The Beautiful Cigar Girl

by Daniel Stashower

  The recent awful violation and murder of an innocent young woman—the impenetrable mystery which surrounds that act—the apathy of the criminal judges, sitting on their own fat for a cushion bench—and the utter inefficiency of the police, are all tending fast to reduce this large city to a savage state of society—without law—without order—and without security of any kind. Only a few days have elapsed since we saw M.M. Noah getting up in his place and gravely enumerating to the Grand Jury the serious duties they had to perform in indicting petty offenders for stealing old clothes, pork, or anything, while the blood of Mary Rogers, crying for vengeance from the depth of the Hudson, never even called forth a single remark—a solitary word—a shake of the wig, or a pointing of the finger, from this ‘most venerable and upright judge.’ This and such like judges exhaust their efforts and faculties—all their law and half their gospel—in procuring the indictment of a newspaper for the horrible offense of an incorrect report of a trial for stealing three pounds of pork—or pilfering a few bags of coffee—but for the taking away of the honor and the life of a virtuous, respectable, lovely young woman, the only daughter of an aged mother, Judge Noah has no time to attend to such trifles—and Judge Lynch is so much engaged in granting writs of habeas corpus, (fees in each case from $10 to $15) that he is equally unable to call the attention of the police or the Grand Jury to the mere violation and murder of a young woman in the lower ranks of life.

  As a further example of the city’s decay Bennett reached back to the Helen Jewett murder, chastising the authorities for allowing Richard Robinson, whom he now bluntly called “the murderer,” to slip through their fingers. “The administration of justice in this city,” he declared, “has been bringing itself into contempt every year, every week, and every day.” Swept up in his indignation, Bennett managed to overlook the fact that he himself had been instrumental in securing Robinson’s release.

  Although his rationale may not have been straightforward, Bennett’s anger struck a chord with his readership, and what began as a personal vendetta soon spread to the other newspapers. Though each journal had its own ideas of what had befallen Mary Rogers, all were united in the complaint that the police and judiciary were not doing enough. “Not a step will be taken without a reward,” thundered the Herald, “and if they even possess a clue to the mystery, still they would keep the secret intact, like capital in trade, till public indignation has raised a sum sufficient as a reward for bringing the facts to the light of day.”

  By the second week of August, with no sign that either New York or New Jersey would offer a reward, Bennett resolved to force the issue. Under the heading of “A Public Meeting,” Bennett called for a gathering of a “Committee of Safety” to raise private funds. “It is in vain to call upon the ministers of justice to step in and stay the plague which is at our doors and the community—at least the virtuous portion—must act for themselves,” he asserted. “Let a public meeting be set afoot, a subscription raised in order to offer a reward for the murderers of Mary Rogers. We will give FIFTY DOLLARS; and we doubt not that in less than 24 hours a thousand dollars may be raised, to be paid into the hands of the Mayor of New York, for the purpose of stimulating the energetic and indefatigable police of this—the commercial and intellectual emporium of these United States. If this course is not pursued, no woman will be safe.”

  Bennett was playing an extraordinary game of brinksmanship. The “Moral War” had branded him a social pariah and united his competitors in an effort to drive him out of business. Every newspaper editor in the city had cause to despise him, though not all of them had attempted to spit down his throat in the manner of James Watson Webb. Benjamin Day—late of the Sun, now editor of the Tattler—had been branded “an infidel” by Bennett, and his brother-in-law Moses Beach, who took over the Sun in 1838, was described as having “no more brains than an oyster.” Park Benjamin of the Evening Signal, who struggled with a physical disability that affected his legs, was said to have been visited with a “curse of the monster.” Horace Greeley of the Tribune, who had once called Bennett an “unmitigated blockhead,” came in for particular scorn: “Galvanize a large New England squash and it would make as capable an editor as Greeley.” Now, not only his rival editors but also New York’s most prominent citizens would be forced to rally behind Bennett and the Herald. If they did not, they would be seen to stand in opposition to a cause that, to all outward appearances, was noble and selfless.

