Blood On The Table

by Colin Evans

  Now it was a question of establishing the cause of death. It seemed clear enough, the skull had been fractured by a single blow behind the left ear made by some blunt object; a hammer or iron bar was Kennard’s best guess. However, despite being fractured, the skull was still intact, which led Kennard to think that the blow might not have killed immediately but rather that the victim lived for several hours after the attack. When he cut into the bronchial tubes, he found what looked like traces of ash and earth. This added an entirely different, more horrific dimension to the murder equation: that the victim might have been alive when buried. Decomposition made it impossible to tell if any other external injuries had been inflicted.

  When Kennard opened the stomach he found a small quantity of undigested food. While this could tell him nothing about how long the body had been in the ground, it did provide a clue as to how long after her final meal Jennie Becker had died. By and large, digestion is a fairly predictable process. As one later New York City medical examiner puts it, “Very little interferes with the law of the digestive process. It is not precise to the minute (no biological process is), but within a narrow range of time it is very reliable. Within two hours of eating, ninety-five percent of food has moved out of the stomach and into the small intestine. It is as elemental as rigor mortis. The process stops at death.” This is fine so far as it goes, but like rigor mortis, any number of variables can affect the digestive process. Fatty food takes longer to digest, as does a large meal. Mood, health and emotional state can also play their part. But nothing is more likely to disrupt the digestive process than sudden trauma, either physical or psychological. Extreme terror can play havoc with the body’s metabolism. Fear, fright, injury, pain—all of these can hamper digestion. For example, after severe head trauma sustained in a road accident, food may stay in the stomach for several days, looking as fresh as when it was swallowed. These, however, are exceptions. As a rough rule of thumb, the average meal evacuates the stomach after a couple of hours or so.

  What Kennard saw here convinced him that the victim had met her death shortly after eating food of some description. According to the case notes, on the night of her disappearance Jennie had been seen at the party, gorging herself on snacks. Mindful of the possibility that the soupy stomach contents he had extracted might well be the residue of those snacks, Kennard sent them, along with numerous other bodily samples, to Alexander O. Gettler, New York City’s chief toxicologist since 1918, for chemical analysis.

  Once Kennard had completed his autopsy, Becker was brought to the mortuary and asked if he could identify the body. Under Kennard’s watchful gaze, Becker viewed the rotting remains with no more emotion than if he had been checking out a used car, then shook his head. Too small, he said, and his wife had much better teeth. Also, Jennie never wore a sweater, and the shoes were all wrong. At this point, Becker’s original missing person’s report was produced, included in which was a comprehensive description of these very shoes. He shrugged his indifference. And it was the same with the pocketbook: never seen it before.

  None of Becker’s denials cut any ice with the DA’s office, and, on November 29, he was charged with murder. The following day, Norkin also found himself facing the capital charge. He was furious. Sure, he might have furnished the shovel used to bury the dead woman, but that was the extent of his involvement. Any suggestion Becker made to the contrary was a flat-out lie! While Norkin fulminated and Becker schemed, Detective James I. McCarton took the keys found on the dead woman to the Beckers’ apartment. To no one’s surprise, they fitted various locks, including the front door, a dresser, and the mailbox. Any iota of doubt that the body was that of Jennie Becker had evaporated, certainly as far as the police were concerned.

  With his already perilous situation darkening by the hour, Becker now buckled and admitted what everyone knew—that his long-lost wife had been found. But still he wriggled like an eel, piecing together a story that flirted first with the surreal, then lurched into the downright fantastic. Norkin, he insisted, had been the lone killer, a vicious psychopath motivated solely by revenge. “He killed her to get even with me because we had a row over an automobile,” Becker told detectives. The two men had argued over payment after Norkin repaired Becker’s truck. Norkin had then killed Becker’s wife and declared the debt wiped out. After this, said Becker, the two men shook hands and resumed their friendship!

  The district attorney, Edward J. Glennon, was incredulous. “Why didn’t you report the crime?”

  “Because he had killed a lot of other people and would kill me, too,” was Becker’s lame and unsubstantiated response.

