The Rope

by Alex Tresniowski

  In 1910, Münsterberg’s machines were not quite ready for the mainstream—though he certainly cleared the path for the modern lie detector that would appear in a few decades’ time.

  But his faith in an investigator’s intuitive prowess, and his view of the full and cathartic confession as the ultimate goal of both suspect and interrogator, were robust enough in 1910 to reach into Raymond Schindler’s mind and transform him as a detective.

  That year, Schindler was given his first murder case to handle as a lead investigator—the Marie Smith case. He felt confident enough about Hugo Münsterberg’s ideas to put them immediately into practice. When Schindler arrived in Asbury Park in late 1910, he was already thinking of criminal intent as an internal imbalance that needed to be corrected—not something monstrous that needed to be destroyed. And he understood that the most imbalanced of souls, the most unfathomable of crimes, would require the deepest penetrations into the darkness of a mind.

  * * *

  Just after 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, November 27, 1910, Ray Schindler, along with Charles Scholl, arrived at the stately Seacoast Bank Building on Mattison Avenue, just off Main Street in Asbury Park.

  The three-story building sat diagonally across from police headquarters and was built of red brick, stone, and terra-cotta. The Seacoast Bank kept $100,000 worth of capital and $1,200,000 in deposits, and the building housed a massive electrical roll press that churned out long sheets of blue-seal American banknotes—$372,250 worth of notes in its fourteen years of printing currency. The building was the thriving financial center of Asbury Park.

  It was also where Sheriff Clarence Hetrick kept a second-floor office for his side business in real estate. Hetrick and Schindler agreed the best place to interrogate Frank Heidemann was in this office, which bore much of the weighty authority of the top lawman in the county.

  The previous two days had been eventful. First, the false alarm about Heidemann skipping town. Then the article in the Asbury Park Press about how Max Kruschka was going to fire Heidemann, freeing him to leave for good. After the article, Schindler ordered round-the-clock surveillance of Frank Heidemann. At 6:40 the following morning, with the dark of night just lifting, two of Schindler’s men watching Kruschka’s home saw the front door open, and saw Frank Heidemann walk out.

  He had something in his hands. A sign board. They watched as Heidemann set the sign on the front lawn and hammered it into the cold ground, before turning and going back inside. One of the detectives snuck forward for a better look at the sign. It read: NO TRESPASSING.

  Right around that time, early on Sunday, November 27, Ray Schindler awoke early and checked the newspapers. He read through the fake article touting new fingerprint evidence in the Marie Smith case. The article declared “a certain man who lives near the scene of the crime has been under surveillance for some time. Impressions of his fingers have been obtained and these were compared with the prints that were found on some of the garments worn by the little victim.” The two sets of prints, Schindler read, “are said to bear a close resemblance.”

  At 8:30, Schindler met with Charles Scholl, and together they left the Marlborough Hotel and headed to Max Kruschka’s house. There they spoke with the detective who had kept watch overnight, and confirmed Heidemann was inside. Schindler had Scholl knock on the front door to officially summon Heidemann to an interview that morning at 10:00 a.m. Max Kruschka answered and said he would personally drive Heidemann to the sheriff’s office for the interview.

  Exactly at ten, Kruschka pulled his sedan up to the Seacoast Building and dropped off Heidemann. Scholl went down to the front of the building and walked Heidemann up to Hetrick’s office. Ray Schindler was waiting for him there. Schindler watched as Heidemann marched grimly into the office and took a seat without a word. He got his first good look at his suspect. Heidemann’s eyes were cast downward and his sharp jaw and sunken cheeks made him appear sickly. He wore a stubbly mustache. When he finally spoke, Schindler could tell his English was good, though occasionally it broke in the middle of a sentence.

  Schindler knew Heidemann was already on the record about Marie Smith’s murder. He claimed he never met Marie and certainly had not seen her the day she vanished—even though she walked past the house where he lived. He said he first heard of her disappearance one day later, when a schoolboy knocked on his door and told him about it.

