I. THE REGULAR FORCE.
The Detective Corps of New York consists of twenty-five men, under the command of a Captain, or Chief. Though they really constitute a part of the Municipal Police Force, and are subject to the control of the Commissioners and higher officers of that body, the detectives have a practically distinct organization. The members of this corps are men of experience, intelligence, and energy. These qualities are indispensable to success in their profession. It requires an unusual amount of intelligence to make a good Detective. The man must be honest, determined, brave, and complete master over every feeling of his nature. He must also be capable of great endurance, of great fertility of resource, and possessed of no little ingenuity. He has to adopt all kinds of disguises, incur great personal risks, and is often subjected to temptations which only an honest man can resist. It is said that the Detective’s familiarity with crime is in itself a great temptation, and often leads him from the path of right. However this may be, it is certain that a member of the New York force committing an act savoring of dishonesty is punished by immediate expulsion from his post.
The Detectives have a special department assigned them at the Police Head-quarters in Mulberry street. There they may be found when not on duty, and the Chief, when not in his office, is always represented by some member of the corps.
They are kept quite busy. The strangers who visit the city throw an immense amount of work upon the Detectives. These people often get drunk over night, and frequent houses of bad repute, where they are robbed. They naturally invoke the aid of the police in seeking to recover their property. Frequently, by making a plain statement of their cases, they recover their money or valuables, through the assistance of the Detectives. Sometimes the stolen property cannot be regained at all. These people, as a rule, refuse to prosecute the thieves, and declare their determination to submit to the loss rather than endure the publicity which would attend a prosecution. Thus the Detectives are forced to compound felonies. The injured party refuses to prosecute, and the Detective knows that to make an arrest in the case would simply be to take trouble for nothing. Consequently, if the plunder is returned, the thief is allowed to escape without punishment.
None but those whose duty it is to search out and punish crime, can tell how much the administration of justice is embarrassed, how much the officers of the law are hampered, and how greatly their labors are increased by the refusal of respectable persons to prosecute criminals. These refusals are not confined to those who seek to avoid such an exposure as is mentioned above. Merchants and bankers who have been robbed by thieves, seem to care for nothing but the recovery of their money or property. They will even sacrifice a portion of this to regain the remainder. The Detective may fairly work up his case, and fasten the crime upon the perpetrator, but he is not sure of meeting with the cooperation upon the part of the injured person that he has a right to demand. The thief seeing that an arrest is inevitable, may offer to return a part or the whole of the property on condition of his being allowed to escape. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the proposal is accepted. The merchant recovers his property, and immediately exerts himself to secure the escape of the thief. He refuses to prosecute the wretch, or if the prosecution is carried on in spite of him, his evidence amounts to nothing. He has protected his own interests, and he cares nothing for
society or justice. He throws his whole influence against both, and aids the thief, in going free, to commit the same crime in another quarter. The Detectives complain, and with justice, that it is of no use for them to arrest a burglar where the stolen property can be recovered. If persons who have been wronged in this way would refuse all proposals for a compromise, and would endeavor to secure the punishment of the offender, the criminal class would be wonderfully thinned out, and the Detectives would not, as now, be obliged to arrest the same person over and over again, only to see him go free every time.
In June, 1870, a gentleman, passing through Bleecker street, on his way home, at two o’clock in the morning, was knocked down and robbed of his watch and money. He was struck with such violence by the highwayman that his jaw was permanently injured. He was very eloquent in his complaints of the inefficiency of a police system which left one of the principal streets of the city so unguarded, and was loud in his demands for the punishment of his assailant, and the recovery of the property stolen from him. The best Detectives in the force were put in charge of the case, and the highwayman was tracked, discovered and arrested. The friends of the culprit at once returned the stolen property to its owner, and promised to reward him liberally if he would not press the prosecution of their comrade, who was one of the leading members of a notorious and dangerous gang of ruffians from whose depredations the city had been suffering for some time. The offer was accepted, and the gentleman flatly refused to prosecute, and when compelled by the authorities to state under oath, whether the prisoner was the man who had robbed him, became so doubtful and hesitating that his identification was worth nothing. This, too, in the face of his previous assertion that he could readily identify the criminal. In spite of his misconduct, however, there was evidence enough submitted to secure the conviction of the prisoner, who was sentenced to an imprisonment of ten years.
