Broadway Butterflies and the Wolves Who Stalk Them

 

Louise Lawson

Louise Lawson came to New York from Walnut Springs, Texas, in 1918. She planned to make it big on the stage or to star in a Broadway musical. Instead, she wound up dead in her luxurious Wall Street apartment. 

The Buffalo Times said Louise had two personalities as widely divergent as the “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of Robert Louis Stevenson’s immortal story.”

Back home in her Texas hometown, the folks saw Louise as an innocent, high-minded girl who met an unfortunate death while pursuing her life’s dream. However, her friends on Broadway knew her as “a sophisticated young woman. A girl who had chosen the easiest way and was living in idle, diamond-studded luxury by matching her smiles and kisses against the desires of men willing to pay high for them.”

The New York stage was not good to Louise. She played one or two-bit parts, but nothing that would bring her the wealth and fame she wanted. New York City had too many girls competing for the same dream.

D. W. Griffith paid her $20 to work as an extra in Way Down East, a film that starred Lillian Gish. But she had no more luck in the movies than on the stage, and music was no more promising. Back home in Walnut Springs, Louise had been a twelve-year-old piano prodigy who sang in the church choir. In Flo Ziegfeld’s Follies on Broadway, she was just another chorus girl who made fifty bucks a week.

The Cook County Lady's Murder Club

 

Florence Bernstein

“There is something intrinsically fascinating about the woman criminal,” wrote the Chicago Tribune. “Men come and go, are arrested and released, follow the life or give it up, but there is seldom anything of a particularly startling nature.

“With women, it is different. There are not nearly so many of them, and they are much more protected.

“She is not ‘peached’ on. She goes free. She is the bane of the police.

“With women murderers, it is different. There is no professional class, for few women murder except for some strong reason, and then few women have more than one or two or even three murders laid at their door.

“And as for the conviction of women murderers—it seems to be a practical impossibility in Cook County at least. ‘Any kind of woman can kill at her pleasure in Cook County,’ said State’s Attorney Malato. ‘Then she can go into the court after the killing, shed a few tears, cast a few wistful glances at the jury, and she will be acquitted.’”

“Indeed,” said the paper, “women, when they take to murder, seem to single their husbands out for victims.”

The clergy expressed the same sentiment.

Could James Buchanan Have Prevented The Civil War?

 

President James Buchanan

Some say that James Buchanan was a “weak, timid, old man” who did nothing to prevent the Southern states from seceding. Some historians have even declared Buchanan was an “accessory after the fact.” He was a president, a Southern sympathizer, and a traitor.

But was he?

The obvious comparisons are Andrew Jackson and George Washington. Jackson stood firm during the South Carolina nullification crisis and threatened to kick the nullifiers in the ass and hang all the traitors from the nearest tree branch if they laid a single hand on federal property or fortifications. During the Whiskey Insurrection, George Washington marched 13,000 troops to western Pennsylvania to put down the rebellion.

By comparison, James Buchanan hid in the White House and issued this special message to Congress on January 8, 1861. “No state has a right by its own act to secede from the Union or throw off its federal obligations at pleasure. To [Congress] belongs the power to declare war or authorize the employment of military force....”

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New York City: The Rise and Fall of Monk Eastman

 

Monk Eastman

The shooting happened outside the Blue Bird Restaurant at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue. Sunset was still a few hours away, but that didn’t matter to the boys. They’d come over from Brooklyn to visit Bradley, a waiter at the Blue Bird.

 

Monk Eastman (aka William Delaney) and Jeremiah W. Bohan left the restaurant together at about 4 a.m. 

They talked as they walked. Monk felt Bohan out, trying to see if the rumors were true.

 

“Jerry,” said the Monk, “you have become a rat since you got that Prohibition job.” He was working for the Feds, enforcing the Volstead Act, and Monk supposedly was running booze.

 

A minute later, Monk Eastman lay dead on the ground with five bullets in his body. Two slugs struck his right forearm, and another the left forearm, just above the wrist. The fourth bullet ripped a path through his hand, and the fifth one smashed through Monk’s chest and into his heart. Bohan insisted it was self-defense—Monk was getting ready to shoot him. But the evidence was against him. Monk didn’t have a gun. They found him with his arms up as if he were trying to shield himself.

It Was Only Right That I Should Kill Him

 

Myrtle Eberly with her dog

“I had to do it, and I’d do it again,” said the jilted lover. 

 

Thomas Lane (aka Edward Leonard) promised to marry Myrtle Eberly, then kept making excuses not to do it. “In two or three weeks, he would have grown tired of me, turned me out, and then— “

 

They met at Dreamland, an attraction at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Myrtle worked as a waitress, and Ed tended the bar. The place had a reputation, but the money was good. She made $8.50 a week salary and almost as much in tips.

 

She’d worked at Dreamland for three months and was still a good girl. At first, Myrtle didn’t know what kind of place it was. When she found out, she asked her mother what she should do. Her mother told her if she could continue to work there without becoming “contaminated,” to do it.

 

So she stayed.

Minnie Cummings: The Black Widow of St. Louis

 

Minnie Cummings

Minnie Cummings shot her husband, Dennis, in the back of the head and killed him on Saturday, April 18, 1903. 

They had been living apart for three weeks, ever since Minnie filed charges against him for stealing her jewelry. Minnie couldn’t understand. Judge Moore dismissed the case, ruling that a husband couldn’t be found guilty of stealing from his wife, nor a wife guilty of stealing from her husband. Not in Missouri, anyway. 

Eleanor Duff, Minnie’s landlady, let Mr. Cummings in the house around 5 p.m. on Saturday. A half-hour later, Minnie knocked on her door.

“I have just shot my husband. He drew a knife, and I had to shoot him or be killed myself.”

They sent for Dr. J. B. Rule. The body lay on its back with a pocketknife and a pair of scissors nearby. When he finished examining the body, Dr. Rule advised Minnie to surrender herself to the Four Courts. But strangely, she stopped at Mrs. Harris’ diner on Locust Street for a bite to eat before going to the police station.

The couple had been married for just under a year. Minnie’s first husband, Edward Harris, died under mysterious circumstances. Eventually, the police ruled it a homicide, but here was dead husband number two with a bullet hole in his head, in the same spot as husband number one.

Minnie said Dennis was drunk and abusive. He tore the place apart, looking for money. When he didn’t find any, he began to curse and threaten her.