The Beautiful Cigar Girl

by Daniel Stashower

  Two days later, the unraveling began.

  XII

  The Murder Thicket

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF AUGUST 25, 1841, a widow named Frederica Loss sent her two younger sons—Charles, age 16, and Ossian, age 12—to collect sassafras bark from a nearby grove. Mrs. Loss was the proprietor of an establishment called Nick Moore’s Tavern, a roadhouse near the shore of Weehawken, New Jersey, a short distance north of Elysian Fields. In addition to a small number of guest rooms, the Loss inn offered light refreshments, cakes, and liquor for sale to visitors whose wanderings took them beyond Castle Point and Sybil’s Cave.

  The two boys, named Kellenbarack after their father, who no longer lived with the family, took a path that led some four hundred yards from the house along an unused carriage route. The trail ran down toward a river dock known as Bull’s Ferry, winding past a dense thicket where the boys often played games of hide-and-seek. It was an unsightly tangle of beech trees and briar shrubs entwined along a stone wall, forming a thick canopy over a cramped interior space. Inside, four craggy boulders served as a crude grouping of stools and benches.

  As Mrs. Loss’s sons neared the thicket that afternoon, a flash of white caught the eye of Ossian, the younger boy. Pushing his head through an opening, he saw a piece of cloth lying on one of the rocks. He scrambled through the tangle of branches, closely followed by his brother, Charles, and snatched up an unfamiliar garment. “Hello,” he called, “there’s somebody has left their shirt.” As the older boy examined the fabric, he realized that he was holding a woman’s petticoat. Looking around, he noticed several other items of female clothing. A silk scarf was draped across another of the boulders, and hanging across the interior branches were strips of fabric that appeared to have been torn from a white dress. As he gathered up the garments and handed them to his brother, Charles made another discovery: A ladies’ parasol and handkerchief were wedged into a gap between one of the boulders and a tree trunk. Carrying the two items back through the opening of the thicket, he examined them in the sunlight. The delicate silk of the parasol was partly rotted from lying on the damp ground, and the handkerchief was badly stained. Even so, Charles could make out a pair of initials delicately embroidered along the hem: “M.R.”

  The two boys bundled up their discoveries and carried them back to their mother. Mrs. Loss examined each article carefully, then folded up the torn and discolored pieces of clothing and placed them in a drawer. Seven days would pass before she took them out again. No convincing explanation for this delay was ever offered. Perhaps at first Mrs. Loss failed to draw a connection between the items and the missing cigar girl. Possibly she hoped that the reward money would continue to increase as the authorities grew more desperate. When pressed, she would only say, according to later newspaper accounts, that she had hesitated to come forward in the belief that “something might turn up to make them more useful than if she handed them over at once.”

  Whatever the reason for the delay, Mrs. Loss had clearly acquainted herself with the Mary Rogers saga by early September, when she made an appointment to see Justice Gilbert Merritt at the Hoboken police station. Merritt listened attentively as Mrs. Loss told her story, but one imagines, after the Joseph Morse episode, that he approached the matter with caution. He would later say that there was something about Mrs. Loss’s manner that put him on guard, and it seemed odd to him that she had declined to bring any of the articles of clothing with her to the interview. On hearing the details, however, Merritt realized that this new discovery, if genuine, marked a major breakthrough in the case.

  Merritt dispatched Dr. Cook, the coroner, to Mrs. Loss’s tavern to examine the evidence. Cook, too, had reason to be wary of leaping to conclusions, but in his mind there could be no doubt. The items belonged to Mary Rogers, and the strips of fabric had been torn from the dress she wore at the time of her death. In all likelihood, then, the thicket at Nick Moore’s Tavern was the spot where Mary Rogers had been murdered.

  As officials from both sides of the Hudson converged on the scene, the New York police issued a formal request to the city’s newspapers to suspend all mention of the case until this new development could be properly explored. The editors complied for the most part, but not without teasing hints of a coming revelation. “When we are permitted,” promised the Herald, “we will lift the veil, and show scenes of blood and brutality that will make the hair stand on end.”

  For Gilbert Merritt, the discovery held out the promise of vindication. Having weathered four weeks of hostility in the press, he lost no time in making his way to Nick Moore’s Tavern to examine the grounds for himself. This type of spadework was normally left to constables, but Merritt was taking no chances. After studying the thicket where the clothes had been found, he settled himself in the front parlor of the inn to interview each member of the family. Although his manner was open and cordial, the magistrate had unmistakable suspicions about Mrs. Loss and her sons.

  Under Merritt’s steady gaze, Mrs. Loss began to draw together the scattered threads of a story that would go through several changes and embellishments in the coming days. The initial version was fairly straightforward: On Sunday, July 25, a young woman had entered the tavern in the company of a young man with a “swarthy” complexion. The young lady was perhaps twenty years of age, dark-haired and very attractive. She wore a white linen dress and carried a parasol. Mrs. Loss recalled the dress in particular because it was similar to one owned by her sister, a coincidence that she had remarked upon at the time. The young woman’s manner, Mrs. Loss recalled, was “very affable and modest.” She realized now that the young woman must have been Mary Rogers.

