A Wild Canary Or A Vampire

 

Nellie Higgs (Chicago Tribune. September 22, 1914)

Nellie Higgs shot her lover in 1914

The Sacramento Star summed the case up best, saying, “Nellie Higgs is on trial for the murder of the man she hated—after ruining the life of the man she loved.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot since that night when something here at my heart snapped, and I shot William Willis, the man who ruined my life,” said Nellie Higgs. “I was never given much to thinking before. I was the innocent kind of girl who never knew good from bad. They [her parents?] brought me up that way.”

She married a 28-year-old man when she was 17. Then she met her neighbor, William Willis. They were all friends—his wife and children and her husband.

“He paid me lots of attention, and I suppose I rather liked it, [because], so few men had ever noticed me. I didn’t know any better. I let him go on giving me presents and being nice to me.”

I Got Me A Great Big Gun And Killed Him

 

Josephine Amore (The Star & Newark Advertiser. August 17, 1908)

Someone murdered Michael Martelle in his second-floor flat at 16 Drift Street in Newark, New Jersey, on August 5, 1908. His wife told detectives she heard gunshots after her husband walked toward the back of the house. He staggered back through the hallway and fell dead on the floor.

The police quickly arrested his next-door neighbor, Carmine Amore, and charged him with the crime even though many people testified Amore was playing cards at a bar across the street. Then, just as quickly, the case against Amore fell apart as his pretty young wife confessed to the crime.

Michael Martelle “bothered the life out of me to elope with him,” said Josephine Amore, “and threatened to kill me if I refused. He, a father of five children, would have deserted them all and had me desert mine. He insisted that I get $500 from my husband and then, with all my jewelry, go away with him.”

What to do? What to do? Finally, the young woman decided on a course of action.

 

“He did not scare me. I got me a great big gun and hid it,” said Josephine. “He said I must kiss him, so I got my revolver and killed him. That is all. He is dead. I am glad.”

She thought it was best to take care of Martelle before her husband found out and “perhaps commit some great crime.”

The Car Barn Bandits Were Chicago's Worst Nightmare

 

(Gustave Marx. Buffalo Times. November 23, 1923)

The car barn bandits were every Chicagoan’s worst nightmare. Four bored boys, armed and out for thrills and let the consequences be damned.

A string of robberies had plagued the city since early March 1903. Then, in July, the bandits killed two men while robbing Benjamin La Gross’s saloon on North Ashland Avenue.

Toward the end of August, three boy bandits raided the city’s car barns, killing two men before escaping with almost $2300. Since then, the police had beaten the streets for nearly two months with no results.

Detectives had dug up a few leads, but nothing they could sink their teeth into.

The first actual break in the case came in late November when detectives captured Gustave Marx.

Marie "Boots" Williams The Prettiest Girl Ever Arrested In West Virginia

 

Marie "Boots" Williams
(Evening Public ledger. November 25, 1920)

Newspapers had a heyday after the arrest of eighteen-year-old Marie Williams (aka Boots), calling her “the prettiest girl ever arrested in West Virginia.”

That same day, Marie told reporters, “They haven’t got a thing on me. I’m having a lot of fun—a regular lark—and the laugh will be on the cops.”

She was talking about her arrest as an accomplice in the murder of Henry T. Pierce in Philadelphia.

The girl entranced detectives with her beauty and fun-loving personality. “She is the most remarkable girl prisoner we ever had in custody,” said Police Chief Frazier. “Her nerve is simply astounding. She eclipses anybody that has ever come under my observation.”

After her lover and partner in crime, Peter T. Treadway, told her he confessed everything, Marie talked. She told detectives she had moved in with Treadwell about three weeks before the murder occurred.

She described the murder as a drunken brawl. “Don’t you believe it was anything else, either,” she told detectives.

“They cannot put the crime of murder on us,” she continued. “We were invited to Pierce’s apartment to have a midnight lunch after a ride and nothing else.” Of course, she wanted a ride in his fast red car.

A Murder in Dixon, California

Susie and Lewis Belew (San Francisco Examiner. November 14, 1897)

The small town of Dixon, California, had a genuine murder mystery on its hands at the beginning of November 1897. Two of its most popular residents, Louis and Susan Belew, died suddenly after suffering terrible stomach pains. Their hired hand, Bruno Klein, just scraped by. For several days, it was touch and go. The doctors weren’t sure if he would make it or not.

It was supposed to be a time of celebration. In two weeks, Louis was to marry Cara Ferguson and Susan Charlie Ehmann. 

They had dinner with their brother Frank the night before they died. Frank got sick and said he vomited, expelled his meal several times, then had a headache. Susie gave him some headache powder and sent him home shortly after 7 p.m.

Charlie Ehmann arrived at the house at about 9:30 p.m. He remembered locking the kitchen door when he came in.

Everyone was fine the next morning. Louis and Susie sat down for breakfast. Louis walked down to the livery stable so Bruno could go to the house and eat breakfast. By the time Bruno finished eating, Susie was vomiting all over, so he went down to the stable to send Louis back. Bruno found Louis was as sick as his sister when he got there.