  Schindler found that hard to believe, considering all the commotion near the Kruschkas’ home on the day Marie vanished.

  The questioning began. Scholl and Hetrick sat to the side while Schindler faced Heidemann.

  “What is your name?” Schindler asked.

  “Frank E. Heidemann.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “In Dortmund in Westphalia. Germany.”

  “What is your age?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “My father died in 1901. My mother died in 1909.”

  Scholl later noted, “He answered all questions reluctantly and not in detail.” But Heidemann did not squirm or shift in his seat. At times, Schindler observed, “he even became rather buoyant.”

  For the next two hours, Schindler and Scholl had Heidemann build a complete personal history up to the present day. His time in a boarding school as a child. His first job at eleven, as an assistant florist in a cemetery. His trip to America on the Crown Prince Wilhelm in January 1910. His arrival in New York City with four hundred dollars in his pocket, and his position as the night telephone operator in a German hospital on 77th Street and Park Avenue, for twenty dollars a month. Answering a help-wanted ad in the German newspaper Staats Zeitung and being hired by Max Kruschka in Asbury Park, just months before Marie Smith’s murder.

  Did he make any friends along the way? Schindler asked him. Did he have any female acquaintances? Heidemann answered no to both. He had no interest in women, he said.

  Schindler asked Heidemann about his recent day trip to New York City. Heidemann provided the details with total assurance. “He was able to recite his movements rapidly, giving each move that he made, the time, etc.,” Schindler noticed. “It was apparent he had rehearsed the story.”

  “You sound rather conversant with the streets of New York considering the fact that you were only there for such a short time,” Schindler pressed Heidemann.

  “I spent a great deal of time walking around. I knew my way very well.”

  Schindler deliberately asked the same questions over and over. Where did you go next? How long were you there? He took Heidemann through the events of the day three separate times.

  After an hour of repetitive questioning, Heidemann finally showed a flash of agitation.

  “I’ve already recounted all of these circumstances and I don’t care to repeat them,” he abruptly announced, flatly refusing to answer any more questions about his day in New York.

  Schindler felt that he had him off balance now.

  Schindler turned the focus to the events of November 9, the day Marie disappeared. He asked Heidemann where he was that morning. Heidemann said he was sweeping up ashes on Max Kruschka’s property.

  “Did you see Marie Smith that morning?”

  “No.”

  Schindler brought up the testimony of Mrs. Emma Davison, who lived one town over from Asbury Park and was walking along Ridge Avenue, near Max Kruschka’s house, at 10:30 a.m. on November 10. Davison was the last known person to see Marie Smith alive. According to a transcript of her testimony, which Scholl read to Heidemann, Davison told a prosecutor that she also saw Frank Heidemann, standing in his front yard just a short distance away from Marie.

  “He stood in the path with nothing but the hedge fence between them,” Davison recalled. “He spoke to the dog when the dog was barking at the little girl, and the little girl and the dog was closer to him than I was, and he couldn’t help but see the dog through that fence, and he certainly would have seen the little girl.”

  “The girl was wit
hin eight or ten feet of him?” Davison was asked.

  “No, she was not three feet.”

  Someone had placed Frank Heidemann within three feet of Marie Smith the morning she disappeared.

  Scholl read the testimony to Heidemann while Schindler studied the suspect’s face. When Scholl was done, Schindler asked Heidemann to give his version of events. Heidemann hesitated. His demeanor was changing. The buoyancy was gone. Heidemann resisted giving any details about that morning.

  But what about Mrs. Davison’s testimony? Schindler persisted. You must answer this question. Schindler got up from his chair and moved around the office as he spoke, asking questions one after the other, firing them “in rapid succession,” he said, in an effort “to get Heidemann riled up.”

  Schindler saw that it was working. He kept circling, kept firing.

  “Okay,” Heidemann finally said, “if Mrs. Davison says she saw me with Marie Smith and that only the hedge divided us and that therefore I must have seen Marie, I say she is a liar.”