  Elsewhere in the county jail, Norkin was dishing up his own version of events, and—surprise, surprise—this painted the teller in an infinitely more favorable light. He said that Becker had first broached the subject of murder around Christmastime 1921, but he’d thought it was just Becker running his mouth as usual, so he’d paid him no mind. Over that winter and into spring Becker piled on the pressure, nagging Norkin at every turn to help him and always receiving a negative response. Finally, in early April, Becker had asked to borrow a shovel. He didn’t say why he needed the shovel, but Norkin had lent him one anyway. Only later did Becker reveal the truth: that he’d killed Jennie and buried her next to Norkin’s repair shop.

  Investigators didn’t buy Norkin’s story at all and cranked up the level of questioning. Hour after hour of relentless grilling finally produced the desired effect. Norkin broke under the pressure and changed his tale. This version contained an admission that he had helped Becker to conceal the body, though he still refused to budge from his adamant denial of any involvement in Jennie’s actual death.

  As the two former confederates did their damndest to strap each other into the electric chair, it was all too easy to forget the other victim in this tragedy. For Anna Elias the past week had been a living nightmare. Just hours after Becker was charged with murder, she was found wandering the streets at midnight, half out of her mind, babe in arms. Tearfully, she told the sympathetic officer that she had been thrown out by her landlady. Her own family, too, had turned their back on her. With nowhere to go, she spent that night at Tremont Police Station.

  Anna’s plight was brought into sharp relief two days later, on December 1, when she was called before a grand jury investigating the death of Jennie Becker. Misty-eyed jury members choked back their emotion as she detailed her appalling predicament. In a spontaneous gesture of charity, they struck up a collection to help the poor woman, with one talesman throwing in a hundred dollars. (This was later refunded when it became apparent that Anna’s circumstances, through the kindness of friends, had improved.)

  Once this poignant interlude was concluded, the grand jury got to hear some startling testimony. Much of this came via a signed confession by Reuben Norkin, in which he claimed that Jennie Becker’s death had been no sudden domestic flare-up that spiraled into tragedy but rather a deliberate murder, planned down to the very last detail. According to Norkin, Becker had first suggested poisoning his hated wife, then drowning her, only for the hesitant and fearful Norkin to each time dissuade him from such drastic action. But persistence won out. Subjected to weeks of incessant pressure and motivated by a sense of loyalty that he now bitterly regretted, Norkin folded and reluctantly agreed to help. The conspirators next scrutinized the neighborhood for a suitable murder venue. After much scouring they finally decided that Norkin’s repair shop, a small building with no dwelling within two hundred feet, was the ideal spot. The icing on the murderous cake was provided by the abandoned junkyard next door: perfect for burying a body. With the details finalized, on April 5 Becker told the unwitting Jennie that he was taking his car for Norkin to fix, because the engine had been misfiring. Instead, the two men used this time to dig the pit, piling up the ash and clay close by, ready to shovel in once the deed was done. The next afternoon—the day of the party—they carried out a full-scale rehearsal of the crime; then Norkin went home to await his ass
ignation with Becker.

  That night Becker drove Jennie home after the party, along a prearranged route that wended northward on Southern Boulevard. As they neared Norkin’s shop, Becker put his driving skills to devious use. By crafty use of the gas pedal and the brake, he managed to contrive the impression that the car’s engine trouble had returned. Pounding the steering wheel in frustration—dammit, he’d paid Norkin good money to fix this car just a couple of days earlier!—Becker thundered that he was driving to Norkin’s to get this sorted out right there and then, even though it was 1:30 in the morning. Whether Jennie expressed skepticism over the likelihood of Norkin’s being at work at this unpromising hour we don’t know, but we do know that when Becker reached Norkin’s place, he found the big front gate locked. Leaving Jennie in the car, he strode angrily to a nearby lunch wagon, one of Norkin’s favorite hangouts. As arranged, Norkin was waiting. Quite by chance, two men witnessed this meeting. After exchanging a few words, Norkin accompanied Becker to the car, where their victim was waiting, then drove it into Norkin’s yard. According to Norkin, the yard’s bleak desolation really got to Jennie. “Oh, my, I don’t like this place,” he heard her say to Becker. “Let’s get away from here.”

