I. Two Murder Mysteries Which, Strangely Alike in Many Ways, Baffled All Efforts to Solve.
(Much condensed, and slightly edited for diction, by author of The Female-Impersonators, from article in a New York daily.)
VICTIMS WERE TWO ELDERLY BACHELORS OF MEANS, LIVING IN THE SAME SECTION OF CITY—X AND Y WERE BOTH FOND OF PERSONAL ADORNMENT AND DISPLAY AND BOTH HABITUALLY CHOSE YOUNG MEN AS ASSOCIATES—EACH WAS SLAIN IN HIS OWN APARTMENT—ONLY TWENTY-NINE DAYS SEPARATED THE TWO MURDERS—MANY CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TWO CRIMES BORE CURIOUS RESEMBLANCE
Consideration of recent terrible crimes in New York which have halted agents of justice at dead walls of mystery must bring to mind the X-Y murders of a little more than a year ago. They were committed within five weeks, the scenes within a few blocks on fashionable Murray Hill.
In both, extraordinary interest was stirred by the maniacal savagery unleashed. The settings of the |Androgynes Art Connoisseurs.| crimes were alike bizarre. The characters of both victims were most peculiar, yet alike. And the men had been friends. [Androgynes, in all large cities, form little cliques like the Cercle Hermaphroditos.]
X was a bachelor of fifty-six, an electrical expert, an art connoisseur, and collector of jewels and weapons. Though in more than comfortable financial circumstances, he resided entirely alone, doing his own housework [common manner of life of androgynes] in a 6-room flat on the ground-floor of the Q Apartments. [I know one androgyne who purposely chose a ground-floor apartment in a house without hall-boy so he could go and come in his disguise with less chance of encountering other tenants.] He had made it his home for ten years. [This proves his outward decency, as well, as liberality to blackmailers.] The artistic luxury of its furnishings was striking. The walls were galleries of fine old prints, original oils, and copies of masters, and displayed a strange collection of swords, sabres, and barbarian spears. [Well-to-do androgynes possess the most highly ornamented homes of any class of society. While congenitally too “yellow” themselves to handle the weapons of warfare, such are generally sexual fetishes with them, being symbols of the highest function of the true man.]
Live under Sword of Damocles.
In this handsome, lonely abode, the detectives made a discovery of significance: X had lived in extraordinary fear of the lawless invasion of his rooms. [Cultured androgynes, realizing how bitterly they are hated by prudes, live constantly under the sword of Damocles. Every night they fall asleep in the fear of being murdered. They are uncommonly careful in locking themselves in. The author tries his locks twice before retiring. While a child, he, every night before getting into bed, looked to see whether there was not a murderer under it. Androgynes are extreme cowards.] For he had used his expertness with delicate electrical devices to set his rooms with a maze of traps for any person who might try to enter it by force or stealth. Doors, windows, etc., were invisibly strung with delicate wires. With the controlling alarm device set, scarcely an article might be touched without the ringing of sharp bells of warning.
But that thieves were those of whom he lived in dread was contradicted by other facts. X, far from being a recluse, frequented hotels and cafes and was prone to make chance acquaintances, especially of young men, while going about extravagantly bejewelled and habitually carrying a large roll of bills which it was a pet vanity to display.
His social hours were spent almost entirely with young men. He had been known to comment: “I keep young because I associate with the young.” The Q servants said these young-men callers never behaved boisterously. All were decorous and well dressed. [A small proportion of cultured androgynes who live alone in their own homes entertain there adolescents who bear the earmarks of trustworthy gentlemen. X’s murderer could have been of no other type, but was in addition an extreme prude so far as concerns homosexuality. The cultured enjoin extreme noiselessness so as not to arouse suspicions of co-tenants of the same apartment house. The uncultured commonly receive any adolescent at all in their homes because having no fear of disgrace and blackmail. By “young men” the author of the excerpt evidently means those from eighteen to twenty-five, the age-group preferred, and almost exclusively cultivated, by androgynes.]
Androgyne Stamping Grounds.
The Q servants further said that X frequently started alone on strolls, many times, however, returning with a youthful companion, who would spend an hour or two with the elderly host. [The favorite New York localities for evening “strolls” of cultured androgynes for scraping acquaintance with a strange Hercules or Adonis are, in cold weather, the Broadway and the Fourteenth Street Rialtos and cafes; and in summer, Madison Square, Union Square, the southerly quarter of Central Park (the three park spaces most frequented at night by idle adolescents who would be glad to pick up a few dollars), the Battery (because frequented by common soldiers), and other localities frequented by uncommissioned warriors, the ideal occupation, as I have already said, for a real man in the eyes of androgynes. In the case of X, the Q men-servants probably saw through everything. The servant class often respect a cultured moneyed androgyne who treats them well, and they act only in a protecting capacity.]
Of woman visitors, there could be recalled but one—whitehaired, a few years older than X, said to be an aunt.
