Your crime scribes,
Gregg Olsen
Katherine Ramsland
Notorious
New York
Foreword
HAVING LIVED IN NEW JERSEY, I frequently visited Manhattan, just an hour away by train. In fact, a missing person case drew me there quite often for the adventure that led to my book about the vampire subculture, Piercing the Darkness. While investigating, I learned about a chilling murder on the Lower East Side near Tompkins Square. Daniel Rakowitz killed and dismembered his girlfriend, cooking pieces in a stew. I met people who knew the killer and the victim. Later I met the forensic psychologist who’d evaluated him. I also attended graduate school on the Upper West Side, at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and I wrote many cases for Court TV. I got up close and personal with evaluations of several New York killers, and for historical research, I discovered that there’s nothing quite like the New York Public Library. It was there that I first saw examples of newspapers from the 19th century. How different they were!
But it’s not just the incidents in the Big Apple that make New York “murder central.” I’ve researched cases in other parts of the Empire State as well. The difficulty was not in finding information for this book but in deciding which cases to cover. As I wrote about the murders that follow, I walked through some of these areas again. Despite the bright lights that most tourists see, the dark side of New York pulses with many diverse and perverse motives for murder. A few incidents involved celebrities.
Newsmakers
WHEN A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN DIES violently, reporters are quick to exploit the most out of the public’s interest. During the first half of the 19th century, two murders involving pretty young women became media sensations. The first one actually changed the way such news was reported.
THIS INCIDENT IN MANHATTAN drew my interest when I was writing a history of forensic science, Beating the Devil’s Game. I was fascinated with how it shaped and changed news coverage of violent incidents that framed specific moral themes. Add the elements of privilege and beauty, and you have a media sensation. That’s what it takes to sell papers.
Mrs. Rosina Townsend ran a bordello on Thomas Street, not far from City Hall. On Sunday, April 10, in 1836, she made her nightly rounds to check on the nine girls who entertained the likes of politicians, lawyers, and merchants. This night was different. She stopped and sniffed. Smoke! It was coming from upstairs. Mrs. Townsend saw a black plume drifting from the bedroom that belonged to twenty-three-year-old Helen Jewett. She raised an alarm.
A night watchman ran to the scene to help extinguish the fire. Then they saw Helen. She lay in bed, apparently overcome. Her nightclothes were burnt. As they moved closer, it became clear that she was dead. Someone had bludgeoned her in the head with a sharp implement. One arm was raised over her head, the other lay over her chest. The fire had apparently been intentional.
Mrs. Townsend told the watchman that she’d brought champagne to the room earlier that evening and had seen the back of the head of Frank Rivers, a young man who’d visited before. He’d come in that night wearing a long dark cloak.
Maria Stevens emerged from the room across the hall and reported that she’d heard a thump and a woman moaning. She’d also heard Helen’s door open and slam shut. Peeking out, she’d seen a tall man wearing a cloak.
An inspection of the backyard and garden, surrounded by a fence, revealed a bloodstained hatchet left on the ground, tied with twine with a ragged edge, as if it had broken. On the other side of the fence was a man’s dark cloak. Mrs. Townsend said that earlier that evening, she’d found her back door standing ajar.
One of the hookers said that Frank Rivers worked as a clerk for a dry goods merchant on Maiden Lane. Citizen-officers Dennis Brink and George Noble went to the address. They learned that Frank Rivers was a false name and the person they wanted was Richard P. Robinson. He lived in a boarding home with James Tew at 42 Dey Street.
Tew opened the door when the officers knocked and they saw a figure in bed. They woke him. It was Robinson. He insisted he’d been home in bed all night. Tew confirmed this, although he wasn’t clear on what time Robinson had come in. The officers ordered Robinson to get dressed so he could accompany them. He acknowledged that he owned a cloak like that found outside the bordello, but he didn’t offer to show it to them. They saw a spot on his trousers that appeared to match the white paint on the fence behind the bordello, which further incriminated him.