  Five or six young couples were gathered in the parlor at the time, and Mrs. Loss could not be certain whether Mary Rogers and her companion had arrived separately or with the larger group. When a tray of liquor was circulated, the swarthy man offered a glass to Mary. She declined, asking for lemonade instead. After a short time, the pair rose to leave. Mary took her escort by the arm and bowed her thanks to Mrs. Loss as the couple strolled off down the path leading toward the water.

  As dusk fell, Mrs. Loss sent her eldest son, Oscar, to drive away a bull that had wandered down the path from a neighbor’s property. A short time later, she heard a cry from the woods near the tavern. She recalled it as “a frightful screaming as if of a young girl in great distress, partly choked, and calling for assistance, and sounded like ‘Oh! Oh! God!’ etc., uttered in great agony.” In spite of the extraordinary precision of this description—she stated repeatedly that the shout was that of a young girl or a woman—Mrs. Loss concluded that it had come from Oscar. Fearing that her son had been gored by the escaped bull, she rushed from the house calling the boy’s name. “As soon as she called out,” the Herald later reported, “there was a noise as of struggling, and a stifled suffering scream, and then all was still.”

  Mrs. Loss soon learned that her son was safe, having successfully driven off the neighbor’s bull. She gave no further thought to the agonized, choking female screams she had heard. “All sorts of riotous miscreants” were prowling and sparring in the area that day, she said. She assumed the sounds had signified nothing more ominous than spirited horseplay. Indeed, it was known that a number of gangs had rowed over from New York and gathered at a “rum hole on the mud bank” not far from the Loss inn, and several fights had disturbed the peace of the afternoon. In days to come there would be a great deal of speculation as to whether one of these gangs might have attacked Mary Rogers and her companion. At the time, however, only one crime was known to have been committed: A group of gang members had “seized all the cakes” laid out on a refreshment table and refused to pay for them.

  Upon close examination by the police, the “murder thicket,” as it soon came to be called, yielded up several important clues. “It is between two roads and the distance across is from thirty to forty feet,” ran a description in the Sun. “It can only be entered on all fours, or on the hands and knees. It requires a m
an with young limbs to get into the place at all. No girl under any circumstances could be persuaded to go voluntarily in such a place among the stones, sharp rocks and dirt—particularly after a rain, when the leaves and earth would be so wet and filthy. Arriving at the inside, there is not a flat rock there—not a platform or even surface, a foot in diameter. There is hardly a place to sit down—and no place upon which a person could lie down with any more ease than he could in a barrel with nail points inward through its sides.”

  Inside the thicket, signs of violence were evident in the soft dirt, along with the imprints of a man’s high-heeled boot. One of the torn strips of fabric hanging from the branches was found to have been pierced three times by a thorn, apparently indicating a prolonged ordeal. “The place around was stamped about, and the branches were broken, and roots bruised and mashed, all betokening that it had been the scene of a very violent struggle,” noted one account. “And it appeared from the position of the articles as if the unfortunate girl had been placed upon the middle broad stone, her head held forcibly back, and then and there horribly violated by several rowdies, and ultimately strangled.”

  Tracks leading away from the thicket toward the river were also visible, along with a long, shallow furrow of dirt, as though someone had dragged a heavy weight in that direction. Two fences stood between the thicket and the river. At the points where the fences crossed the trail of footprints, several railings had been knocked out to allow easier passage. The discarded rails were still lying in the nearby grass. The railings and the tracks in the dirt appeared to confirm one of Dr. Cook’s conclusions; during the initial inquest, the coroner had noted a long strip of fabric wound three times around the body and tied in “a sort of hitch.” Cook had speculated that the fabric served as a kind of handle, allowing the murderer to drag the body away for disposal in the river.

  For some, the evidence of the murder thicket raised troubling questions. How could these clues have passed unnoticed for so many weeks? Was it really plausible that the clothing and the marks in the soil could have remained undisturbed for more than a month? A suspicion arose that the scene had been staged by Mrs. Loss or her sons, possibly with an eye toward collecting the reward. Or perhaps, if the articles of clothing were found to be genuine, Mary Rogers’s murderer might have planted the evidence in an effort to distract attention from the actual murder site.

  As the rumors and hearsay gathered force, Mayor Morris issued another plea for the newspapers to refrain from comment, insisting that idle speculation would inhibit the progress of the investigation. After more than a week of silence, however, the press could no longer restrain itself. On September 17, James Gordon Bennett openly flouted the wishes of City Hall with a lengthy comment on the discoveries at Weehawken, complete with an engraving of Nick Moore’s Tavern, with a caption identifying it as “The House Where Mary Rogers Was Last Seen Alive.”

  True to form, the Herald presented the new evidence as an ironclad confirmation of the view it had embraced from the beginning, that Mary Rogers had fallen victim to one or more members of a gang of “soaplocks and rowdies.” The paper painted a vivid portrait of the crime and its aftermath, with the villain cowering “by the dead and mangled body of his victim in that dark thicket, with no eye but that of God upon the murderer and the murdered maid, until all was still—perhaps ‘til midnight. Then, tying the frock around her to form a handle, he carried her to the river, and hurled her in, and fled, too horror-stricken to think of returning to the scene of the murder to remove the articles found by the boys.”

