FRIENDS IDENTIFY THE REMAINS.
With amazing rapidity the news had spread throughout the suburb, and by this time the station was besieged by an excited crowd, while hundreds of voices clamored loudly but vainly for admission. Down in the city, too, where the information had been telephoned as soon as the remains had reached the morgue, the excitement was equally intense. It was just at the hour when the mercantile establishments, business houses, and manufactories, were emptying their army of toilers at the conclusion of the work of the day, and the bulletins that were displayed at the newspaper offices and a score of other places in the most frequented thoroughfares, were surrounded by thousands of people, who read and commented upon the startling information that was thus conveyed. Many gave vent to shouts of horror, others loudly breathed imprecations upon the murderers. Extra editions of the evening papers, giving the facts so far as known up to the hour of publication, were successively issued, and added to the popular excitement. Before midnight the fact that the body of the missing physician had been discovered under such revolting circumstances was known under almost every roof in the great western metropolis, and was being discussed by Irishmen in scores of towns throughout the country, to which it had been flashed over the electric wires.
Among the earlier arrivals at the morgue were several citizens of Lake View, who had known the physician when in the flesh, and with one or two exceptions, their identification of the remains was instantaneous and complete. They were soon joined by John F. Scanlan, Mortimer Scanlan, Pat McGarry, James Boland, and John E. Scanlan, all intimate friends of Dr. Cronin and members of the committee which had the case in charge. They made a careful examination of the remains and pointed out the resemblances. The Doctor had large hands, as had the corpse; he was a hairy man, and there was lots of loose body hair on the corpse. The water had rotted this off, but it lay in masses and tufts on the body. The height of the man and his build agreed with that of the physician. Next to this they relied upon the "Agnus Dei." Cronin had worn one of these reliquaries, and had never taken it off even while bathing. Then some one remembered that the Doctor had an extravasion of blood under the finger nail of the right thumb; and this, too, was found upon the corpse. A mark upon the side was also declared to be identical with one upon the body. Cronin had a superfluity of hair about the wrists, and this point of resemblance was found on the corpse. There was also a peculiarity of the second finger of the right hand, which might be described as a base-ball finger, with which Dr. Cronin had been afflicted. This malformation was apparent on the same hand of the dead man. But the most convincing and conclusive identification of all was that of Dr. T. W. Lewis, a dental surgeon, who had done considerable work for the Doctor. Upon his arrival at the morgue, John F. Scanlan pried open the mouth of the corpse with a pencil, and Dr. Lewis immediately recognized his handiwork in the gold filling of some of the upper teeth. It was a remarkable fact, moreover, that in a lower jaw plate that he had made for the physician he had placed several teeth peculiar to themselves, and known to the profession as "crown sunk." He had done this something in the line of an experiment. This identical plate was taken from the mouth of the dead man, while, to make the proof still more positive, the cast of Dr. Cronin's mouth, taken for the purpose of making the plate, was found to fit the mouth of the corpse to a fraction.
SCANLAN AND CONKLIN IDENTIFYING THE BODY.
After Dr. Lewis came Cronin's tailor, Joseph J. O'Keefe, and who, upon making tests, found that the measurements of those portions of the body that had not perceptibly increased in size were identical with the figures in the order book kept by his cutter. John Buck, the barber who had counted Dr. Cronin among his customers for over a year, recognized the shape of the head and the texture of the hair; and immediately after, Dr. John R. Brandt, President of the staff of the Cook County Hospital, and who had been comparing the dead man's hair with the lock of hair found in the trunk three weeks before, declared that they had come from the same head. In this he was corroborated by Dr. Ruthford. T. T. Conklin arrived at the station at 8 o'clock. He was taken down-stairs and looked long and earnestly at the bloated corpse. "It is the body of Dr. Cronin," said Conklin, his eyes filling with tears. "I have known him for twenty years and cannot be mistaken. I have been in swimming with him and know him better than any man living. There is no chance for a mistake. I don't like to say 'I told you so,' but this substantiates what I have said from the start. Dr. Cronin was murdered, and if the police had done their duty, instead of believing the lies invented by Dr. Cronin's enemies, the murderers would have been captured before this time."
And so for hours the friends of the murdered man came in singly, and in twos and threes, and added their testimony to what had already been given. Many of them were profoundly affected, and there were many pitiable scenes of grief as one man after another turned away from the bloated corpse that was all that remained of the man with whom they had been so closely associated for years. Captain Wing, when interrogated, said that the place where the body was found was a particularly lonely one, the nearest house being over a block away. A hundred yards to the east was the depot of the Chicago & Evanston railroad. The spot was a little over three-quarters of a mile beyond the point where the trunk was found on the morning after the physician's disappearance, and four miles north of Fullerton avenue. It was surrounded with swampy land, the few trees growing to the north serving to shut off the view from the residences that were located in the neighborhood.
All this time the excitement outside was at fever heat. For hours the streets in the neighborhood were crowded with vehicles, and thousands of people blocked the approaches to the morgue until the police were compelled to use their clubs again and again. The station was filled with Chicago officers, who consulted with those of the suburb upon the best method to be adopted with the view of running down the assassins. The tumult continued until midnight, and then the morgue was cleared in order that a more careful examination of the head might be made by Dr. Gray. It was first placed in an upright position and photographed, and when he had finished his examination, Dr. Gray said:
"There are five wounds. No. 1 is on the front parietal suture, just here," and he took a skull which he had brought with him and used it in the demonstration. "That could easily have been fatal in itself. No. 2 is on the vertex, to the right of the sagittal suture," and he touched a point on the skull before him squarely on the top, but a little forward of the crown. "The skull is not strong there, and a heavy blow would be fatal. The third wound is one-half inch posterior to No. 2—just here," and he again illustrated by laying his finger almost on the crown of his object lesson. "The fourth is on the left temple, and is only one inch long. The rest are about an inch and a half in length. The fifth is a crushing wound, immediately below the external angle of the left eye. This one fractured the cheek bone, and must have been delivered with great force."
THE SKULL SHOWING LOCATION OF WOUNDS
THAT CAUSED DEATH.
"The absence of wounds on the hands," said Walter V. Hayt, a city health inspector, "would indicate that the first blow, whichever one of these five it was, was delivered unawares; otherwise there would have been a struggle which would have left its mark on the hands or arms, either in striking or warding off blows. He must have been surprised and stunned at the first blow."
Dr. Brandt, who also assisted in the examination of the wounds, said the blows must have been made by some sharp instrument, perhaps an ice-pick. He said if the instrument had not been sharp the skull would have been fractured, whereas it was only indented, or marked by the blows.
To many of the dead man's friends it seemed remarkable that the body had not sooner been discovered, more especially as the Lake View police had started out to search the catch basin on the day after the trunk was found, and continued at the work for nearly a week. This was satisfactorily explained, however, by Alderman Maxwell, of the city council, who was one of the searching committee. It appeared that there were four catch basins at the intersection of Evanston avenue and Fifty-Ninth street, the body being discovered in the one on the south-east corner. The committee, aided by fifteen police officers and six volunteers, had commenced their operations at Evanston avenue and Sulzer street, where the trunk was found, and went east and west from that corner. From here they had gone through the basins north and south along Evanston avenue, but no clues being discovered, they arrived at the conclusion that the trunk had been left for a blind, and that, in all probability, the body had been hidden some distance away. They had consequently gone to Graceland and looked through the basins up and down the avenue and on the cross streets for a distance of several miles. This occupied an entire week, until, tired and disgusted, they had stopped, by sheer bad luck, two blocks north of Fifty-Ninth street. Hence it was that the catch-basin in which the body had been hidden was missed.