The witness Mr. Jerger then continued, saying that he was standing in front of his barn while watching the automobile as the rain poured down and saw the auto stop in front of Volk’s Saloon, at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
Attorney Penney at this point attempted to question the witness, but the judge had Mr. Jerger step down. The Judge then turned his attentions to the antagonistic Mr. Penney.
“You have no right to examine the witnesses under the law,” stated Judge Murphy.
Mr. Penney said, “But I insist.”
Judge Murphy—“Well, I won’t permit it.”
Mr. Penney—This is a most irregular proceeding. It has been irregular all through from the beginning.
Judge Murphy—“Well, if you don’t like it you can get out of my courtroom.”
Mr. Penney—“Well, I won’t get out.”
Judge Murphy—“Well, I’ll put you out.”
Mr. Penney—“I’d like to see you do it.”
The Judge scoffed at Penney but allowed him to remain, and continued the inquiries.
The saloonkeep Mr. George Volk, proprietor of the tavern where Arthur Pennell stopped for a drink, said that Pennell entered his saloon at about 4 pm on March 10 and had a whiskey and a cigar.
A boy named James Reilley testified that he saw Pennell’s automobile stop in front of Volk’s Saloon and that Mrs. Pennell was a passenger. Mr. Pennell entered the saloon, he said, leaving his wife sitting in the auto all alone. Some time later he saw Pennell emerge from the saloon and get back in the auto.
“Just before he got in he said something and he and Mrs. Pennell laughed,” said the young witness.
A witness named George Campbell testified that he was sitting at the front window of his house when he saw the Pennell automobile pass slowly. It went up the street and back again, then as it went up Kensington Avenue, the driver, Mr. Pennell, threw the top back, despite the fact that the rain was pouring down. At that point the auto was about 300 feet from the quarry, Campbell said, and “After the occupants put the top down they increased the speed.” Then, Mr. Pennell put his hand up to his head, as if he reaching for a hat that might have blown off. The automobile “swayed” at that point, then careened over the cliff.
A newsman with the Albany Journal newspaper claimed knowledge that an hour before taking his fateful drive, Pennell had conducted an anxious conversation over the telephone with a female; that the information given to him by that female made a strong impression on him, indeed, it weighed heavily on his mind, and that the subject of that conversation was the midnight murder of his former friend, Edwin L. Burdick.
Mr. Babcock of the automobile company from whom Pennell had bought his machine testified that the Baker runabout was “perfectly manageable and in perfect condition and repair. In fact, it had been in the factory being refinished and was turned over to Mr. Pennell again the Saturday before his death, good as new.”
The official findings of the Pennell Inquest as to whether the automobile accidentally or was intentionally plunged into the quarry were termed “inconclusive.”
Hartzell & Hartzell Have Their Say
On April 20, almost two months after the murder of Ed Burdick, the Buffalo Express published a lengthy article which revealed finally and at long last details of the actions of the police assault on the Burdick home on the night of March 1st, and the unconscionable behavior of the gang of thugs involved.
Upon learning the details of this bizarre fiasco, Buffalo’s citizens were universally appalled and their historic fear and mistrust of the police department renewed.
Whatever fragile faith had been recently and tenuously set to ticking again between the police department and Buffalo’s citizens, after decades of corrupt allegiance to the likes of Fingy Conners, Jack White, the Sheehan brothers and other criminal ilk, this outrageous event effectively reset the clock back to zero.
The attorney-brothers Hartzell & Hartzell, who represented Mrs. Marie Hull and Mrs. Alice Burdick, summed it up in the Express article:
Who can picture the horrors of that night?
Who can imagine the terror that filled the hearts of these tender women and children as officers of the law pounded on the doors of that stricken home with their night sticks, the sounds reverberating through the silent house as though a legion of murderers clamored and strove for admittance?
And when these men forced their way in they ran through the hallway and up the stairs shouting roughly. ‘Get up! Get up! We want Mrs. Hull and Mrs. Burdick! They must come with us to the police station!’
Of all the unreal situations and the shocking conditions that have appeared in this tragedy from first to last, there has been none more terrifying or revolting than their midnight raid upon the Burdick home by the supposed ‘guardians of the peace’! What home is forthwith secure in its sanctity and privacy? What recompense or amends shall be had? What shall prevent its recurrence in your home or ours?
Buffalo has achieved much, but it has much to achieve. The principle that ‘Every man’s home is his castle,’ wrought into the English law at such heroic cost and claimed by our young nation as its birthright suddenly becomes in Buffalo but a myth.
In a single night this community casts off the acquired civilization of centuries. In a single night we leapt backward through the years to the darkest period in history.
Might again makes right. Law is only the manifestation of the arbitrary will of those in power.
Liberty is a faint spark, feebly flickering in the night of intense blackness. The rights of man are but an empty dream.
The word of Christ is untaught.
The Golden Rule lies hidden in the monasteries, and the words ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’, and ‘Do unto others even as ye would have them do unto you’ is unknown to men.”
...
From the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle:
A particularly striking example of a new kind of questionable entertainment, the crime-play, is a melodrama entitled “Over The Quarry Brink, Founded On The Great Buffalo Mystery,” now being played at a Buffalo theater.
