argue over how the loot was to be split. Taxicab driver Green demanded additional reimbursement for the damage to his cab and sought out the opinion of complete strangers. Tough Tony and Kreisberg openly talked to others about their part in the murder. As with all stories that involve criminals with loose lips, the tale eventually found its way to the police. After two weeks of investigation the arrests were made.
During the process of probing into this scheme, the police learned of the death of a hairdresser named Mabelle Carlson nearly a year before. Carlson died on March 17, 1932. The coroner ruled that it was death due to terminal bronchopneumonia complicated by acute and chronic alcoholism. It was later learned that Marino had gotten Carlson drunk until she passed out. He took her up to his room and laid her down on the bed and stripped her naked. Marino then poured water all over her body and opened the windows on a cold night. Unlike the resilient Malloy, she froze to death. Marino just happened to be the beneficiary of her $800 life insurance policy. (Does this story sound shockingly similar to another one that you recently learned about?!?)
Einstein's Refrigerator: And Other Stories from the Flip Side of History Page 2