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Case File: Brown, Carrie née Montgomery (1891)
[External link to the original] – Page 5, Column 1,2
CHOKED, THEN MUTILATED --- A MURDER LIKE ONE OF "JACK THE RIPPER'S" DEEDS --- WHITECHAPEL'S HORRORS REPEATED IN AN EAST SIDE LODGING HOUSE -AN AGED WOMEN THE VICTIM- SEVERAL ARRESTS ON SUSPICION
A murder which is many of its details recalls the crimes with which “Jack the Ripper” horrified London was committed late Thursday night or early yesterday morning in a small room in the squalid lodging house known as the East River Hotel, on the southeast corner of Catherine and Water Streets. The victim was an old, gray-haired, and wrinkled woman, who had for years past haunted the neighborhood. The murderer escaped hours before the deed was discovered. He left behind him the weapon with which he had butchered his victim.
The lodging house is kept by James Jennings. It is a four-story brick building, which has a decent exterior appearance, but the interior is squalid in the extreme. While dignified by the name of hotel, it is a lodging house of unsavory reputation, and is chiefly resorted to by the women who prowl about the neighborhood after nightfall. On the ground floor there is a bar-room. The entrance to the lodging house proper is in Water Street and the door opens into a short hallway, at the end of which is a narrow stairway leading to the upper floors. At the landing of the first flight of stairs is what is called the office, and here is kept a greasy book in which it is the practice of Edward Fitzgerald, the room clerk, to write the names the lodgers give him.
Thursday night Samuel Shine, the bartender and night clerk, was in charge of the premises. Fitzgerald was acting as room clerk and Mary Miniter, the assistant housekeeper, was on duty looking after the rooms. According to the story told by this woman to the police the elderly woman came into the saloon at 9 o’clock with a young woman named Mary Hesley. The assistant housekeeper says that she had never seen the older woman before, but her younger companion appeared to be acquainted with her and called her “Shakespeare.” This it was subsequently learned was a nick-name by which the old woman had been known for many years.
The two women remained in the place for over half an hour drinking beer, and then Mary Healey went out with a girl named Lizzie. The old woman, under the influence of the beer, began to talk about herself in a maudlin way. She told Mary Miniter that all her relatives were seafaring people, and that her husband died many years ago on the Pacific coast. She also said that she had two daughters still living, one of whom was thirty-six years old. From what she said, the Miniter woman gathered that the woman’s husband was named either Charles S. Brown or Beane, and that she was knwon as Carrie Brown.
The old woman went out and returned between 10:30 and 11 o’clock accompanied by a young man, who is described by the assistant housekeeper as apparently about thirty-two years old, five feet eight inches in height, of slim build, with a long, sharp nose and a heavy mustache of light color. He was clad in a dark-brown cutaway coat and black trousers, and wore an old black derby hat, the crown of which was much dented. He was evidently a foreigner, and the woman’s impression was that he was a German. The man kept in the back-ground, and appeared anxious to avoid observation.
Mary Miniter was in temporary charge of the office. The old woman asked for a room, and Mary Miniter asked her companion for his name. She understood the man to reply “C, Nicolo” and she went to Fitzgerald and gave him the name. He made the entry in the register “C. Kniclo and wife” and assigned the couple to Room 31, which is a corner room on the top floor of the house. There are six rooms on this floor, all opening on the same hallway. Four of these rooms were occupied, but, as far as could be ascertained, no noise or calls for help disturned any of the lodgers.
The discovery of the murder was made by Fitzgerald about 9:30 o’clock yesterday morning. He was on his rounds waking up the late sleepers, and when he reached Room 31 he knocked, but got no answer. The door was unlocked, and he entered. Such a sight met his gaze that he rushed from the room like one demented and raised the house with his cries for help. The old woman was lying dead on the bed. She was naked from her armpits down and was disemboweled. Her head and face were tightly enveloped in portions of her clothing. There were marks about her throat to indicate that the woman had been choked or strangled before the mutilation was perfomed.
The woman was lying on her right side with her face to the wall, and her right arm was twisted under her back. There was a gash extending from the base of the spine around the abdomen to the front of the body. The incision was begun near the base of the spine and carried from below upward in an oblique direction to a point half way up on the right side. On the back was a mark like an “X” made by drawing the knife lightly across the skin; this was evidently the murderer’s sign manual.