This play purports to tell the story of the murder of Edwin L. Burdick, and is built on the theory that Mrs. Burdick was the author of the crime. It represents Mrs. Burdick as an evil woman wrongdoing her husband and finally procuring him to be murdered by one of her associates. As Mrs. Burdick, against whom no such accusation has ever been authoritatively made, is living in Buffalo presently, the utter abominableness of producing this play, especially in a Buffalo theater, need not be particularly pointed out. The law of criminal libel probably covers such an extreme case as this and it is to be hoped that it will be invoked in behalf of Mrs. Burdick. Conspicuous examples ought to be made of the author and of the producer of ‘Over The Quarry Brink.”
Milwaukee
The civil insurrection that Hannah Sullivan had anticipated would surely ensue upon revelation to Buffalo citizens of yet another outrageously intolerable and illegal police action never materialized. Precious little reaction, short-lived, came of the Hartzell Brothers’ passionate statement printed in the Express.
Hannah couldn’t quite understand it. This inaction only again reiterated in her mind the emergent need for women to win the right to vote. She had come to realize that people were naturally inclined to shut out from their thoughts any disturbing reminder of things they believed they could do nothing about. This may have explained why the police raid on the Burdick family house went ultimately unpunished. Women having the vote would surely change things, Hannah believed. Fingy Conners owned the police, the municipal judges and the politicians and had ruled over all for almost a generation. The police had demonstrated time and again that they were not protectors of the citizens as they had so sworn in their oath, but rather served as a standing army to politicians requiring protection from the righteous wrath of the citizens, from the penalty of law, and from all common standards of human decency.
Likewise, politicians were not servants of
the citizens as vowed in their campaign promises, but rather servants of those who had bought them with surprisingly paltry sums of cash and cheap trinkets, whose primary objective was keeping the citizens under their thumbs.
Hannah missed her brother.
David J. Nugent had been banished to Milwaukee along with his wife, Fingy’s niece Minnie and their children. There Dave was put in charge of Fingy’s dock operations, in the beginning unhappily so.
Fingy’s intent was to get the flashy blatherskite Nugent out of Buffalo while his attorneys wrangled to overturn his conviction and his two year sentence to Auburn Prison. Among First Ward men Dave Nugent had evolved into a folk hero of sorts. He was a charismatic figure and never gave any outward indication of distress or care over his legal predicament, so confidant was he in his place in the scheme of things—and in Fingy Conners’ able maneuvering. It was habitually commented by newsmen in their reports about him that he was very well dressed and remarkably youthful appearing. Overconfidence made him cocky and drew attention to him wherever he went. His attorney Mr. Hoyt was not happy about Dave’s boasting and his colorful profile in the community. He’d heard that in the saloons that Dave and his cousin Dick frequented he had been entertaining the clientele with dramatic new enhanced renditions of his ill-fated attack on the Mather, putting his case in peril.
Together Fingy and Hoyt came up with the plan to get him out of town.
Milwaukee was a big change. He’d never been there before. He had no friends in Milwaukee, and the workers under him, loyal to their longtime previous boss, took it poorly when Nugent strutted in, moved his predecessor out of his office, and took over operations.
The Nugent children were bereft at being uprooted from friends and family, but Dave’s wife Minnie was downright distraught. Her antagonism toward her husband and his narcissistic behavior coming as it did at great cost to her and the children had only expanded in recent years. Her temporary exile to Milwaukee was something to endure with teeth gritted. She told herself it would only be for a short while. But soon enough she was horrified to find her husband expressing his actual preference for the place.
For the first time since he was a boy Dave Nugent was out from under Fingy’s judgment, direct management and eagle eye while at the same time enjoying The Boss’ full protection and support. More so, he was able to exercise better control over his family, especially Minnie, as she no longer had Fingy to conveniently run to whenever disagreements rose up between her and her husband. Minnie was forced into stricter subservience now that over 600 miles separated her from her uncle.
Good news came for Dave Nugent in January upon Attorney Hoyt’s victory at winning a new trial for him and his 16 shooters. The Apellate Division set aside Nugent’s previous conviction and sentence. The decision was based on grounds that the court that had indicted Nugent was not regular in that a notice of its convening had not been published as required.
Dave returned to Buffalo, and with Hoyt at his elbow, surrendered himself to the District Attorney for arraignment to plead to four indictments that had been found against him. He was described by newspapers as looking “as stout and young-faced as ever. He bore no sign of anxiety or worry when the D.A. formally informed him that the grand jury had found four indictments against him, three charging him with assault and one with rioting.”
The judge set his bail at $3000. South Buffalo building contractor William H. Fitzpatrick became surety on the bond. Fitzpatrick and Fingy Conners were business partners in the building of hundreds of homes in the new South Buffalo section of the booming city.
As expected, Fingy once again had prevailed.