Jesse Pomeroy: The Boy With The White Eye That Stuck Out

 

Jesse Pomeroy, age 12

The “boy with the white eye that stuck out” dominated the headlines around Boston in 1872. He beat and mutilated six young children between February and September, disappearing into thin air after each attack.

His first victim, Tracy Hayden, age 10, told Marshal Drury that “a boy with a white eye that stuck out” enticed him to follow him up Powder Horn Hill on February 21, 1872. When they got to the top, he locked him in an outhouse.

“Strip at once, or I’ll kill you,” he screamed.

Once the boy’s clothes were off, the attacker took off his belt, lifted his victim to the rafters, and made him cross his wrists while pinning him there. And then, while the boy dangled in midair, he beat him across the back with a fence post.

“If you cry, make any noise, or kick,” the boy cautioned him, “I’ll kill you.”

The attacker untied the boy and let him fall to the ground when he finished. “Stop inside here all night,” he said. “If you move out, I’ll kill you.”

A Murder Mystery in Aledo, Illinois

 

Allie Dool

In September 1902, Aledo, Illinois, found itself plunged waist-deep into the biggest murder mystery the town had ever encountered. Marie Antoinette Dunlap (Tona) stood accused of killing her best friend, Mary Alma Dool (Allie), to get her $4.00 a-week job as a clerk at Felix’s Store.

At first, the authorities considered Allie Dool’s death an unfortunate accident. The coroner’s inquest said the same thing. It was accidental poisoning.

A few days later, suspicion centered on Tona Dunlap. 

State’s Attorney Will J. Graham questioned the decision of the coroner’s inquest and began looking into the details of Allie’s death. He tried to question Tona but met a brick wall. Every time he asked a question, she said her attorney advised her not to say anything. 

Then Dr. Carter, the pharmacist at Craig’s Drug Store, told Graham Tona bought five cents worth of strychnine on Sunday, August 3. 

That gave the state’s attorney the ammunition he needed to go after Tona Dunlap. The next person he spoke to was Margaret Miller. She told him about her shopping trip with Tona Dool the day Allie died.

The Murder of Cherry de St. Maurice At The Mysterious Cherry Club

 

Cherry de St. Maurice

Someone strangled Cherry de St. Maurice, the mistress of the mysterious Cherry Club, in her room on July 8, 1913. Cleo Sterling, a girl in the resort, discovered her nude body face down on the floor at 5:45 Tuesday afternoon. Maxine Meyers, another resort girl, heard a scream at about 8 a.m. but ignored it, thinking it might be the creak of a door.

Police Inspector Koening determined Cherry put up a desperate struggle for her life. She had bruises on her arms and shoulders, and the strangler’s fingers discolored her pretty pink neck.

Cherry always wore expensive jewelry and kept valuables in her room, so the detectives supposed the motive was theft. Newspapers reported she lived in constant fear of robbery. 

In 1911, her piano player, Jack Palmer, teamed up with another man to steal Cherry’s jewels. In between sets, Palmer piled a stack of jewelry and other valuables by a window in Cherry’s room. Unfortunately, his accomplice’s timing was off. He crawled through the window while Cherry came through the door. Both parties ran away.

Later that year, an “insanely drunk” Japanese man named Iwasaki shot it out with six patrolmen during an attempted robbery. No one got hurt in the incident, but the papers had a good laugh poking fun at the lawyers and businessmen who fled the club half-dressed.

Jake Lingle: Victim of a Double Life

 

Jake Lingle

When Alfred “Jake” Lingle, a crime-beat reporter with the Chicago Tribune, was murdered in the city subways on June 9, 1930, the police immediately blamed the city’s gangsters, declaring his death was a warning to newspapers. If they wanted to take on the criminals, they were fair game.

If that were the case, Lingle seemed the ideal target. He’d spent the last nineteen years prowling the city’s underbelly, exposing criminals, cozying up to cops and gangsters, and now they had silenced him.

All signs pointed to a mob hit.

Lingle followed his usual routine that day. He ate lunch at the Hotel Sherman, visited with friends in the lobby, going outside at about 1:15 p.m. He walked up Randolph Street toward the Illinois Central Subway Station. From all appearances, he planned to spend the day at the Washington Park Racetrack in Homewood. After the races, he was going to the reopening of Bugsy Moran’s Sheridan Wave Tournament Club, a gambling den on Waveland Avenue. The club had been closed after a raid in June 1929.

Lingle stopped at a newsstand near the library, where he grabbed a racing form. As he started walking away, a man in a roadster hollered, “Don’t forget to play Hy Snyder.”

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.

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. 

Clementine Barnabet: The Voodoo Killer

 

Clementine Barnabet (enhanced picture from the
New Orleans Item. April 2, 1912)

The Midwest ax murderer wasn’t the only fiend causing havoc in the early 1900s. Detectives in Louisiana and Texas found themselves pitted against a repeat murderer closely following the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. Thirteen black families had been slaughtered in their sleep in less than two years.