Investigators were astonished by the nicety, the fond care, with which X had done his own housekeeping. Floors, rugs, and every article were flawless of dust. In spick and span appearance, thoughtful and orderly arrangement of utensils, neatness of china closets, refrigerator and provision store-room, a feature of which latter were shelves lined with jars of homemade preserves labelled in handwriting, the |Bent for Woman’s Toil.| bachelor’s kitchen was fit to excite a housewife’s envy. [Androgynes take naturally to woman’s tasks.]
Discovery of the Murder
It was not discovered until many hours after commission. At noon of [date omitted by author of The Female-Impersonators] the Q janitor saw a light shining out of a transom of X’s. He was immediately convinced such a methodical man would not have gone away leaving the light turned on. He tried X’s entrance and found it unlocked. He went to the room where the light was burning. Stretched on the floor beside a divan, with a couch pillow resting on the face, was X. A few feet away was the sabre with which he had been murdered.
The divan covers were half ripped off where the falling man had clutched them as he was repeatedly felled—repeatedly, for it was evident X had fought hard for his life against the sabre-armed assassin. The sabre had been ripped off the wall of the hall-way of the apartment. The retaining wires were strong and the hand must have been strong that snapped them. [Androgynes cultivate only the best physically developed.]
The deduction was made that the assassin had not entered X’s home with the intent to murder. He was pictured as having, in all probability, left his host in the “den” and started down the hall to make his exit from the flat when the resolution to attack and kill—a resolution which the weapons on the wall may have suggested—came suddenly upon him. Ripping the weapon from the wall, he is pictured as having dashed back to the “den” and surprised X with a fury of murderous |Prudery Gone Insane.| attack. [X probably entertained at his home for the first time that night his well dressed and apparently trustworthy assassin. Only when the two adjourned to the “den” did X probably disclose his desire, so nauseating to the unsophisticated and those ignorant of abnormal psychology. Doubtless a minute after the disclosure, the prude left X’s side in insane disgust, and on passing through the hall entertained his first thought to do his “duty by society and put this monster where he could corrupt no more young men”—an absolutely unfounded way of looking at the matter. I have myself scraped acquaintance with a youthful Hercules, who would lead me on hypocritically, and when he got me where there could be no witnesses, has half-murdered me because of disgust at androgynism. My adventure with Harvey Green is an example.]
Physical examination disclosed that despite his fifty-six years, X possessed the preservation of a man of thirty-five. [Perennial youth is an earmark of ultra-androgynism.]
The autopsy showed that every character of blow had been inflicted—deep stab wounds, slashes, and fracturing strokes on the skull either with the broad side or dull back of the sabre. The coat of X, who was fully clothed when killed, had been slashed to tatters. [The assassin wished not merely to kill, but to hack X to pieces because of his loathing of androgynism. I myself have not alone been half-murdered, but mutilation has been practiced for its own sake. See page 132 of my Autobiography of an Androgyne.]
Murdered by a Guest.
A Midnight Caller
X’s condition of being fully clothed proves of course that he had not yet retired. [It also indicates that his assassin had repulsed his amorous advances immediately after the pair entered the “den.” On such occasions, androgynes usually undress.] Further evidence was that his web system of alarms had not been set. It was his invariable custom, on retiring or when he went out, to do this. There was no sign of forcible entrance of the ground-floor apartment. Therefore X is believed to have freely admitted the man who was to murder him—probably such a chance acquaintance as he appears frequently to have made in his saunterings through the city’s streets and visits to its resorts.
The examination of medical experts resulted in the hour of the crime being placed between nine and eleven of the evening previous.
Made No Outcry
It being evident that X had survived the first attack at least for a few minutes before he finally succumbed under the raining blows of the sabre, the police were puzzled to understand why, with his life at stake, the man did not make an outcry. There was only a single wall separating the scene of combat from the public lobby where were stationed throughout the night a telephone operator and an elevator attendant. Tests made showed that a shout of medium volume from the “den” could be distinctly heard in the lobby. The attendants were positive they had heard no calls for help.
Death Preferred to Disclosure.
One of the puzzles, therefore, was to determine the character of X’s murderous guest and the circumstances of his visit. Had X reason so grave for concealment of the presence of his slayer as to prevent him from calling for aid even with death immediately upon him? [X’s consciousness of being a sexual eccentric would likely be an inhibition to his alarming those who lived in the same house. He probably did not suspect that the servants saw through everything. Between death and the disclosure to his co-tenants that he was a sexual eccentric, he probably chose the former.] None of the wounds was in his throat. The blow that fractured his skull must have been among the last as indicated by the evidence that X had fought his slayer long and hard.
Motive Not Clear
A diamond ring, whose value must have been close to $1,000, habitually worn, together with X’s gold watch and chain, were taken. Very little money was found in his clothing, whereas it was known he usually carried large sums. But there were at hand heavy solid silver articles, and gold ornaments, and valuable jewelry in a frail desk—none of which had been taken. Only X’s body had been stripped. The police were convinced that the robbery was committed to conceal another deeper motive, as suggested by the savage maltreatment of X’s body.