  Under the flag of civic duty, the warring parties called an uneasy truce. On the evening of August 11, Greeley, Beach, and Benjamin dutifully filed into the home of James Stoneall on Ann Street, around the corner from the Rogers boardinghouse. It is not known whether Benjamin Day attended, as several anonymous “friends” were listed among some thirty-five guests, but the official roster did include Richard Adams Locke, who had boosted Day’s readership with his “Great Moon Hoax.” In addition to editors and journalists, the gathering featured rising politicians such as Caleb Woodhull, shortly to be elected mayor, and alderman Elijah Purdy, who had authorized the second postmortem examination on behalf of the absent Mayor Morris.

  Bennett knew better than to attempt to preside over the meeting himself. Instead, he kept to the background and left the formalities to William Attree, an experienced reporter who had covered the Helen Jewett case for the Transcript and was now working on the Mary Rogers murder for Bennett. Attree called the meeting to order and oversaw the appointment of a chairman and secretary. Next came an open forum in which several of the men present stood and gave voice to their distress over the fate of Mary Rogers. These “learned and eloquent” addresses filled the better part of three hours. All the while Bennett sat placidly at the back of the room, nodding his head as each of the speakers passed to the front of the room.

  At a few minutes before ten o’clock, as the last of the speeches appeared to be winding down, Bennett straightened and gave a nod to Attree. The young reporter stepped to the front of the room to move ahead with the principal business of the evening, the collection of funds to serve as a reward “for the arrest of any or all of those concerned in the late murder.” Before proceeding with this vital matter, however, Attree paused and glanced at the faces around the room, many of them still glistening with the heat of the evening’s oratory. Would it not be prudent, he wondered, to offer a written record of the noble sentiments expressed by this assemblage, to record and codify its statements of concern? A set of resolutions, perhaps? As it happened, Attree continued, he had taken the liberty of making a few notes over the course of the evening. Unfolding a sheet of paper, he cleared his throat and began to read.

  Needless to say, Attree’s proposed resolutions, though presented as a summary of the evening’s proceedings, were in fact a note-for-note reprise of the previous week’s Herald editorials, written by Bennett himself. Not surprisingly, they served to express “alarm and horror” over the murder and to “deprecate the apparent apathy that has characterized the Chief Magistrates of the States of New Jersey and New York.” Caught up in the heady momentum of the evening’s rhetoric, the self-styled “Committee of Safety” voted unanimously to adopt the resolutions.

  It was a masterful tactic from Bennett. In effect, he had contrived to put three dozen of the city’s most powerful names behind his vendetta against Mordecai Noah. Although Noah and Lynch had not been mentioned by name, a specific reference to “political patronage amongst our judiciary” served the same purpose. By the end of the week, many of Bennett’s rivals would reprint the resolutions in full, spreading the Herald’s influence across the previously insurmountable chasm between the penny press and the blanket sheets. Sitting quietly at the back of the room, Bennett allowed himself the luxury of a smile.

  Having completed this business, Attree moved quickly to the collection of the contributions toward a reward. As promised, Bennett pledged fifty dollars, as opposed to five dollars from Greeley and two each from Beach and Benjamin. One of the anonymous “friends” in attenda
nce also weighed in with a fifty-dollar contribution, suggesting that at least one of the wealthy and powerful men in the room that night was uncomfortable with the public criticism of City Hall.

  John Anderson, the young owner of the cigar store where Mary Rogers had worked, was also present at the Stoneall house that evening. Anderson was known to have been deeply distraught over the murder of his former employee. By some accounts he had displayed a black-bordered sketch of Mary Rogers in the window of his shop, and would place his hand on his heart whenever her name was mentioned. He had said little throughout the evening, waving off an opportunity to address the group when it was offered, and he appeared thoughtful and withdrawn through much of the oratory. As the donations were being collected, however, he straightened in his chair and reached for his pocketbook. When his name was called, he answered with a pledge of fifty dollars. Cheers erupted at this show of generosity, but Anderson simply nodded his head to indicate that it was no more than his duty.

