by Carrie Hagen
Instead, George W. Walling stood like a general in his uniform and took credit for catching the kidnappers of Charley Ross. “Soon after I received the description as given by the boy Walter and others who had seen the two men in the buggy who took little Charley away, after a conference with Captain Hedden, and the obtaining of other information, I knew my men,” he said in a statement to reporters. “You will remember that that description said one of the men wore goggles and had a ‘monkey nose,’ as the children called it. Despite the goggles, the detailed description of the man’s deformity of nose and the description given of the other man told us who the men were. Let me show you how quickly Mosher was recognized. I called in Detective Silleck one day, and after describing Mosher and the peculiarity of his nose, mentioning him by his alias of Henderson, I told him I wanted to get hold of him, but did not tell him for what. Silleck at once exclaimed, ‘Why, I know him; that’s Bill Mosher.’”
A reporter for the New York Herald asked Walling how he had led the investigation.
“We arranged our plans very secretly, and no one knew anything about them, with the exception of the officers engaged in the hunt and some of the members of the Ross family, with whom I have been in communication about the men for four or five months by mail and telegraph.”
“Was the search made in this city?”
“‘In this city?’ I should say it was. There was never made in my experience so thorough a search for anything as has been made by us in this case. Officers have been secretly detailed everywhere—at the ferries, at the depots, wherever, in fact, we had an idea we could get a clue to the men.”
Within forty-eight hours of Mosher and Douglas’s deaths, Walling had so manipulated the sequence of events over the past six months that it seemed as if the police, under his leadership, had planned and orchestrated the murders at Bay Ridge. Many newspapers, including the Bulletin, accepted Walling’s statements as justification for controversial police secrecy early in the case. “One satisfactory result comes from this sudden turn of affairs. It gives the police an opportunity to vindicate themselves from the unjust aspersions under which they have been placed by the necessary ignorance of the public regarding these operations.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer, however, used Walling’s words to criticize the police. “That they did not find them at all until they were shot down in the commission of [a] crime by a private citizen, does not greatly indicate their skill or earnestness in the pursuit. There was awful bungling somewhere.”
Walling blamed his men for the length of the chase. “Every officer in the city was on the lookout for them,” he told the Herald. “We would have had them a month ago but for the stupidity of one man whom I put on the track. I sent him to see if they were in a certain place which I thought they frequented. An officer was sent with him, and wafted outside some distance from the place. The men were not there, and my man foolishly asked for them. The result was that he was followed from the place and seen meeting the officer. Of course Mosher and Douglas were notified, and they haven’t been near the place since. We sent an expedition on a steam launch to try and find them on the water. Every bay and inlet of the Sound, the bay and the rivers, were explored, but we failed to find our men. The expedition was searching for ten days.”
“Mr. Walling,” the reporter asked, “what effect will the death of Mosher and Douglas have on the Ross case? If the boy was in their care may he not have been concealed in some place unknown to any other persons, and thus starve?”
“It is a rather hard question to answer, whether the death of these men will have a good or a bad effect upon the case; whether it will facilitate Charley Ross’s discovery if in the hands of other persons or not. My opinion is that it will be all right now.”
He spoke much too soon, of course. The truth was, he and the police needed the public to believe everything would be “all right.” The new superintendent was a gifted speaker. He knew how to spin information. In the days following the kidnapping, Walling had reviewed the facts in such a way that it appeared he had anticipated the murder of the kidnappers, therefore creating the illusion that the police had been in control. Some journalists saw through his rhetoric. Others did not. Instead of seeing the murders as further evidence of incompetent forces hesitating to act for personal and political reasons, they believed Walling’s delusion. He convinced the public to take comfort in the death of the kidnappers, not to worry about the lost child. Deftly, Walling had changed the story. It was now primarily about Mosher and Douglas, and finding the people who had helped them— not saving Charley Ross, whose case was subject to whether the kidnappers’ deaths had “a good or a bad effect upon it.”
The change was significant. Of course journalists would continue to mention the Ross family and people would keep looking for Charley, if for no other reason than somebody could still earn Mayor Stokley’s $20,000 reward should another abductor be tried and found. By acting like everything was “all right” now that the kidnappers were dead, Walling concentrated the public’s interest on the power the thieves had possessed. In so doing, he allowed Mosher and Douglas to have something they had predicted all along: future notoriety. The kidnappers lost their lives, but they did get away with the abduction on their terms: the Rosses had refused to give them money, so they had refused to return Charley. They had outwitted the police and avoided prison.
Others would study and emulate their kidnapping model.
to vindicate themselves
ON DECEMBER 15, MAYOR STOKLEY, POLICE CHIEF JONES, police captains, and two of Christian Ross’s brothers met at police headquarters on Chestnut Street to discuss whether they could continue offering $20,000 for Charley’s return.
That night, New York’s Detective Doyle and two officers prepared to raid a small, deserted island off of Westport, Connecticut, in Long Island Sound. Doyle had learned about an elderly couple who sold provisions to fishermen and wanderers from their home on the island. Assuming that Mosher and Douglas had stopped there more than once, Doyle thought the pair could very well be hiding Charley Ross. Doyle assembled a team, secured a search warrant, and landed on the island at 3:00 A.M. on December 16.