A messenger was at once sent to the Oak Street police station, and Capt. O’Connor and his ward detectives were quickly on hand and made a search of the room. On the floor they found the murderer’s weapon. It is an ordinary black-handled table knife with a blade four inches long. At the end of the blade a piece of the steel has been either broken or ground off, making a sharp point. This knife was found on the floor near the bed, and was still wet with blood. The only other articles found in the room which belonged to either of the occupants were two pairs of old spectacles and a small shopping bag, made out of gaudy cotton cloth. Coroner Schultze made a superficial examination of the woman’s body. He came to the conclusion that she was killed by strangulation, probably while asleep, and was mutilated afterward.
When the news of the crime reached Police Headquarters Capt. McLaughlin, who for several days has been in temporary charge of the detective bureau, went down to the Oak Street police station with Detectives Crowley, Grady, and McClusky to assist Capt. O’Connor in unraveling the mystery, but very little progress was made. It was definitely ascertained that the woman Mary Miniter was the only person in the lodging house who saw the murderer, and she was taken to the station house, where she made statement of all that she knew about the case to the officers. She was committed to the House of Detention. Mary Healey, who had been in the company of the murdered woman, was also arrested. She occupied Room 12 in the house during the night, but she was so intoxicated when taken to the station house that she was unable to make a statement.
Some blood marks on the scuttle in the roof of the hotel would tend to show that the murderer may have escaped to the roof and down to the street through an adjoining building.
Inspector Byrnes, Inspector Williams, Capt. McLaughlin, and Capt. O’Connor spent most of the evening in the Oak Street station in the Captain’s room. Drag-net tactics were indulged in, and a search was made in all the lodging houses down town for men answering the description of the murderer.
The first thing done by a dozen headquarters detectives, the precinct detectives, and officers in citizens’ clothes was to hunt up some of the dissolute companions of the murdered woman and to trace her movements before she went to the hotel. There was not much difficulty in finding those who had known her as “Shakespeare.” To trace her movements before she visited the house in Water Street was a more difficult matter.
One of the clues lead to the arrest of a man known as “Frenchy.” He met the woman, it is said, on Thursday in Mrs. Mary Harrington’s lodging house at 49 Oliver Street, where he had called to inquire for a woman named Mary Ann Lopez. Carrie Brown went out with him, and he may have accompanied her to the Water Street Hotel. He was arrested at 9 o’clock last night in a room in Water Street near James. The man might pass for a Greek or an Italian. He is rather tall, thin, and dark. He does not tally very well in this latter regard with the man described by Mary Miniter. When searched he had a two-dollar bill and some change in his possession.
The detectives, from the Inspector down, refused to give his name or say a word about the case. The prisoner was taken into the Captain’s room twice, however, and Mary Miniter and two other women saw him there, but the result of their meeting or his explanation of his movements Inspector Byrnes kept to himself. It is known, however, that the woman spent some time in the prisoner’s company on Thursday and that after leaving Mrs. Harrington’s the pair went to John Speckman’s saloon in Oliver Street and left there together in the evening. “Frenchy” was not seen in his usual haunts in James Street during the day.
Carrie Brown, the murdered woman, often stopped at Mrs. Harrington’s. She was sixty years old and was said to have been born at sea. She lived out at service till drink caused her fall. She had been released from a short sojourn on Blackwell’s Island three weeks ago.
Annie Lynch, Annie Corcoran, and Lizzie Mestrom, who work around the East River Hotel and visit it frequently, were detained as witnesses. Three Italians who were arrested were allowed to go after they had been examined by the Inspector and his aides.
There was no autopsy performed upon the body of the woman yesterday, and whether the parts that in the murders of “Jack the Ripper” were always carried away were removed is not known yet. The body was not taken to the Morgue till about 6 o’clock, when it was too late to perform the post-mortem examination. This morning, however, the autopsy will be held by Coroner’s Physicians Jenkins and Weston, and some of the doctors in Bellevue Hospital will be present.
There has not been a case in years that has called forth so much detective talent. Inspector Byrnes apparently feels that the murderer must be arrested, for Inspector Byrnes has said that it would be impossible for crimes such as “Jack the Ripper” committed in London to occur in New-York and the murderer not be found. He has not forgotten his words on the subject. He also remembers that he has a photographed letter, sent by a person who signed himself “Jack the Ripper,” dated “Hell,” and received eighteen months ago.
The police theory, however, is that “Jack” is not in New-York, but that an imitator, perhaps a crank, committed the murder. A strict policy of not saying a word about the case was kept up last night. At midnight the temporary detective quarters at the Oak Street Station were closed for the night, but the night squad were told to look out for a man 5 feet 8 inches high, rather thin, with a light mustache, light hair, and hooked nose, and dressed in a dark cutaway coat and derby hat.
Another woman was added to the company detained at the stateion house at 11:30 o’clock. Who she is is or what she can testify to is as yet a police secret.