Several people were questioned but quickly released. Then, in November 1911, Detectives in Lafayette, Louisiana, arrested Clementine Barnabet.

Six months later, the nineteen-year-old housekeeper confessed to killing seventeen of the forty-plus Negroes murdered in and around Lafayette, and for a moment, it seemed as if the case was solved. But unfortunately, the killings continued for nearly a year after her arrest.

For her part, Clementine enjoyed the spotlight. She smoked cigars with the reporters crowded around her cell, cracked jokes, and made light of the killings, blaming her capture on the loss of the “cunjah bag” Joe Thibodaux, a “Voodoo Doctor,” sold her.

The papers described Thibodaux as an old Voodoo priest who sold charms and conjure bags, which he “guaranteed would make the wearers immune from arrest, no matter how atrocious the crime.”

Hans Schmidt: The Priest Who Cut His Girlfriend to Pieces

 

Hans Schmidt and Anna Aumuller

Hans Schmidt, 33, was an assistant priest at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in New York City. He was also a murderer, a counterfeiter, and possibly one of the strangest men ever to sit in the electric chair at Sing Sing.

His victim was Anna Aumuller, a 24-year-old German immigrant Schmidt claimed to love.

He killed her, cut her body into pieces, and dumped the remains in the North River. When detectives asked why he did it, Schmidt said, “I killed her because I loved her.”

That was one explanation.

His other story involved St. Elizabeth of Hungary, a blood sacrifice, and voices telling him to kill.

Things only got stranger from there.

On September 4, 1913, some children playing along the New Jersey shore of the Hudson River near Ninety-sixth Street found a pillowcase. Inside was the torso of a young woman.

A few days later, more body parts washed ashore near Weehawken. Then, on September 10, still more pieces turned up at Keansburg, New Jersey.

Leon Czolgosz: I Killed President McKinley Because I Done My Duty

 

Leon Czolgosz

The Temple of Music was the most ornately decorated building at the Pan-American Exposition. It spanned 150 feet on each side, and the dome rose 180 feet into the air. Outside, the primary colors were blue and green. It boasted one of the largest pipe organs in the United States, and the arena had seating for 2200 guests. Each corner featured statues by Isidore Konti. At night, the building was lit up with a brilliant display of electrical illumination.

Two gunshots rang out on the afternoon of September 21, 1901.

Eyewitness, John D. Wells, writing in Collier’s Magazine said:

Suddenly I saw a hand shoved toward the President—two of them, in fact—as if the person wished to grasp the President’s hand in both of his own. In the palm of one hand, the right one was a handkerchief. Then there were two shots in rapid succession.

I stood stock-still. I saw Detective Foster strike upward the hand that would fire the third shot, and a soldier seize the man from behind and drag him down.”

The President “fell into the arms of Detective Geary. Mr. Milburn supported him from the other side. Just a few drops of blood spurted out and dropped on his white waistcoat.”

Seconds later, “I rushed to where the assassin lay prostrate on the floor. A dozen or more men, detectives, and guards were standing over him, striking and kicking him.”

The President observed the rough treatment given to the shooter and told nearby officers, “See that no one hurts him.”

Wells’ story closely follows the other accounts of the assassination.

The Strange Case of Lizzie Borden

 

Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden is the stuff from which legends are made. Schoolchildren recite poetry about her while adults revel in the gory details of her crimes.

Unfortunately, little is known about Lizzie’s inner life.

She was thirty-two at the time her parents were killed. Her sister, Emma was forty-one. The girls lived at home, unattached, with their father and stepmother.

Lizzie’s father, Andrew J. Borden, was most often described as peculiar. A Puritan type, more interested in acquiring money than living life. He got his start as a furniture dealer, partnering with William L. Almy. When Almy retired, they dissolved the business, and Borden began investing in real estate. Over time, he made some shrewd moves and wound up owning many of the city’s choicest properties.

When he died, Borden’s real estate holdings totaled over $170,000. In addition, he held stock in the cotton mill, bank, and other business concerns valued at several hundred thousand dollars more. John T. Burrell, the cashier of the Union Bank, valued Borden’s estate at $200,000 to $300,000 (just under $10 million today).

Who Killed Earle Remington in Los Angeles?

 

Map showing where Earle Remington was killed. Mr. & Mrs. Remington

When Earle Remington stepped out of his automobile shortly before midnight on February 15, 1923, two men were waiting for him.

One carried a double-barreled shotgun. The other had a revolver. As he walked toward his home at 1409 South St. Andrew’s Place in Los Angeles, both men opened fire. The medical examiner said Remington was dead before he hit the sidewalk.

The killers disappeared into the darkness.

Remington’s maid, Charity Dawson, found his body lying on the sidewalk the next morning. Neighbors had heard the gunfire the night before, but no one took the time to investigate. They told the police; they assumed it was an automobile backfiring. Nothing to worry about.

Someone heard a door slam. Someone else heard a car race away. Nobody thought much of it until daylight.

The killing looked like an ambush from the beginning.