  The gathering disbanded amid an atmosphere of “public-spirited resolve,” according to the Transcript, with more than five hundred dollars pledged in reward money. In spite of this show of public unity, however, the newspapers resumed their skirmishing almost immediately, with Moses Beach attacking Bennett for using Mary Rogers’s death as a platform for self-aggrandizement. In Beach’s view, the meeting constituted a “sacrilege” in suggesting that the city’s public servants were not doing their duty. Bennett lost no time in condemning Beach for his “savage attack” on the noble motives of his fellow citizens, and wondered why, if Beach found the committee’s intentions so distasteful, he had been moved to make a contribution. Bennett went on to note the amount of Beach’s largesse—two dollars—before asking, “Who did the fellow cheat out of that sum?”

  Although a second meeting of the Committee of Safety was scheduled the following evening, there is no evidence that anything was achieved apart from a discussion of the case over port and cigars. Within days, however, the publicity surrounding the private reward money had forced the governor of New York, William Seward, to take notice. On August 31, Seward, later Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, issued an official proclamation concerning the young woman who “was lately ravished and murdered” and acknowledged the “altogether unsuccessful” efforts of the police to bring the perpetrators to justice. That being the case, the document continued, “I do hereby enjoin upon all magistrates and other officers and ministers of justice that they be diligent in their efforts to bring the offender or offenders to condign punishment.” In a tacit admission that those efforts would likely fail, Seward added $750 in state money to the private reward, bringing the total to $1,350.

  It was a pointed rebuke to the officials of New York City, and reflected Seward’s awareness that police and judicial matters were likely to loom large in the coming elections. Although Seward had now effectively laid a bouquet at the feet of James Gordon Bennett, the Herald was unimpressed. “Governor Seward Waked Up,” ran the headline over the proclamation. While admitting that “no governor ever did more,” Bennett could not resist getting in a dig at the Seward administration’s “appointment of such old political hacks as Noah and Lynch.” The editor was more conciliatory in discussing the reward money: “If the present reward, united with that of the people’s reward, can discover the murderers, we say ‘God speed.”’

  It is unlikely that Bennett’s editorial brought much cheer to the governor’s mansion. In reviewing Seward’s promise to take action to restore “the peace and security of society,” Bennett offered a blunt retort:

  “Better late than never.”

  IX

  A Most Notorious Scoundrel

  JUST PAST TEN O’CLOCK on the night of August 5, 1841, a New York marshal led a team of constables up the gangplank of the USS North Carolina, a receiving ship docked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. With the ship’s duty officer leading the way, the men made their way belowdecks to the sleeping quarters and dragged twenty-two-year-old William Kiekuck from his bunk. The young sailor was placed in manacles and hustled into a dogcart waiting on the docks. Within the hour, he was at the Bowery police station being subjected to what the Sun would call “long and critical interrogatories by the Magistrate.”

  Kiekuck’s arrest, one of several that took place in the week before James Gordon Bennett’s “Committee of Safety” meeting, demonstrated that the police had not been quite as idle as the newspapers were reporting. At the same time, the sailor’s capture established that the findings of Dr. Richard Cook, the New Jersey coroner, had not been entirely discarded. Although Cook’s work had been publicly derided as amateurish and unworthy, the coroner’s conclusions had led the police directly to Kiekuck in a manner that would have fit comfortably in one of Poe’s tales of “ratiocination.”

  In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” published just three months earlier, Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin, had found great significance in a piece of ribbon knotted in a manner “which few besides sailors can tie.” The New York investigation had proceeded along similar lines. Dr. Cook repeatedly stressed that Mary Rogers’s bonnet was fastened to her head with a unique type of knot. He insisted that this was not something a lady would have tied, but rather “a slip knot…a sailor’s knot.” Moreover, he noted that a strip of cloth torn from Mary’s dress had been fashioned into a “sort of hitch at the back,” presumably to serve as a handhold while dragging the body to the river. In Cook’s view, these details indicated that, in all likelihood, Mary Rogers’s killer had been a sailor. When the New York police learned that there had been a young sailor among the tenants of the Rogers boardinghouse, they believed they had found their man.

