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Case File: Brown, Carrie née Montgomery (1891)
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BYRNES SAYS HE HAS A CLUE --- HE THINKS HE HAS SOLVED THE EAST RIVER HOTEL MURDER --- THERE ARE TWO "FRENCHYS"; HE HAS ONE AND WANTS THE OTHER - THE VICTIM OF THE CRIME IDENTIFIED AS MRS. JAMES BROWN
The murder of the old woman in the East River Hotel Thursday night is still as deep a mystery as ever. The best detectives of the city force, headed by Inspector Byrnes, are working like beavers to clear it up. Information as to what they are doing and what they have done and hope to accomplish they refused to give. They hope to catch the murderer, and this hope is warranted by the fact that there is reason to believe that he is absolutely without means. This may have forced him to stay in hiding in New-York. If so, it will also force him out of his hiding, and in that event his chance of escaping detection will be very slight.
Those who have officially to do with the crime discovered much yesterday that may or may not prove to be of import. They might have done more had their idea been clearer as to the personal appearance of the murderer. Nobody has been found who saw him except Mary Miniter, the housekeeper at the East River Hotel, who showed the murderer and his companion to the room where she was killed, and she cannot describe him in detail, though she says that she could identify him positively at a glance. On the strength of her description the following general order was sent out yesterday at daybreak:
General Alarm! – Arrest a man 5 feet 9 inches high, about thirty-one years old, ligth hair and mustache; speaks broken English. Wanted for murder. – THOMAS BYRNES, Acting Superintendent.
The most important clue that came to the police yesterday was from the Glenmore Hotel, a Chatham Square cheap lodging house. The morning of the murder, about three hours after the murderer and his victim went to their room in the East River Hotel, a man went to the Glenmore and asked for a room. Kelly, the night clerk of the house, noticed that the man’s hands, face, and clothing were smeared with blood. The fellow spoke with a pronounced German accent. Kelly describes this man as about five feet nine inches in height, light complexion, long nose, and light mustahce. He says that he wore a shabby cutaway coat and a shabby old derby hat. He had no money to pay for a room, and therefore was not permitted to remain. The Glenmore is not more than five minutes in a straight line from the scene of the murder. The murderer and his victim at the East River Hotel went to their room at 11 P. M. It was more than two and less than three hours afterward that the bloody man went to the Glenmore. Where he went next is a problem. Without money it is hard to see how he can long escape the law.
Night Clerk Kelly has been closely questioned in regard to this call of the man with blood on his hands and clothing. Kelly says that the man was very nervous and agitated. “His hat was pulled down over his eyes,” Kelly explained, “and he acted queer. He asked me in broken English if I could give him a room for the night. At the time his right hand rested on my desk and I noticed it was all bloody. I noticed it looked as though he had tried to wipe the blood off; but it was smeared all over. There were also two blotches of blood on his right coat sleeve and it was spattered on his collar. Altogether the fellow looked very bad.
“I asked him what priced room he wanted. He answered nervously that he wanted me to give him a room as he did not have a cent. I told him that I could not give him a room as the house was full. He turned to go away, but instead of going down the stairs to the street he started for the washroom. I came out from behind my desk and told him we only allowed the guests of the house the use of that room. He turned then without a word and went down into the street. As he did so I turned to Tiernan, our night watchman, who was in the office at the time, and said: ‘That man looks as though he had murdered somebody.’”
Kelly tells his story in a straighforward way, and the detectives place great credence in it. His description of the blood-stained man who asked him for a room tallies so closely with Mary Miniter’s description of the man who took the murdered woman into Room 31 of the East River Hotel that there does not seem to be very much doubt that they were one and the same.
Before daylight yesterday the police had taken a dozen prisoners to the Oak Street Station. Some were discharged; but five women and two men were held. Capt. O’Connor said that they were locked up as witnesses only. He says that the prisoner George Francis, alias “Frenchy,” who was arrested Friday evening, is only held because he knew the murdered woman well and could give valuable information regarding her life and associates. “Frenchy” has the reputation of being a very bad man. He was brought face to face with Mary Miniter, the only person who saw the murderer, in Capt. O’Connor’s room yesterday. For what purpose Capt. O’Connor refused to say. It could hardly have been with an idea that she would identify him as the man who occupied Room 31 on the night of the crime, for “Frenchy” was well known to her as a regular habitue of the East River Hotel, and he is a dark-skinned man, an Algerian by birth.