The Detectives are in constant telegraphic communication with other cities, and intelligence of crimes committed is being
constantly received and transmitted. Criminals arrested for serious offences are photographed, and their pictures placed in the collection known as the “Rogues’ Gallery.” These likenesses are shown to strangers only under certain restrictions, but they aid the force not a little in their efforts to discover criminals. The amount of crime annually brought to light by the Detectives is startling, but it does not exhibit all the evil doings of the great city. “The Police Commissioners of New York,” says Mr. Edward Crapsey, “have never had the courage to inform the public of the number of burglaries and robberies annually committed in the metropolis; but enough is known in a general way for us to be certain that there are hundreds of these crimes committed of which the public is not told. The rule is to keep secret all such affairs when an arrest does not follow the offence, and hardly any police official will venture to claim that the arrest occurs in more than a moiety of the cases. There are hundreds of such crimes every year where the criminal is not detected, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property stolen of which the police never find a trace.”
The individuality of crime is remarkable. Each burglar has a distinct method of conducting his operations, and the experienced Detective can recognize these marks or characteristics as he would the features of the offender. Thanks to this experience, which comes only with long and patient study, he is rarely at a loss to name the perpetrator of a crime if that person be a “professional.” Appearances which have no significance for the mere outsider are pregnant with meaning to him. He can determine with absolute certainty whether the mischief has been done by skilled or unskilled hands, and he can gather up and link together evidences which entirely escape the unpractised eye. He rejects nothing as unimportant until he has tested it, and is able to conduct his search in a systematic manner, which in the majority of cases is crowned with success.
A few years ago a man came into one of the police stations of the city, and complained that his house had been robbed. He had pursued the thief without success, but the latter had dropped a chisel, and had torn up and thrown away a piece of
paper in his flight. The captain commanding the station and an experienced Detective were present when the complaint was made. They carefully examined the owner of the house as to the mode by which the entrance had been effected, the marks left by the tools, the kind of property taken, and the action and bearing of the thief while running away. When these facts were laid before them, the two officers, without a moment’s hesitation, concluded that the robbery had been committed by a certain gang of thieves well known to them. This settled, it became necessary to identify the individual or individuals belonging to this gang, by whom the robbery had been committed. The chisel was examined, but it could give no clue. The house-owner had fortunately secured the bits of paper which the thief had thrown away. The officers spread a layer of mucilage over a sheet of paper, and on this fitted the scraps which were given them. This at once disclosed the name of the robber, who was well known to the police as a member of the gang to whom the officers attributed the robbery. Their suspicions were at once confirmed, and the next step was to make the arrest. The Detective said that the thief would certainly be at one of three places, which he named. Three policemen were accordingly sent after him, one to each of the places named, and in an hour or two the culprit was safely lodged in the station-house.
It would require a volume to relate the incidents connected with the exploits of the Detective Corps of New York. Sometimes the search for a criminal is swift and short, and the guilty parties are utterly confounded by the suddenness of their detection and apprehension. Sometimes the search is long and toilsome, involving the greatest personal danger, and abounding in romance and adventure. Some of the best established incidents of this kind would be regarded simply as Munchausen stories, were they related without the authority upon which they rest. Such adventures are well known to the reading public, and I pass them by here.
But the Detectives are not always successful in their efforts. If they are ingenious and full of resource, the criminals they
seek are equally so, and they find their best efforts foiled and brought to naught by the skill of this class in “covering up their tracks.” To my mind the most interesting cases are not those in which the Detective’s labors have been crowned with success, but those in which he has been baffled and perplexed at every step, and which to-day remain as deeply shrouded in mystery as at the time of their occurrence.
Inspector James Leonard, in the spring of 1869, related the following case to Mr. Edward Crapsey, in whose words it is presented here:
“One spring morning, during the first year of the war, a barrel of pitch was found to have disappeared from a Jersey City pier, and the porter in charge, when reporting the fact to his employers, took occasion to speak of the river-thieves in no very complimentary terms.
“On the same day, Ada Ricard, a woman of nomadic habits and dubious status, but of marvellous beauty, suddenly left her hotel in New York, without taking the trouble to announce her departure or state her destination. The clerks of the house only remarked that some women had queer ways.
“A few days after these simultaneous events, the same porter who had mourned the lost pitch, happening to look down from the end of his pier when the tide was out, saw a small and shapely human foot protruding above the waters of the North River. It was a singular circumstance, for the bodies of the drowned never float in such fashion; but the porter, not stopping to speculate upon it, procured the necessary assistance, and proceeded to land the body. It came up unusually heavy, and when at last brought to the surface, was found to be made fast by a rope around the waist to the missing barrel of pitch. There was a gag securely fastened in the mouth, and these two circumstances were positive evidence that murder had been done.