  Becker pooh-poohed her concerns, insisting that it wouldn’t take long, and for a few minutes Jennie shivered inside the car while the two men tinkered with the engine. When Norkin announced that he needed to fetch some extra tools and wandered off, Becker summoned Jennie from the car and asked her to listen for “knocking” sounds from the engine, while he adjusted the carburetor’s fuel mixture. As requested, Jennie bent low over the engine and put one ear to the block.

  A thunderous blow knocked her senseless.

  Becker threw his club to one side and stood, panting, over his stricken wife. Norkin, who had watched this scene unfold from by the gate, where he was standing guard, glanced anxiously in both directions along the deserted street. Even if any passerby had chanced along at this late hour, he or she wouldn’t have seen a thing as the murder scene, on the south side of the premises, was completely hidden from the street by billboards. Then, Norkin alleged, Becker grabbed his wife by the coat and dragged her like a sack of potatoes around to the north side of the building, into the adjacent vacant lot where the yawning pit lay in wait. With Norkin still acting as lookout, Becker heaved his wife’s body into the makeshift grave, doused it with lime, then filled the hole with the accumulated ash and clay.

  Only now did Norkin become actively involved, or so he claimed. For the next few minutes he helped Becker throw dirt over the blood on the ground where the blow had been struck, then he washed the auto thoroughly, before joining Becker in the car and driving back to the lunch wagon. Harry Series, who worked the night shift at the wagon, and Nicholas Carbo, a customer, were still swapping stories when the two men returned sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 A.M. Becker, obviously pleased with his night’s work, ordered cigars.

  According to Norkin, Becker later gave him one hundred dollars for his part in the crime. Asked why someone who owned a thriving business, that employed five mechanics, would carry out such a deed for so paltry a sum, Norkin shrugged and said the money had played no part in his decision. “I did it out of friendship for Becker.”

  Investigators didn’t buy Norkin’s story at all. Gut instinct—the kind gleaned from a thousand interviews—convinced them that Norkin controlled the partnership. His was the brain that had fashioned the cunning scheme, and if the boastful Becker had been able to keep his lip zipped, then, most likely, both men would have gotten clean away with murder.

  There was also a sense that Norkin was telling prosecutors what they wanted to hear. For instance, when told that Kennard thought Jennie Becker might have died from suffocation rather than the blow to the head, Norkin suddenly and miraculously recalled that, yeah, the victim was still groaning as Becker shoved ash and clay on top of her body in the pit. Unfortunately for Norkin, as the grand jury now heard, Kennard was no longer prepared to defend that opinion. He didn’t really have much choice: his boss had decided to intervene.

  As the chief medical examiner, Charles Norris had the authority to investigate any case of unnatural death in the five boroughs, and something about this case just didn’t smell right to him. The fact that the body had lain, unpreserved, in the ground for eight months was crucial. Decomposition and postmortem staining made any observations tricky. His own examination of the body left him convinced that Kennard had overstepped the mark. And he decided to say so before the grand jury. “I don’t see any medical evidence that suffocation was the cause of death,” [italics added] Norris told the packed courtroom. “It may or may not have been.” Poor Kennard could only squirm in impotent silence as he listened to this. As public humiliations go, it was right out of the top drawer. Under the old system, coroners’ physicians were used to having their opinions rubber-stamped, not countermanded, by superiors. For Norris it was a brave step; any blunder and the mayor would have his head. The DA’s office wasn’t too impressed either. Not that Norris gave a damn. He knew how the legal game was played, how much an election-conscious prosecutor—always with one eye fixed firmly on his conviction rate—would try to wring every inch of emotional mileage out of a killer burying his wife alive, for God’s sake! Such game playing irked Norris. So far as he was concerned, forensic science counted for nothing if its objectivity was undermined by political expedience. Norris saw what Kennard saw, the same contamination of the bronchial tubes, and he would have defied anyone to say that this provided categorical proof of suffocation. He was equally scathing when it came to vague rumors that Jennie might have been drugged or poisoned, prompted mainly by Norkin’s claim that she seemed drowsy, making him wonder if Becker had doped her, saying, “There has been no evidence of poisoning…No evidence has been found of any wound except the wound on the head.”