  Bennett and William Attree, his crime reporter, quickly dismissed the notion of contrivance or falsehood about the recovered articles of clothing: “In order that it may not be supposed that these things were placed there recently, it is proper to state that from their appearance this could not have been the case. The things had all evidently been there at least three or four weeks. They were all mildewed down hard from the action of the rain, and stuck together from the mildew. The grass had grown around and over some of them.” As if this weren’t compelling enough, the Herald noted, the petticoat and shawl were found to have been infested with small bugs identified as “cellar jackass, an insect that always gets into clothing lying in wet places.” To bolster its argument, the Herald published a sketch of the thicket over a caption reading: “The Actual Spot Where the Shocking Murder and Violation of Mary Rogers Took Place.” Owing to the limited printing techniques of the day, the engraving left a great deal to the imagination. As a later commentator would remark, “The sketch could pass equally for a simoom in the Arabian desert, or twilight in a drunkard’s stomach.”

  As the Weehawken discoveries became public, a new witness stepped forward whose testimony appeared to support the notion that Mary Rogers had been murdered at the thicket. Adam Wall, a Hoboken coach driver, reported that he had been waiting for fares at the river dock on the Sunday in question when a friend pointed out a strikingly attractive young woman in the company of a “swarthy man.” The woman, Wall now realized, must have been Mary Rogers. The couple declined to accept a ride, Wall said. Instead, they set off on foot down the path leading to Weehawken. Wall also claimed to have caught a glimpse of the corpse that came ashore at Castle Point three days later. On reflection, he felt positive it was the same person.

  Wall, like Mrs. Loss, could give no good reason for his delay in coming forward. On further questioning, he claimed that he had not drawn a connection between the pretty girl he had seen and the missing cigar girl until his friend jogged his memory some time afterward: “So,” Wall was told, “that pretty cigar girl was killed that day I pointed her out to you.” Wall’s evidence, as numerous papers pointed out, did not inspire confidence. Like Mrs. Loss, he soon fell under suspicion of having concocted his story with an eye toward collecting the reward money.

  As the debate grew, curiosity-seekers once again flocked to New Jersey, and Mrs. Loss began to do a brisk business in liquor and lemonade. Boatloads of visitors arrived daily to wander over the grounds of the infamous thicket, and all but a few of them called in afterward at Nick Moore’s Tavern to enjoy the thrill of sitting at the very spot where Mary Rogers was last seen alive.

  Not all of these visitors were thrill-seekers. At three o’clock on the afternoon of October 7, Daniel Payne, Mary Rogers’s beleaguered fiancé, crossed the Hudson and made his way to Weehawken. He wore a brown frock coat over a black suit, and his high silk hat was wound with a black band of mourning crepe.

  Grim-faced and haggard, Payne made his way to the Loss inn, where twelve-year-old Ossian Kellenbarack was tending bar. Payne ordered a brandy and water, knocked it back in a single gulp, and asked for directions to the spot where Mary Rogers was said to have met her death. By this time Ossian had devised a profitable sideline in conducting tours of the murder thicket, but Payne did not want an escort. Instead, after fortifying himself with another brandy and water, Payne set off alone down the carriage road.

  At ten o’clock that evening, Payne stumbled through the doors of a tavern in Hoboken and asked for a brandy and water. His clothing was askew and he appeared highly agitated over the loss of his hat. “I suppose you know me,” he said. “I’m the man that was promised to Mary Rogers.” He paused over his drink. When he spoke again his voice had gone thick: “I’m a man in a great deal of trouble.”

  The following morning, a local farmer named James McShane came across Payne sprawled facedown, sobbing in the wet grass. The smell of alcohol hung in the air. To McShane, this could mean only one thing. “My dear man,” he said, “are you a Frenchman?” On receiving assurances to the contrary, McShane helped the fallen man to his feet. Payne made a half-hearted attempt to brush his clothing, then stumbled off in the direction of Castle Point, still mumbling about his missing hat.

  A short time later, Payne’s hat was found lying on the soft ground of the murder thicket. Nearby were glass shards from a vial of laudanum, an alcoholic tincture of opium sweetened with sugar. At the time laud
anum was in wide use as a pain reliever and “nerve tonic,” but the drug was reviled by temperance advocates for its addictive and potentially toxic qualities. Payne had purchased his supply at an apothecary on Ann Street, a few steps away from the Rogers boardinghouse. Apparently he uncorked the vial upon reaching the murder thicket, and drained the contents as he surveyed the scene of his fiancée’s final struggles. Turning away, he smashed the empty glass vial against a rock and wandered off toward the river.

  He did not get far. Within a few hours, Payne was found lying prone on a bench near Sybil’s Cave, his head hanging a few inches off the ground. By chance, the first man to reach him was a doctor, who rolled him over and loosened his collar. Payne’s eyes were glassy, and a soft moan rose from his lips. The doctor rushed away to get help, but by the time he returned, Daniel Payne was dead.