Domesticated animals and birds roamed the grounds outside of several shacks. When officers knocked on the main cabin, nobody answered. They pounded harder. An elderly man cracked open the door. Behind him, an old woman stood holding a candle. In a shaky voice, the man asked why they were bothering him so late at night. Doyle’s men pushed the door open, entered the cabin, and said they were there to take Charley Ross back home to his family. As the couple watched the officers search their home and the surrounding shacks, they insisted that they never let anybody stay with them, not even a child. Officers asked about Mosher and Douglas. Boatmen came to visit them often, the couple said, but only to buy provisions. Doyle left without making an arrest.
Later that morning, the Philadelphia Inquirer questioned the logic of praising police efforts now that Mosher and Douglas were dead. “Neither the police authorities of New York or Philadelphia accomplished any discovery which has led to one appreciable result; and, if the child should be restored through the terrible infliction upon the abductors, while perpetrating another crime, it cannot, in any wise, be credited to the vigilance or sagacity or efficiency of either of these police authorities or of any one who has aided them.”
The Baltimore News also chastised Walling and his men for their blatant self-promotion. “The New York police, for the sake of their own credit, had better keep quiet about their knowledge of these men for had they done their duty Charley Ross would not have been stolen.” Questioning why the police hadn’t arrested the former convicts earlier, the paper realized members of the department had hoped to profit from the ransom. “These things look very suspicious, and if they were not in league with the police, then the police were certainly very indifferent to their duty.”
For Walling to retain the spotlight, he needed to find Charley fast. Doyle’s mission to the Connecti
cut island had failed, and any associate of Bill Mosher’s who had information on the child wasn’t coming forward. Douglas had said that Mosher didn’t trust him with details on the boy, and if he were to be believed, then perhaps Mosher didn’t trust anybody.
The integrity of one of Walling’s top investigators, Detective Silleck, had also been compromised. In her interview at the Brooklyn morgue, Mrs. Albert Mosher had directed allegations at the detective, implying that the Silleck and Mosher families had shared the same ignoble acquaintances. They had. Like Officer Moran, Detective Silleck had not only grown up around Bill Mosher, but he had also arrested him. Silleck had revealed his familiarity with Mosher when he publicly identified the body at Bay Ridge, and Walling knew he had been the officer to bring Gil Mosher to the attention of Captain Hedden back in July, the single action ultimately responsible for Walling’s current high profile in the press. It was Silleck whose knowledge of the harbor led a search by the joint Philadelphia and New York forces, and it was he who had told the authorities that Bill Mosher’s deformed nose was due to either cancer or a disease, like syphilis.
Two officers and two criminals—Moran and Silleck, Mosher and Douglas—had grown up along those same Long Island shores so favored by river pirates. Ever since they were children, thieves had gravitated to their East River world, targeting shipments headed to isolated piers along the bay. The authorities tried not to interfere much. The force allotted such a small number of men to the harbor police that only hideous robberies—such as ones where captains were beaten with handpicks—were investigated. Pirates knew the odds were in their favor, and so they thrived—until the very end of the nineteenth century, when a fearless police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt overthrew their stronghold. Until then, it was hard to tell between the law enforcer and the criminal. Their worlds overlapped too frequently. It was too easy to become a police officer: all one had to do was find a veteran officer who would either sell his position or nominate the newcomer for one. And once an officer, it was too easy to operate as a criminal: all one needed was to maintain enough underworld connections to collect a decent paycheck as a thief catcher or as a thief protector.
Walling and Silleck knew that more of the Moshers could begin talking soon, and the police had no control over what they would say, contradict, or allege. Based on Mrs. Albert Mosher’s interview at the morgue, reporters were certain to ask more about the family’s past associations with Silleck. In the meantime, the detective continued working closely with Walling.
The day after the shooting, Walling learned about a Mrs. Russell— a junk dealer and landlady on Ridge Street who had funded Mosher’s failed business attempts as a fishmonger and saloon keeper. He decided to go undercover as a sanitary inspector to investigate her. Walling went to Russell’s broken-down lodging house, and after introducing himself to one of the tenants as a member of the Board of Health, declared the house a target for diphtheria and unacceptable for children. He asked to speak with the proprietor about the flooded cellars.
The tenant said Mrs. Russell had left for her country home an hour before.
Walling asked to go upstairs.
The tenant said she would be gone for at least one night.
Walling pushed past him, walked upstairs, and knocked at a bedroom door. Another man answered. Identifying himself as Russell’s son, he told Walling to take his complaints to the neighboring stable responsible for the flooding.
Walling asked where Mrs. Russell could be found in the country.
Both men said they didn’t know the address.
Before leaving, Walling perused the halls and the rooms. He then walked to the stable, and while he pretended to examine the alleyway between the buildings, Detective Silleck watched the front door.
A few minutes later, Silleck saw Mrs. Russell and her son exit the lodging house. He followed them and stopped when he could to telegraph Walling.