  In the five years since Norris had taken office, this marked the first occasion on which he had really exerted his authority. In the past, district attorneys had bullied coroners and physicians alike into giving them the evidence that best suited their ends. Norris was having none of it. While his intervention probably made little impact on the grand jury, which indicted both Becker and Norkin on charges of first-degree murder, it did have a sobering effect on the investigative team. Chastened detectives returned to the junkyard, and this time recovered an eighteen-inch length of gas pipe that clearly could have been the murder weapon.

  By the laggardly standards of modern day, 1920s justice moved along at breakneck pace. Consider this: within fourteen days of Jennie Becker’s body being unearthed from its temporary grave, a grand jury had been convened, indictments had been returned against two men, and one of those defendants—Abraham Becker—was standing trial for his life (it was decided to try Norkin separately). Little wonder that Assistant DA Cohn was able to boast to reporters, “We are going to make a record in this case.”

  Even during this hiatus there was scarcely time to catch a breath as, on December 10, New York City witnessed one of the most astonishing private funerals in its long and colorful history. Upward of fifty thousand people, many wailing and sobbing, jammed the streets as Jennie Becker’s funeral cortege treacled its way through the Bronx. Every yard of the journey was fraught with grief. Some mourners, more frenzied than the rest, had to be physically restrained from wrenching off the coffin lid so that they might have a sight of the victim. Police managed to restore order by the time the cortege reached the orphanage where the twins Celia and Sarah Becker still lived. After a brief service on the orphanage steps, Jennie Becker’s coffin moved on to its final resting place, the Riverside Cemetery in Hackensack. Such a remarkable outpouring of public grief for someone, who just two weeks beforehand had been virtually anonymous, gives some idea of the extraordinary level of publicity that this case generated. So heavily charged was the overwrought atmosphere that jury selection for Becker’s trial, which had been scheduled for the following day, was delayed until December 13.<
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  When the trial did open, the state’s case was crystallized in one simple sentence: Becker had enlisted the assistance of Norkin to murder his wife in order that he might live with Anna Elias. For the defense, attorney Alexander Mayper decided that his only hope, however faint, lay in resurrecting Becker’s initial argument that no incontrovertible evidence existed to prove that the body found at the vacant lot was that of Jennie Becker.

  Kennard testified first. He gave his evidence clearly and well, describing the blow to the head, but was expressly forbidden by the judge from offering an opinion as to whether the woman had been buried alive. Then came Anna Elias. Looking stiffly ahead—not once did she glance at the defendant—she outlined her personal tragedy in terms so graphic and personal that at one stage she dissolved into hysterical screams and the court had to be recessed. Other witnesses followed. Monstein told his story, then came a chain of bit players, all of whom claimed that Becker had bragged repeatedly of having got rid of his troublesome wife.

  When the state rested its case, the defense moved for a dismissal on grounds that the prosecution had failed to prove that the victim was Mrs. Becker, a motion that was unsurprisingly denied by county judge Louis D. Gibbs.

  Then Becker took the stand. Looking haggard and drawn, he gave a confused performance, one minute resolutely denying that his wife’s body had been found and then in the next breath leveling venomous accusations against the absent Norkin. He claimed that five or six days before his wife’s disappearance Norkin had burst into the Becker home, threatening to “fix” Jennie because she had blabbed to Norkin’s wife of his adultery with his sister-in-law and with other women. All Becker could think was that Norkin had kept his malevolent word. As for himself, he reiterated his claim to have brought his wife home safely from the party on the night of April 6, that she was there when he arose next morning, and that she had vanished when he returned at noon. As for Monstein’s testimony, Becker dismissed it all as “a tissue of lies.”