  The denial was not as important to Schindler as the way in which it was delivered. Heidemann, he noted, “appeared very dejected, as meek as a lamb.” The fight was going out of him. It was time for more pressure.

  First, Schindler brought in a bundle of clothes—the clothes in which Marie Smith was murdered. Schindler handed Heidemann the brown winter coat and the green Scotch plaid dress, both caked with dirt and blood. He watched for a response. Heidemann looked over the clothing and said he had never seen them before. He remained calm.

  Schindler had one more surprise. A very big surprise. He backed up from Heidemann and spoke to Scholl.

  “Okay,” Schindler said, “bring in the girl.”

  CHAPTER 18 The Greenhouse

  November 27, 1910

  Asbury Park, New Jersey

  There was a hard silence in Hetrick’s office. Schindler kept his eyes on Heidemann. He believed he knew what Heidemann was thinking.

  The “girl,” Heidemann surely presumed, referred to the body of Marie Smith. What other girl was there? He had been handed her clothing, and now he was going to be made to look at her.

  Schindler studied Heidemann’s face and saw “his lower lip begin to quiver.” He watched Heidemann slump down in his seat and look pleadingly up at his interrogator.

  In a low, soft voice, Heidemann said, “I wish you were through questioning me.”

  At Schindler’s order, Charles Scholl left the office, and within a minute returned with the “girl.”

  It was Grace Foster.

  On their way to Sheriff Hetrick’s office that morning, Schindler and Scholl stopped at the Fosters’ home on Pine Street, and escorted the seven-year-old to the Seacoast Building. Grace waited in a side room with her mother while the Heidemann interview progressed and finally arrived at her part. Scholl walked Grace Foster into Hetrick’s office, but kept her several feet away from Heidemann.

  Grace, tell us what happened the day you were over at Max Kruschka’s house, Schindler asked her.

  Grace told her story again. “Frank Heidemann asked me to come over to the house tomorrow when the boys are not there,” she said. “He told me he had some candy he wanted to give me.”

  Schindler turned to Heidemann, who was defiant.

  “I will not say that she lies,” he said, “nor will I say that she speaks the truth.”

  Schindler pressed him for more. Again, Heidemann got angry.

  “I do not like children particularly,” he said. “If they are around me too much, I get annoyed.”

  That was all he would say about Grace Foster.

  Scholl led the girl out of the room. Heidemann withdrew quietly into himself. Schindler hadn’t expected Heidemann to buckle in Grace’s presence. He didn’t believe the tactic would lead directly to a confession. It was all part of chipping away at the façade. Heidemann’s discomfort in her presence, he believed, was a marker of deception. His reaction to possibly having to face the dead body of Marie Smith revealed raw emotions. Guilt? Remorse? Fear? Something was there. Something had caused a flinch.

  Schindler also knew Heidemann’s ordeal wasn’t nearly done. The questioning would go on for several more hours. There would be other opportunities for Heidemann to slip up and contradict himself, get caught in a lie. More chances to see him flinch.

  Yet Schindler wouldn’t be there for much of it. Bringing Heidemann in for an interview had a secondary purpose, unknown to the suspect—to get Heidemann out of Max Kruschka’s house, and give Schindler a clean shot at searching Heidemann’s bedroom.

  Not long after Grace’s appearance, Schindler and Sheriff Hetrick left the Seacoast Building, handing Heidemann over to Scholl. Hetrick drove Schindler to Max Kruschka’s home, and asked Kruschka to allow Schindler to search the property. Reluctantly, Kruschka agreed, and Hetrick left Schindler there by himself.

  Kruschka’s fenced-in corner lot was spacious. Besides the main two-story home, there were several outbuildings, including a handful of greenhouses. There was a big barn, and, back in a small courtyard, a doghouse. Schindler went straight to the largest greenhouse behind the main home. Just a few minutes into his search, he heard a noise at the entrance. The shuffle of boots. It was a police officer and the two Greater New York detectives. Max Kruschka, who had summoned the men, came bounding in after them. He yelled at Schindler to leave and “stormed about like a madman,” Schindler later said. The officer escorted Schindler off the property.