“When the body was landed upon the pier, it was found to be in a tolerable state of preservation, although there were conclusive signs that it had been in the water for some time. It was the body of a female, entirely nude, with the exception of
an embroidered linen chemise and one lisle-thread stocking, two sizes larger than the foot, but exactly fitting the full-rounded limb. The face and contour of the form were, therefore, fully exposed to examination, and proved to be those of a woman who must have been very handsome. There was the cicatrice of an old wound on a lower limb, but otherwise there was no spot or blemish upon the body.
“In due time the body was buried; but the head was removed, and preserved in the office of the city physician, with the hope that it might be the means of establishing the identity of the dead, and leading to the detection of the murderer.
“The police on both sides of the river were intensely interested in the case; but they found themselves impotent before that head of a woman, who seemed to have never been seen upon earth in life. They could do nothing, therefore, but wait patiently for whatever developments time might bring.
“Chance finally led to the desired identification. A gentleman who had known her intimately for two years, happening to see the head, at once declared it to be that of Ada Ricard. The Detectives eagerly clutched at this thread, and were soon in possession of the coincidence in time of her disappearance and that of the barrel of pitch to which the body was lashed. They further found that, since that time, she had not been seen in the city, nor could any trace of her be discovered in other sections of the country, through correspondence with the police authorities of distant cities. They had thus a woman lost and a body found, and the case was considered to be in a most promising condition.
“The next step was to establish the identity by the testimony of those who had known the missing woman most intimately. The Detectives, therefore, instituted a search, which was finally successful, for Charles Ricard, her putative husband. He had not lived with her for some time, and had not even seen or heard of her for months; but his recollection was perfect, and he gave a very minute statement of her distinguishing marks. He remembered that she had persisted in wearing a pair of very heavy earrings, until their weight had slit one of her ears
entirely, and the other nearly so, and that, as a consequence, both ears had been pierced a second time, and unusually high up. He regretted that her splendid array of teeth had been marred by the loss of one upon the left side of the mouth, and told how a wound had been received, whose cicatrice appeared upon one of her limbs, stating exactly its location. He dwelt with some pride upon the fact that she had been forced, by the unusual development, to wear stockings too large for her feet, and gave a general description of hair, cast of face, height, and weight that was valuable, because minute.
“When he gave this statement he was not aware of the death of his wife, or of the finding of her body, and without being informed of either fact he was taken to Jersey City, and suddenly confronted with the head. The instant he saw it he sank into a chair in horror.
“His statement having been compared with the head and the record of the body, the similitude was found to be exact, except as to the teeth. The head had one tooth missing on each side of the mouth, and this fact having been called to his attention, Ricard insisted that she had lost but one when he last saw her, but it was highly probable the other had been forced out in the struggle which robbed her of her life, and the physician, for the first time making a minute examination, found that the tooth upon the right side had been forced from its place, but was still adhering to the gum. He easily pushed it back to its proper position, and there was the head without a discrepancy between it and the description of Ada Ricard.
“The Detectives found other witnesses, and among them the hair-dresser who had acted in that capacity for Ada Ricard during many months, who, in common with all the others, fully confirmed the evidence of Charles Ricard. The identity of the murdered woman was therefore established beyond question.
“Naturally the next step was to solve the mystery of her death. The Detectives went to work with unusual caution, but persisted in the task they had assigned themselves, and were slowly gathering the shreds of her life, to weave from them a thread that would lead to the author of her tragical death, when
they were suddenly ‘floored,’ to use their own energetic expression. Ada Ricard herself appeared at a down-town New York hotel, in perfect health and unscathed in person.
“The explanation was simple. The whim had suddenly seized her to go to New Orleans; and she had gone without leave-taking or warning. It was no unusual incident in her wandering life, and her speedy return was due only to the fact that she found the Southern city only a military camp under the iron rule of General Butler, and therefore an unprofitable field for her.