Adolph Kallenberg, the German who was arrested on suspicion by the police of the Elizabeth Street station, who found him hanging around the Bowery at 1 o’clock yesterday morning, was taken to the Oak Street station. There Mary Miniter said he was not the murderer, so he was discharged.
So far as is known none of the prisoners whom Capt. O’Connor is holding is even suspected of having committed the crime. They are merely women of the same character as the murdered woman, who are known to have associated with her. They were arrested in the dives that she used to frequent. There is a prisoner at Police Headquarters, however, about whom there is more mystery. Shortly after 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon, Capt. Reilly of the Nineteenth Precinct, accompanied by Detective Hayes, took a handcuffed man to Headquarters. From a brief glimpse that could be got of him as he was hustled into Inspector Byrnes’s office, he was a man who corresponded with the murderer, as Mary Miniter described him. Inspector Byrnes, however, said flatly that the prisoner was not a figure in the East River Hotel murder.
The police are trying to find a man named Isaac Perriger. In Ridge Street, near Broome, there is a lodging house run by the Seventh Presbyterian Church. Its Superintendent is J. A. McEachron. Thursday afternoon, the day of the murder, at 3 o’clock, a man went there and registered as Isaac Perringer, and paid 35 cents to occupy Room 53. He left particular orders that he wanted to be called at 9:30 P.M. and told some of the lodgers that he was going to meet a woman at that hour. He was called and left the house at 9:30 o’clock. The police learn that this man Perringer was seen later Thursday night drinking in a “dive” with the murdered woman. While he was drinking with her a man, supposed to be the murderer, came in and called her away. She went out with him and did not return. Perringer is said to be a sailor and a very bad character. Detective McNaughton was looking for him last night.
There seems to be no certainly as to whom the murdered woman was. When her body was found Mary Miniter and others said that she was Carrie Brown, or Bean, but better known to her associates as “Shakespeare.” Her identity is probably of little importance. But the victim, whoever she may be, does not appear to be “Shakespeare.” The woman known by that name is celebrated among the “dives”. For ten years the police have known her well. She was once the wife of a well-to-do man, in comfortable circumstances. She was a highly-educated woman and something of a writer. Drink was her ruin. She got her nick-name through her habit of standing in her cell when arrested and quoting passage after passage of the works of Shakespeare.
This character “Shakespeare” was seen drinking in Sullivan’s saloon, at Chrystie and Hester street, at midnight Friday, twenty-four hours after the murder. At least Sullivan says so, and some hangers-on about his place agree with him. At 1 o’clock it is said she left the place drunk, and hurled Richelieu’s curse upon the heads of some drunken men who annoyed her. An ex policeman of the Oak Street station named Courtlander, who knew “Shakespeare” well, has looked at the body of the murdered woman and says that it is not that of “Shakespeare.” He says that he has seen the woman who was murdered around the “dives” for years, but he does not know her name.
Despite the horrible murder that had been committed within its walls, the East River Hotel did a rushing business yesterday. The door of the room in which the old woman was butchered was wide open all day, and many curious persons gratified their morbid taste by going up and peering in. One of the old woman’s choes, which she had used to prop up the window, was still in its place. The blood-soaked mattress and filthy bed clothes were scattered about.
Looking about the premises one cannot help wondering how the murdered could have accomplished his work without disturbing the occupants of the other rooms adjoining the one in which he had his victim. Nothing excpet pine boards divide these apologies for rooms. That the murderer was able to get out of the house after committing his crime is not surprising. At the end of the little hallway running by his room was an iron ladder, running to a scuttle opening on the roof. He could have gone through the scuttle and then onto a neighboring roof. Or, if his bloody work was finished before 1 o’clock, or two hours after he went to the room, he could have gone down the stairs and out through the private drinking room without attracting any attention. This is probably what he did do.