“Got the woman in Twenty-fourth Street. What shall I do?”
“Follow—to Canada if necessary” Walling replied.
Silleck telegraphed next from Grand Central Station. “Just bought tickets for New Britain, Connecticut.”
Walling now had a more concrete answer for those who asked why Douglas’s dying confession had connected his name to Charley’s hiding place: he and his men were watching the criminals’ former accomplices. “I do not think the boy is concealed in this city,” Walling told a New York reporter. “To be frank with you, I never believed that he was concealed in this city. It is not for me to tell you all I know about the case in its present aspects, but I am of the opinion that we are still on the right track.”
Another reporter asked whether Mosher’s wife, Martha, now known to be living in New York City, ever had the child. Walling dismissed the idea. He said he would have noticed if Mosher had communicated with his wife through the papers.
“My idea is that the boy may be picked up now,” he continued, confident Silleck would soon wire him from Connecticut with good news. “You see, there is no hope of reward any more than there is for fear of a conviction of the parties who may now have the child—and I think I know what I’m talking about—and he will be a burden to his keepers; of no use to them, in fact. How easy will it be for them to ‘set him afloat,’ put him out in the streets, with the knowledge that he would soon be taken up by the police as a ‘lost child’?”
Silleck telegraphed the next morning. “Nothing here; coming back.”
Back in New York, Silleck told Walling that Mrs. Russell went to visit her nephew and niece in New Britain. While in Connecticut, Silleck had traced rumors of a little boy in their company to a child who had died a month before.
“Did she say anything to you about Mosher?” Walling asked.
“No, but she said, ‘I know what you are looking after; you are looking after that boy.’”
Walling disagreed with Silleck’s summary of “Nothing here.” He and Charley’s uncle, Henry Lewis, traveled to New Britain the next day. Mrs. Russell’s son answered the door.
“You’re a queer young man not to know where your mother lived,” said Walling, referring to their earlier encounter at the lodging house. Mrs. Russell appeared once Walling demanded to speak with her. Although she refused to give straight answers about her sudden departure from New York, she identified the dead child as a relative. If the police didn’t believe her, she said, they could talk to the boy’s doctor, who also happened to be the town mayor.
Walling turned to questions about Mosher. Mrs. Russell said she might have seen his wife recently, but she didn’t remember when.
“Was it two years ago?”
“It might be.”
“Was it eight weeks ago?”
“Perhaps it was; yes, it was about that time.”
Walling asked about Mosher.
He owed me money, Mrs. Russell said.
Why would you deal with a criminal?
It is nobody’s business, she replied, if I choose to help somebody earn an honest living.
Walling found the town mayor. After confirming Russell’s story about the dead child, he and Lewis returned to New York.
Either Joseph Douglas, riddled with bullets and gasping for breath, lied about Walling’s knowledge on his deathbed, or the superintendent was only acting like a man who had no idea of Charley’s location. Henry Lewis was a successful and shrewd businessman. Chances are, he wouldn’t be easily conned into following Walling on a wild goose chase to Connecticut. However, by calling him a kidnapper of Charley Ross, he had the country believing Douglas’s dying confession—a confession that also stated, “Walling knows, and the boy will get home all right.” Eyewitnesses believed Douglas to be of sound mind at the time of his death. Walling insisted that Douglas was mistaken. If both men were being honest, then either Douglas had underestimated Walling’s knowledge or somebody had moved Charley without telling the superintendent.
If Walling was lying, then he was protecting somebody.
we’ll
defend ourselves
Such a large crowd arrived at the coroner’s inquest in Brooklyn on December 17, 1874, that the coroner delayed the morning proceedings by half an hour.
At 11:30 A.M., he charged the jury overseeing the inquest to deduce how Mosher and Douglas had died. Four men remained under police supervision: Mr. J. Holmes Van Brunt, the brother and next door neighbor of the burglarized home owner; Albert Van Brunt, Holmes Van Brunt’s son; William Scott, their gardener; and Herman Frank, a hired man.
Due to an illness, Mr. Holmes Van Brunt had been allowed to go home and await the inquest’s verdict from his bed. The other three men remained in police custody until the trial, that Thursday morning. The Herald defined them as honest men who did what the police could not—confront Mosher and Douglas without waiting for the opportune time. “And scarcely have we time to wonder over this chance before the inevitable policeman pops a stupid visage out of nothing, like a clown in a pantomime, and says, ‘We were just going to do it, Sir.’”
Albert Van Brunt testified that his neighbor and uncle, Judge Van Brunt of the New York Supreme Court, had installed a telegraph burglar system in his summer cottage. Should an element trigger the alarm, it would sound in the bedroom of his brother Holmes next door. At 2:00 A.M. on Monday, December 14, J. Holmes Van Brunt heard the alarm from his bedroom. Albert’s mother and sister were awake, aiding an ill child in a separate room, while Albert slept upstairs. Albert recalled his father summoning him to his bedroom and saying, “Albert, go over and see what has sounded that alarm. I guess the wind has blown open one of those blinds again.”