“The ghastly head became more of a mystery than before. The baffled Detectives could again only look at it helplessly, and send descriptions of it over the country. At last it was seen by a woman named Callahan, living in Boston, who was in search of a daughter who had gone astray. She instantly pronounced it to be that of her child, and she was corroborated by all the members of her family and several of her neighbors. The identification was no less specific than before, and the perplexed authorities, glad at last to know something certainly, gave Mrs. Callahan an order for the body. Before, however, she had completed her arrangements for its transfer to Boston, a message reached her from the daughter, who was lying sick in Bellevue Hospital, and so the head once more became a mystery. And such it has always remained. The body told that a female who had been delicately reared, who had fared sumptuously, and had been arrayed in costly fabrics, had been foully done to death, just as she was stepping into the dawn of womanhood—and that is all that is known. Her name, her station, her history, her virtues, or it may be, her frailties, all went down with her life, and were irrevocably lost. There is every probability that her case will always be classed as unfinished business.”
On Friday, July 20th, 1870, Mr. Benjamin Nathan, a wealthy Jewish resident of New York, was foully and mysteriously murdered in his own dwelling by an unknown assassin. All the circumstances of the case were so mysterious, so horribly dramatic, that the public interest was wrought up to the highest pitch.
Mr. Nathan was a millionaire, a banker and citizen of irreproachable character, well known for his benevolence, and highly esteemed for his personal qualities. His residence stood on the south side of Twenty-third street, one door west of Fifth Avenue, and immediately opposite the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in one of the most desirable and fashionable neighborhoods of the city. The mansion itself was palatial, and its owner had not only surrounded himself with every luxury, but had taken every precaution to exclude housebreakers and thieves. But a short time before his death, he remarked to a friend that he believed that his house was as secure as a dwelling could be made.
On the night of the 28th of July, Mr. Nathan slept at his residence, his family, with the exception of two of his sons, being then at their country-seat in New Jersey, where they were passing the summer. One of these sons accompanied his father to his sleeping room towards eleven o’clock, but the other, coming in later, and finding his father asleep, passed to his chamber without saying “good-night,” as was his custom.
On the morning of the 29th, at six o’clock, Mr. Washington Nathan descended from his chamber to call his father to a devotional duty of the day. Entering the chamber of the latter, a most appalling spectacle met his view. His father was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, dead, with five ghastly wounds upon his head. The young man at once summoned his brother Frederick, and the two together rushed to the street door and gave the alarm. The police were soon on the spot, and, taking possession of the house, they prepared to investigate the horrid affair. The newspapers spread the intelligence over the city, and the murder created the profoundest interest and uneasiness on the part of the citizens. All classes felt an interest in it, for it had been committed within the sacred precincts of the dead man’s home, where he believed himself to be safe. If a murderer could reach him there, men asked, who could tell who would not be the next victim. This feeling of insecurity was widespread, and the whole community demanded of the police extraordinary efforts in tracking and securing the assassin.
The Superintendent of Police at that time was Captain John Jourdan, who was acknowledged to be the most accomplished detective on the Continent, and his principal assistant was Captain James Kelso (the present Superintendent), who was regarded as next to Jourdan in ability. These two officers at once repaired to the Nathan mansion, and took personal charge of the case.
At the first glance Jourdan pronounced the murder to be the work of a thief. The house was carefully searched. The room bore evidences of a struggle between the dead man and his assassin, and three diamond studs, a sum of money, a Perregaux watch, No. 5657, and the key of a small safe, had been stolen from the clothing of the dead man which had been hung on a chair placed at some distance from the bed. The safe stood in the library beside the door opening into the bed room. Jourdan’s theory was that the thief, having stolen the watch and other articles from the clothing, had gone to the safe to open it, and had aroused Mr. Nathan by the noise he made in opening it. Alarmed by this noise, Mr. Nathan had sprung from his bed, and at the same moment the thief had raised himself up from his kneeling posture, with his face toward Mr. Nathan, and lighted up by a small gas jet which was burning in the chamber. The two men had met in the doorway between the rooms, and the thief, seeing himself identified, had struck Mr. Nathan a blow with a short iron bar curved at the ends, and known as a ship carpenter’s “dog.” A struggle ensued, which resulted in the murder, the assassin striking his victim on the head nine times with terrible force. Then, rifling the safe of its valuable contents, he had gone stealthily down the stairs, had unfastened the front door, which had been carefully secured at half an hour after midnight, and, laying the “dog” down on the hall floor, had passed out into the street. His object in carrying the “dog” to the place where it was found by the police had been to be prepared to make sure of his escape by striking down any one whom he might chance to meet in the hall. Once in the street, the assassin had disappeared in safety.