Inspector Byrnes refuses to say whether in his opinion the old woman was killed by the genuine “Jack the Ripper” or not. The general opinion of the officers who are workign on the case is that that murderer for whom there are looking is not the real “Jack the Ripper,” but some weak-minded ruffian who has read of the deeds of the Whitechapel’s terror and attempted to do as he did. “Jack the Ripper” proper never did such a bungling job as this. In every instance he cut his victim’s throat from ear to ear before starting to mutilate them and he always carried away portions of the body. This murderer did neither of these things. The real “Jack the Ripper” has always disembowled his victims with that might be spoken of as “neatness and dispatch” This murderer was as clumsy as possible. From the appearance of the body his only object was to mutilate it wherever his knife struck. It would take a series of such crimes to establish the fact that the London “Jack the Ripper” is in New-York.
The autopsy held on the old woman’s body yesterday by Deputy Coroner Jenkins was a four hours’ task. He concluded that the woman was between sixty and sixty-five years old. The condition of the lower part of the trunk of the body cannot be described. There were cuts and stab wounds all over it. Dr. Jenkins’s opinion was that the murderer had tried entirely to cut out his victim’s abdomen, but that his fury and her sturggles prevented him. There were two cuts that penetrated for several inches into the abdominal cavity which would have caused death.
There were evidences of strangulation about the throat, and blood from the left ear indicated that she had been struck on the head. Col. Vollum, President of the United States Board of Army Medical Examiners, was at the autopsy. He said that in his opinion the murderer had clutched the woman by the throat and when she was half dead had begun to slash her with the knife. He thought that there was a with the knife. He thought that there was a struggle while the butchery was in progress. When Dr. Jenkins had finished his work he said that he thought death was caused by a combination of asphyxia and weakness resulting from hemorrhage.
The Brooklyn police have joined with the New-York force in trying to catch the murderer. Inspector Byrnes visited Brooklyn Headquarters yesterday mornign and had a consultation with Superintendent Campbell and Commissioner Hayden. A generdal order was sent out similar to that issued to the New-York force. Detective Kearney of the Second Precinct was the first man to make an arrest under this order. He took into custody Frederick Strube of 68 Fulton Street, and Detective North of Inspector Byrne’s staff and Mary Miniter, who saw the murderer, were sent for. The woman could not identify Strube, and later he was discharged.
LATER – Late last night Inspecter Byrnes and Capt. McLaughlin went to the Oak Street station and were closeted in Capt. O’Connor’s private room. They called the prisoner, George Francis, or “Frenchy,” up, and for a half hour questioned him. Then, with great formality, they told the reporters to enter. Capt. McLaughlin had in his hand a long, type-written statement, which, under Inspector Byrnes’s directions, he began to read. It was in the main merely a history of the case, detailing those facts already made public. Finally, however, it began to tell a story that was to the point.
George Francis, or “Frenchy,” the prisoner now in custody, has a cousin also known as “Frenchy.” The real name of this cousin Byrnes professes not to know. Both “Frenchys” have a reputation among the dives as ruffians of the worst character. They were always in the company of the old hags who haunt the water front. Both of the the men were seen around the dives the night of the murder. The “Frenchy” under arrest was with an old woman known as Mary Ann Lopez. The cousin “Frenchy” was seen with the murdered woman. He has disappeared, and the “Frenchy” under arrest refuses to say where he is or to talk about him in any way. Byrnes, however, says that he wil have no difficulty in tracing him and he believes that when he gets this man he will have the murderer. He says that he has not arrested him yet, but the fact that he has made public the facts here stated contradicst that, for Byrnes is not in the habit of talking about a man whom he desires to catch for committing a crime.
The statement read by Capt. McLaughlin also cleared up the identity of the murdered woman. She is a Mrs. James Brown. Among her dissolute companions she was known as “Jeff Davis,” because of her persistency in arguing for the “lost cause” and as “Shakespeare”. This last name, however, was seldom given her. It was the common name of a woman, already referred to, who was sent to Blackwell’s Island only yesterday.
The murdered woman was married twenty-fvie year ago to Capt. James Brown of Salem, Mass. She had two daughters. The Captain died, leaving her a small fortune. Fifteen years ago she came to New-York. She was addicted then to liquor. She was sent to several institutions in this city in the hope of referming her, her bills at these places being paid by a relative named Lawson, living in Salem. Finally she fell into the hands of the police, and for the last ten years has been a common drunkard. She was discharged from the Island only five days before she was murdered.