  The Greater New York detectives did not know about the hiring of Ray Schindler, and treated him like an invader. For Schindler, it was evidence of how chummy they’d become with Kruschka, whom they had cleared but who remained on Schindler’s list of suspects. With one call to Sheriff Hetrick, Schindler straightened out the confusion, and was soon back on Kruschka’s property. This time, Kruschka—still angry but now silent—led Schindler to the room Heidemann was renting, a room on the second floor of the main house, just above the kitchen.

  It was nearly dusk, and the small bedroom was dark. Schindler asked Kruschka for an oil lamp. Once it was lit, he went back in the room. It was spare—a bed, a chair, a desk, and a window facing the back of the house. Schindler went to the desk. He lowered his lamp, and it lit up a small vial on the desk. Schindler picked up the vial. It was morphine. Next to it was another small bottle of morphine tablets.

  Schindler moved his lamp across the wall behind the desk. Four black-and-white postcards were tacked to the wall. They were postcards of young, pretty women in their early twenties, holding a telephone and smiling. “Gee, I hate to wait,” read one caption. Another: “Stop your kidding.” The postcards were not pornographic, but they were suggestive. Earlier, Heidemann had insisted to Schindler that he had no real interest in women. These postcards proved that wasn’t true.

  Back on the desk, Schindler found a sheet of paper with a series of details written on it. It was a list of all of Heidemann’s movements during his recent day trip to New York City. Schindler was right. Heidemann had rehearsed his answers.

  Night was falling. Schindler left the house and went to the greenhouses. Kruschka had a successful florist business, with several busy greenhouses operating at once. Schindler went into the largest one first. He knew he didn’t have very much time to search them.

  Inside the greenhouse, it was dark and damp. The last of the sunlight was passing through large glass panes and over rows of fragrant plants and flowers. The space felt moist and alive but eerie.

  Just off the entrance, at the northern end of the greenhouse, there was a large, circular wooden platform. Four steps led to the top of the platform. A walk up the steps, and onto the platform, and you could see what was there.

  The platform encircled a deep, dark pit.

  The pit was oblong, five feet by ten feet across. It dropped nine feet down, and its sides and floor were made of concrete. A spindly three-rung ladder hung on to the edge of the platform and led down into the pit.

  Down there, at the botto
m, there was a massive coal furnace at one end—an imposing black iron machine that rose nearly to the top of the pit. Just in front of the furnace, a large pile of coal. And that was it. The pit was for making heat. Someone worked there, shoveling coal into the furnace. Someone spent hours there, shoveling, grunting, sweating, thinking, no sense of day or night. Alone except for the nearly human rumble and hiss of the hungry furnace. Frank Heidemann had to know this pit. He had to know every inch of it.

  That night, the furnace was silent. It hadn’t been fed in a while. But it was not cold to the touch. It was hot. Not burning hot, but still hot. Even the coals on the ground were warm from being next to it. Imagine how hellishly hot the furnace would be during operation.

  Could it be that Marie Smith had been lured into this greenhouse, or dragged into it, or even drugged with morphine and carried in? Could she have been lowered into the pit, to hide her or silence her? Or maybe pushed in? Or had she fallen while fleeing? Had she landed next to the hot coals, or been placed there? Or against the furnace itself?

  Could the unexplained burn scars on Marie’s nose and ear have been caused by direct exposure to the searing heat of this dark machine?

  It was fully night now. The great black furnace stayed asleep. Ray Schindler was done with his hurried search. He left the eerie greenhouse and went back to the Seacoast Building, back to Frank Heidemann.

  CHAPTER 19 What Kind of Fellow He Was

  November 27, 1910

  Asbury Park, New Jersey

  It was the colossal power of heat and steam that brought Frank E. Heidemann to America.