Hoyt’s strategy was for Dave and five of his cohorts to change their plea from not guilty to guilty to the lesser charge of rioting; the remainder of the gang pleading guilty to unlawful assembly. The plea change was made in order to avoid a trial. The men were arraigned in groups before the judge. They consented to have sentences imposed at once. Justice Kruse imposed a fine on David Nugent and his fellow conspirators of $250. The amount was posted by Fingy Conners. Thus, the Criminal Term of the Supreme Court efficiently disposed of the criminal cases. Nugent and all the rest walked free.
Their victim John Molik on the other hand received a life sentence of pain and disability, thoroughly uncompensated.
“I don’t know what to think anymore, Annie,” Hannah said.
“It’s complicated,” Annie responded while tying up a pork roast.
“What do you think, Annie? I mean, David has crippled a man. Mr. Molik has a bullet too close to his heart for surgeons to remove. That’s what President McKinley died of. A bullet they couldn’t retrieve caused the onset of sepsis. That’s what I read. And who gets the money from the fines the Justice imposed? Shouldn’t that money go to the Molik family by all rights?”
“I don’t know. Is David staying here in Buffalo now that he’s free?”
“Of course. His family and all his friends are here. But what do I do now? Just because a court excuses him doesn’t change what he done. Little David thinks we can all go back to the way things were, with his Uncle Dave welcome as before. I don’t know what to tell him now.”
“Tell him the truth.”
“I already did.”
“No, I mean the truth about how you feel about all this. Say those exact words to him. Otherwise his understanding of right and wrong will be confused. You have to tell him that the court failed in its duty because what he did was terrible. He has to learn some time that justice does not always prevail, and here’s the perfect example in his own life. In his own family.”
“He misses his uncle, Annie. I miss him too. But...”
“Your responsibility is to your own child, not to your full-grown brother who acts like a child.”
“You don’t understand...the things that happened to him when we were little and got split up when our parents died. I feel responsible.”
“Hannah, must we, again? You were only three years older than him. A child yourself! It wasn’t your duty to raise him! You are not his parent. The Manahars took him in—and that’s that. You have to stop blaming yourself. Your brother made all his own decisions. Yes, Fingy Conners had his influence, but your brother was a hoodlum before he ever met Fingy Conners. Haven’t you ever stopped to consider why, if your family circumstance turned your brother bad as you claim, then why didn’t them same circumstances turn you bad?”
Hannah had no response at the ready for such logic.
After a minute of silence Annie reiterated, “Am I wrong about that?”
“No,” Hannah admitted reluctantly.
“You can’t blame the Manahars, Hannah. They saved David from the orphanage after your parents died just like the Sheas saved you. How lucky you both were not to end up there! We both know our husbands’ awful stories about when they were put in the orphanage. You can’t blame Fingy—I mean, entirely—because David was trouble long before he ever landed on Fingy’s doorstep. And you can’t blame yourself. So, who’s left? How about blaming your brother for his own foolishness? How about blaming your brother for making so many bad choices? Isn’t it about time you shrugged this heavy burden off your shoulders and put it on him where it rightfully belongs? I admit I feel sorry for those poor kids of his, Hannah, I really do. But as for Minnie,” she added, “that girl knew exactly what she was gettin’ into.”
...
“Hannah!” her brother called. He was standing out on the stoop, knocking hard on one side of the door as Zeke barked and raged on the other. Hannah startled. She was awakened from her nap. She went down the stairs and unlocked the door.
“Zeke! Quiet. It’s okay! Shh!”
She opened the door with one hand and looped the other under the dog’s collar to hold him back. It was quite clear the two disliked each other.
“Oh, Sis. Did I wake yous?”
“I’m glad you did, Dave. Little Davey’ll be gettin’ home from school in a few minutes anyway. Come on up.”
“How come you’re goin’ to Chicago?”
“That’s where I change trains for Milwaukee.”
“Are you goin’ back there to pack up?”
“Pack up for what?”
“For movin’ back home, silly.”
“Hannah, I ain’t movin’ back. I got responsibilities now. I’m headin’ that whole Milwaukee operation. I got that place runnin’ like a well-oiled machine. That lummox Hastings I replaced nearly had it run into the ground.”
“What about Minnie and the kids, Dave?”
“Oh, they’re fine. The kids are settlin’ in. They got new friends.”
“Well then, what about us? We’re your family too.”
“Come on now, Hannah. I know what’s goin’ on here. Jim don’t want me round here no more. I’m a bad influence, or so’s I been hearin’!” he laughed ruefully.
“Dave...”
“Gotta go, Hannah. Kiss the kids for me. Come see us this summer. We got a beach cottage twenty miles north of the city, right on the lake. It’s beautiful up there. You’d love it.”
“Oh Davey!” she began to cry.
“Aw, Sis. Don’t. I’ll be comin’ back here on business a few times a year. It’ll be like I never left. Gimme a kiss now.”
Hannah hugged him tight. He kissed her on the cheek.
“Yer my best friend, Hannah,” he said. “Don’t know what I’d‘ve ever done without yous.”
She cried as she watched him get into the automobile he’d borrowed from Fingy and drove away, waving, the car sliding sideways on the ice, he wrestling with the steering arm to get it under control so he could move forward.
Fingy Conners & The New Century Page 38