Both Jourdan and Kelso were agreed that this theory of the
commission of the crime was correct, and this led to the inevitable conclusion that the murder was the work of an “outsider,” that is, of some one not properly belonging to the criminal class. The weapon with which the murder had been committed was one which the Detectives had never before encountered in the annals of crime, and its appearance indicated long use in its legitimate sphere. No burglar or professional thief would have used it, and none of the inmates of the house recognized it as belonging to the mansion. Again, the professional thief would have despatched his victim with more speed and less brutality. There was not the slightest sign of the thief having forced an entrance into the mansion, and the most rigid search failed to reveal the mark of a burglar’s tool on any of the doors or windows. This fact warranted the conclusion that the murderer had secreted himself in the house during the day. From the first Jourdan was convinced that the assassin was one of a class who pursue an honest trade during the day, and seek to fill their pockets more rapidly by committing robberies at night. From this conviction he never wavered.
As he stood by the side of the murdered man, Jourdan recognized the difficulty of the task of finding the assassin. The “dog” bewildered him. Had the weapon been any kind of a burglar’s tool, or anything that any description of thief had ever been known to use, he would have been able to trace it to some one in the city; but the facts of the case plainly indicated that the assassin was an “outsider,” and even Jourdan and Kelso were at a loss to know how to proceed to find him.
At the time of the murder, the only inmates of the house were Washington and Frederick Nathan, sons of the dead man, and Mrs. Kelly, the housekeeper, and her grown son, William Kelly. Had the murder been committed by any of these they must of necessity have stolen the missing articles, and as they had not left the house, must have destroyed or concealed them on the premises. Without the knowledge of these persons, Jourdan caused a rigid and thorough search of the house and lot to be made from cellar to garret. Every crack and crevice, every nook and corner was rigidly and minutely searched by
experienced persons. Even the furniture and carpets were examined, the flooring of the stable was taken up, the water-tank was emptied, the basins, closets, and waste-pipes of the house were flushed, and the street-sewers were examined for a long distance from the house, but no trace of the missing articles could be found; nor could any mark of the “dog” be discovered anywhere save on the body of the victim. One by one, the inmates of the house were subjected to the most searching cross-examination, and within six hours after the discovery of the deed, Captain Jourdan was satisfied that the inmates of the mansion were entirely innocent of the crime. The evidence drawn out by the inquest subsequently confirmed the innocence of these parties.
The only clew left by the assassin was the “dog.” At the inquest, the policeman on the beat swore that when he passed the house on his rounds at half-past four A.M., he tried both front doors, and that they were fastened, and that when he passed again a little before six o’clock, he noticed that the hall-door was closed. Another witness testified that about five o’clock, a man in a laborer’s dress, carrying a dinner-pail, ascended the steps of the Nathan mansion, picked up a paper from the topmost step, and passed on down the street. The introduction of this man in the laborer’s dress but deepened the mystery and increased the labors of the Detectives.
The entire police force of the city was set to work watching the pawn-shops and jewelry stores where the thief might try to dispose of the stolen property. Every ship-yard and boat-yard was searched for the identification of the “dog,” but without success, and almost every mechanical establishment in the city where the instrument could have been used, was subjected to the same inspection, but without discovering anything. A list of the missing property, and the marks by which it could be identified, was given to the public and telegraphed all over the Union. Captain Jourdan declared that it was well to have as many people as possible looking for these articles. Every known or suspected criminal in the city was waited on by the police, and required to give an account of himself on the night of the
murder, and it is said that there was a general exodus of the professional thieves from New York. The ten days immediately succeeding the murder were singularly free from crime, so close was the espionage exercised over the criminals by the police.
It is safe to assert that the police never made such exertions in all their history, to secure a criminal, as in this case. Every sensible suggestion was acted upon, no matter by whom tendered. Neither labor nor expense was spared, and all with the same result. Captain Jourdan literally sank under his extraordinary exertions, his death, which occurred on the 10th of October, 1870, being the result of his severe and exhausting labors in this case. His successor, Superintendent Kelso, has been equally energetic, but thus far—nearly two years after the commission of the deed—no more is known concerning it than was presented to Jourdan and Kelso as they stood in the chamber of death, and nothing has occurred to destroy or shake their original theory respecting the murderer and his mode of committing the deed. The mystery which enshrouded it on that sad July morning still hangs over it unbroken.