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Case File: Brown, Carrie née Montgomery (1891)
[Link to original] – Page 2, Column 7
THE MURDERER STILL AT LARGE --- NO LIGHT AS YET ON THE EAST RIVER HOTEL MYSTERY
The same tremendous air of mystery and the same depressing lack of information characterized the operations of the police yesterday in the attempt to find the murderer of old Mrs. Brown in Catharine Street. The shoals of detectives and ward men worked just as hard as at any time since the ghastly discovery in the East River Hotel. They brought in an took away several women and boys, but denied, which was probably true, that they had learned anything of value from them.
The crowd around the station house spent its time in making guesses as to the last appearance of the Street-Cleaning Department minions in the district and in wondering how it was that Captain O’Connor allowed such dives as the ones that have been brought into notice by this case to exist in his immaculate precinct.
Acting Superintendent Byrnes denied yesterday that he had made the statement that the ruffian known as “Frenchy,” the cousin of the man with the same sobriquet now under arrest, was the man who had murdered the old woman, or that he had authorized such a statement to be made. So far as he was concerned, he refused absolutely to give any opinions about the case or to make public the conclusions which he had arrived at. When he closed up his office at Police Headquarters last evening he said that there was nothing new in the case.
The Brooklyn police got very much excited over the case yeterday and arrested every man who had ever been known as “Frenchy” or who might be known by that name, and several who never claimed it. The first man taken into custody was Nils Hansen, a Swede, and Detective McCauly and Mary Miniter had a look at him. They had never seen him before.
Then Capt. Eason captured a man known as Eli Commanis, alias John Williams, alias “Frenchy”. He lives in a lodging house next door to the Fourth Ward Hotel and knew old “Shakespeare”. He is a laborer along the docks, forty-five years old, and was in a house at 114 Roosevelt Street about two years ago when a woman was murdered. But he is dark and short, and as soon as Detective McCauly looked him over he was discharged. Then a man known as Christian Rey, alias “Frenchy”, who keeps a fruit stand at Altantic and Alabama Avenues, was arrested. He had been absent from his stand for several days owing to illness, but after he had been examined by Detective McCauly he too was discharged.