They took Robinson straight to the Thomas Street house, where seven more night patrol officers had gathered, along with the magistrate and coroner. They led Robinson to Helen’s room, expecting a specific reaction upon seeing his alleged handiwork. However, he showed no signs of agitation or distress.
As officers took the nineteen-year-old away, others examined the evidence: the cloak and hatchet from the yard, broken twine on the hatchet that matched a broken piece found wound into a buttonhole of Robinson’s clothing, and a man’s handkerchief found beneath the pillow on Helen’s charred bed. Oddly, Robinson knew about it and boldly stated that because its initials did not match his, he’d never be convicted. Yet Mrs. Townsend insisted that only Robinson had been in Helen’s room that night.
Two doctors moved the body from the charred bed to the floor and performed an autopsy. They decided that any one of the three blows to Helen’s head had been sufficiently forceful to be fatal. Setting the bed on fire seemed an attempt to conceal the murder. When they were finished, they covered the body with a linen sheet. A coroner’s inquiry, conducted on the spot, indicted Robinson. He was then taken to Bridewell, a deteriorating debtors’ jail on Broadway, to await a formal grand jury hearing.
Helen Jewett was a well-known woman of the night. That afternoon, men crowded around the bordello to learn more about her murder. Even the mayor stopped by. This interest did not go unnoticed by those who covered the news.
TO THIS POINT, CRIME REPORTS in newspapers had been succinct, objective and factual. Several newspapers were a mainstay of the thriving businesses in the area, including the New York Herald, edited by James Gordon Bennett. Yet he viewed the press as dull and drab. He’d been looking for exciting news. His competitors among the penny sheets, the New York Sun and New York Transcript, devoted no more than half a column to police reports, but Bennett sensed that readers wanted more. The murder of a beautiful but fallen woman by a privileged young man seemed made to order. In choosing the cover the murder of Helene Jewett, Bennett would set several media precedents.
He entered the bordello and conducted the very first direct interview with an eyewitness to be published in a newspaper. He questioned Mrs. Townsend. He also went upstairs to see the body. An officer readily lifted the sheet that covered the victim. Bennett’s report on this experience detailed the sensual contours of the body, stiffened with rigor mortis, and compared the decedent to the Venus de Medici. He noticed how the fire had “bronzed” her skin along the left side, like “an antique statue.”
These erotic aspects fired up the public imagination. They bought up copies of the Herald, forcing him back to press over and over. He didn’t complain. His competitors knew they’d have to copy his style. But Bennett had the front-row seat, and he didn’t hesitate to fabricate a tale if he thought it would keep readership interest intense.
The Herald reported that Richard P. Robinson had been in the habit of “keeping” a girl named Helen Jewett. “Having, as he suspected, some cause for jealousy, he went to the house on Saturday night as appears, with the intention of murdering her, for he carried a hatchet with him. On going up into her room, quite late at night, he mentioned his suspicions, and expressed a determination to be done with her, and demanded his watch and miniature, together with some letters that he’d written to her. She refused to give them up, and he then drew from beneath his cloak the hatchet and inflicted upon her head three blows, either of which may have proved fatal, as the bone was cleft to the extent of three inches in each place.”
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nbsp; The account went on to say how the “cold-blooded” suspect lit the bed on fire and then ran from the room and left the house, discarding his cloak in his haste to get away. Bennett’s readers ate it up. Bennett researched the backgrounds of the principal parties, and provided heartfelt editorials about morality and the likelihood of Robinson’s guilt. A cult-like movement developed in which young men donned cloaks and caps like the one Robinson had worn. Young men, they insisted, should not be subject to the threats of prostitutes, whom they considered social leeches. Robinson was their idol. Women donned white beaver caps with a black band of crepe to show their support of the victim.
The Herald kept the case on the front page. This pressured large city papers in other areas into reprinting Bennett’s accounts. The Herald became the most widely read paper in the country.