  Kiekuck freely admitted to having an acquaintance with Mary Rogers. He had lodged at the Nassau Street boardinghouse for some two weeks during the previous year, while on leave. When questioned about the exact nature of his relationship with Mary, he denied that they were on courting terms: “far from being intimate with her,” reported the Courier and Enquirer, “he had never walked out with her in his life.” He did, however, think well enough of Mary to have called at the boardinghouse on July 3, three weeks before the murder, in order to visit with her.

  In spite of Kiekuck’s protests, the police had good reason to be suspicious. On Wednesday, July 28, the day Mary’s body was discovered, Kiekuck was reported to have signed himself onto the North Carolina in a state of great agitation. “Contrary to the usual custom of sailors,” noted the Courier, “he was apparently very anxious to get on board the ship,” giving his superior the impression that he was a man on the run. “His behavior,” said one of the constables, “was decidedly curious.”

  Although the investigators had no evidence with which to charge Kiekuck, they believed that a stretch in the Manhattan House of Detention for Men on Centre Street might be in order. Known as “the Tombs” for its white granite and Egyptian-style architecture, New York’s main prison was only six years old at this time, but already it had cultivated a fearsome reputation. Overcrowded and understaffed, the prison housed “the guilty and the blameless alike,” according to one source, “as it was known that even the threat of a lengthy confinement could wring a confession from an innocent man.”

  Apparently Kiekuck bore it stoically and resisted all pressure to confess. When it became known that the sailor was in custody without formal charges, a statement was released that he had been taken to the Tombs at his own request, “until the authorities are satisfied of his innocence.” Though the language was cautious, the police clearly believed they had their man. All of their energies were now focused on establishing the sailor’s guilt.

  Within twenty-four hours, however, any hope of a speedy resolution to the mystery had faded. In the days before Kiekuck’s arrest, a number of people had come forward claiming to have seen Mary on Broadway in the company of a young man, “someone whom she appeared to know well,” according to the Courier. When summoned to the Tombs, however, these witnesses did not recognize Kie
kuck. “Several persons were there for that purpose,” reported the Herald, “but they failed entirely to identify him.” Under close questioning, most of the witnesses admitted that they could not even be certain that the young lady they had seen was Mary Rogers.

  The case against Kiekuck weakened further when the sailor provided a detailed account of his movements during the period of Mary’s disappearance. He had arrived in New York the night before and passed much of his time at the home of his sister, with whom he was having breakfast on the Sunday morning when Mary was last seen at the boardinghouse. The rest of Kiekuck’s time was spent with friends, swimming in the Hudson River, drinking in a public house, and enjoying the company of “a girl he knew” in the Five Points. More than a dozen witnesses, including the girl, confirmed the truth of his statement. After three days in custody, Kiekuck was released.

  No explanation was offered for Kiekuck’s apparent nervousness after the discovery of Mary’s body, and his rush to sign back on to the ship. The police would question him several more times in the coming days, but for the moment they had no grounds to hold him. “If anything should occur which will render his presence again necessary, he can be readily found on board ship,” noted the Courier, “but it is the opinion of a gentleman at the Halls of Justice, well versed in all the art of rogue catching, that this person is entirely innocent.”

  As the case against Kiekuck evaporated, the police were forced to cast their net wider in the search for suspects. This became more difficult as the news of the murder made its way onto the front pages of the newspapers, resulting in dozens of anonymous tips and letters from people claiming to have relevant information. Many of these accusations proved to be useless and even willfully misleading. “Anonymous letters speak the truth sometimes,” declared one nameless informant. “E. Keyser, 43 Washington Street, knows something of the murder of M.C. Rogers.…You would do well to examine him.” Mr. Keyser turned out to be a man in the midst of an ugly dispute with his neighbor over an unpaid debt.