Then a new development fueled the fire of social gossip: A two-volume diary was discovered in Robinson’s room that bore a warning: “Whoever shall pry unbidden into the secrets of this book will violate the whole of the Ten Commandments.” Editors freely posted excerpts. Robinson stated in writing that while he looked innocent and naïve, he was a depraved profligate. In print, he became a scoundrel, which had the effect of transforming Helen into a beautiful girl who’d been shamelessly seduced.
Information from Robinson’s background indicated that he had intellectual gifts and a promising career. He’d come to New York to learn the merchant’s trade and he worked in a dry goods store run by a friend of his father’s. Yet he fell in with a fast crowd. He’d met Helen at the theater and was soon seeing her under an alias, “Frank Rivers.” She supposedly fell in love with him, although he was four years younger.
After a while, Bennett wrote, he seemed to tire of her. She sensed that he’d grown aloof. He admitted that he could not bear the thought of other men having her. Robinson began to see other women, making Helen unhappy, and she began to write threatening letters. She told she would spread a nasty rumor about him murdering a girl whom he had sullied and deserted. She promised to publicly humiliate him. But she also hoped to reconcile. She invited him to visit her.
Robinson sent a note saying he would come on Saturday night, but he asked her not to tell anyone about his visit.
A reporter for the Sun wrote that he seemed too gentle and “correct” to be a murderer. He was from a good family. Around this time, Bennett, too, began to rethink his original stand. As he sleuthed around, he discovered that a married merchant had visited Helen as well that night and had begged the watchman to let him out of the house.
The Sun and the Transcript sided together against the Herald, showing sympathy for Helen. The Sun printed a story saying that her “downfall” had been the result of being seduced. The Transcript offered a version in which Helen had been orphaned and one day the son of a merchant had seduced her. Feeling that she was now shamed, she had come to New York.
However, Bennett discovered that her real name as Dorcas Doyen, and while she had indeed been orphaned, her foster family and ensured that she received a good education. She did lose her virginity to a bank cashier forcing her, but did so willingly.
A grand jury convened and returned a true bill of indictment. Robinson was taken to a cell in Bellevue at 29th Street. His employer, Joseph Hoxie, hired three lawyers: Ogden Hoffman, William Price, and Hugh Maxwell.
A few days before the trial was set to begin, Maria Stevens, who’d seen a cloaked man in the bordello hallway just prior to the discovery of the murder, died. This was a blow to the prosecution. She’d been the most immediate eyewitness.
THE TRIAL BEGAN ON JUNE 2, 1936, less than two months after the murder. Thousands of curious onlookers clustered outside in the rain. For the first time in American history, representatives from newspapers in other cities were present.
Judge Ogden Edwards presided and District Attorney Thomas Phoenix was prepared to prosecute. Mrs. Townsend was among the principal witnesses against Robinson. She provided her details, after which investigators described the crime scene, the layout of the house, and the items found in the backyard. A porter from the store where Robinson had worked identified the hatchet as the one Robinson always used. It had turned up missing on the Monday after the murder. He recognized the broken twine as being like that sold at the store. Phoenix got Robinson’s roommate to admit that Robinson had not been in his bed by 11:00 that night. Thus, he had no alibi.
A clerk at an apothecary in the general vicinity of the Thomas Street house stated that a week before the murder, a man named “Douglas” had attempted to purchase arsenic for “rats.” The clerk had refused his request, and in the courtroom that day, this clerk identified Robinson as Douglas. Things looked grim for the defendant.
Hoffman insisted that such testimony was irrelevant, and the judge agreed. The clerk’s testimony was thrown out, as was Robinson’s diary. Hoffman’s best evidence was the handkerchief taken from under Helen’s pillow. He also had a witness who claimed that Robinson had been in his store that evening, smoking cigars. The whitewash stain on Robinson’s trousers was identified as paint from the store where he worked, and a manufacturer of the hatchet testified that he had sold 2,500 in New York City, so it was a generic item. Hoffman pointed the finger at Rosina Townsend as a viable suspect.
On the last day, the trial went into the night. The jury took less than half an hour to acquit.
Robinson wept as many male spectators burst into cheers. Helen’s supporters were shocked. Those newspapers that had speculated about Robinson’s guilt criticized the verdict as a terrible injustice.
Richard Robinson walked away a free man. He went to Texas, where he died several years later from a fever.
Helen’s “real” murderer was never apprehended. Supposedly, some medical students exhumed her and used her skeleton as a medical exhibit. Along with Robinson, Helen Jewett become part of a traveling wax chamber of horrors, created as a cautionary tale for young men and women with wicked thoughts.
American journalism would never be the same.
*****
THE STORY OF MARY CECELIA ROGERS not only features a girl so pretty she inspired poems but also a convoluted case with several off twists and the interest of a famous writer.
Mary was 18 when she went missing in 1938. Her mother found what appeared to be a suicide note, and the coroner who read it interpreted it as a clear decision to “destroy herself.” Her father had died the year before, so perhaps she was distraught. Someone else suggested that she’d eloped with a Naval officer. Her mother was frantic, but within a few days, Mary returned. She was surprised at all the fuss. She’d been visiting a friend across the river in Brooklyn, she said.
The girl clerked in John Anderson’s cigar shop on Liberty Street and people noticed her. After this story about her vanishing appeared in the New York Sun and Herald, some people made it a point to visit the shop just to get a look at the girl who’d raised such a fuss. There were accusations that Anderson had fabricated the story and written the note so he could sell more newspapers from his shop. Eventually, the rumors died down.
Three years later, Mary found a suitor, Daniel Payne, who rented rooms at her mother’s boarding house. They got engaged. Everyone seemed quite content when Mary told her family on June 25, 1941, that she was going to New Jersey to visit some friends. She expected to return the following day, but a storm blew in. Mary didn’t come back, but no one worried. Weather this severe could easily delay anyone’s plans.
However, by that evening, with no word from the young woman, her mother placed an ad in the Sun looking for information from anyone who might have seen Mary. She heard nothing. She started to worry. Then another day went by. The weather had cleared, but there was no sign of the girl.
Near the Hudson River, which separates Manhattan from Hoboken, New Jersey, was a recreational area called Sybil’s Cave. A couple of men were out walking on July 28 when they saw something bobbing along in the water. They got into a rowboat to make their way toward it. When they rea
ched the object, it was clearly the body of a young woman. They dragged it to shore. People gathered around and soon someone who knew Mary identified her. “The Beautiful Cigar Girl” was dead. She appeared to have been beaten.
The incident made the front pages of the Herald, Sun, and Tribune. This time it was no hoax. People debated for weeks over what might have happened to her and demanded that the police produce a suspect. Some believed that her fiancée had followed her and killed her. Others thought it was a former fiancée who’d been jilted. The coroner found that she was still a virgin and not pregnant, so this dashed a few theories.
Daniel Payne, it turned out, had an alibi.
Then came news that items of female clothing had been found in the woods near Hoboken, and a woman named Frederica Loss told a tale of Mary being seen with a man. Because people in those days loved the notion of their 15 minutes of fame every bit as much as people today, it seemed that stories were fabricated just to get some press coverage.
This murder of Mary Rogers might have simply faded away were it not for yet another bizarre event. In October, Daniel Payne went to Hoboken. He started drinking, going from one establishment to another until he finally purchased a bottle of laudanum. Then he went down to where Mary’s body had lain on the beach after being pulled to shore. He sat on a bench and poisoned himself.
A note found with him proved the suicide: “To the world—Here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life.” He didn’t confess to anything, and some people simply read the note as the sentiments of a broken-hearted man, it’s also possible that he had a hand in Mary’s death.
Yet there were no answers. Edgar Allan Poe decided to invent some. Mary Rogers became the more elegant and mysterious Marie Rogêt, a young woman in Paris. He used the fictional base as a way to make sense of the death of Mary Rogers. Poe told several newspapers that he had solved the case. But then there was news of new evidence.
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