Whatever the motive, the murderer entered the apartment unseen that night and departed unseen. The police made haste to interview all persons whom they could trace as having been associated with X. There was a young sailor whom X had lately befriended |A Secret Guest.| and who had been his guest for several days. This youth was traced to his ship and his presence aboard the night of the murder established.
One clue was a bit of cardboard on which was scribbled, in X’s handwriting, the latter’s address. It looked as if made hastily for the guidance of the stranger guest to X’s apartment. [And in the apartment thrown away as being no longer of use.]
No slightest clue to the identity of the slayer was uncovered.
THE MURDER OF Y
On the night of [date omitted by author of The Female-Impersonators] just twenty-nine days after the murder of X, Y was slain in his home nearby. The two murders instantly linked. For the two crimes presented an almost perfect parallel. The scene was the same—an elaborately furnished “den.” As with X, Y’s murderer had been his guest. A secret guest—in that nobody saw him enter Y’s residence, no sound betrayed him in the act of killing, and he managed to leave the “den” and Y’s house unobserved.
Of astonishingly the same stamp were X and Y. Both were elderly bachelors and art connoisseurs. [The latter an earmark of cultured androgynism.] Both had specialized in the collection of ancient and curious weapons. Both were addicted to an extravagant display of jewelry on their persons. [Androgynes are loud dressers.] Both lived in dread of attack in their homes and had made elaborate preparations against the possibility. Inspection of the lives of both found them oddly empty of attachment to or |Loathing of Androgynes a Murder Motive.| association with women. Both had a disposition for the society of much younger men, and had many such acquaintances.
Living in the same neighborhood, frequenting the same hotels and restaurants, visiting the same art galleries and antique shops as they were tireless in doing, it was rather to be expected that they were found to have been close friends.
The indicated motive for both murders was robbery but in both cases only the valuables used in personal adornment were stolen, while other jewels, and silver and gold objects of art and service, plainly in sight, were ignored. [Robbery being only a blind, loathing of sexual eccentricity being the true motive.]
In only two particulars did the crimes differ: X was hacked to death; Y was strangled by the bare hands of his assailant. The marks of relentless fingers were deeply imbedded in the victim’s neck. The other difference was that in Y’s case, there had been no struggle. He had had no chance to put up a fight for his life. He had been taken by surprise and the strangler’s grip been clamped on his throat before he could make outcry.
Y was fifty-nine years old, and a native of rural Illinois. He had prospered as owner of a fashionable ladies’ dress-making concern in New York. But he had retired and at the time he was murdered was renting an ex-mansion of a millionaire, where he conducted a boarding house of the highest class. There were twenty lodgers, but scores of additional persons living in the aristocratic neighborhood took their meals at Y’s. He frequently organized card parties and dances for his guests, and to these were always invited freely |Murderer Mandatory of Society!| young men in war service on leave in New York. [Warriors are androgynes’ special heroes. A common soldiers’ and sailors’ club was situated next door, where Y apparently made many acquaintances.]
Y’s body was found at seven A. M. [date here omitted] by George, one of Y’s eleven negro servants. [Y conducted his establishment on the plan of a multimillionaire’s residence.] It was George’s daily duty to go to his employer’s room on the first floor, directly over the kitchen, awaken him at seven, and serve him breakfast in bed. On that morning, George, receiving no reply to his knock, pushed the door open and entered the elaborately furnished “den” and bedroom.
Strangled to Death
The bed was in order, and the body of Y on the floor nearby was clad only in pajamas. [Apparently the assassin had pretended he was going to retire with Y. Therefore Y got into his night clothes, as also probably the assassin. But just before the bed covers would have been turned down the latter fulfilled his mandate from society by “ridding New York of the monster!”] An autopsy showed that indubitably Y had been strangled to death. The deep, purple marks on his throat were valueless as furnishing finger-print evidence, but they did stamp the murderer’s hands as large and very strong. [Androgynes cultivate only the best physically developed.] Y had been suddenly attacked by the strangler and immediately choked into helplessness, for nothing in the room had been disturbed. He had been borne down to death on the very spot where seized.
A Trusted Murderer.
Y’s “den” was the scene of many late-hour parties, in which young men figured exclusively as guests. Frequently also he returned very late with a single companion. His late-hour guests were never boisterous and never gave cause for complaint by Y’s refined lodgers.
As in the case of X’s apartment, Y’s house gave no evidence of a forcible entry. Physicians determined that Y’s death had occurred at eleven the night before the body was discovered. At that hour the outer doors of the house were always locked. Many of the lodgers and some of the negro servants had not yet retired, and must have heard, it would seem, a ringing of the door-bell. None did.
Probably an Expected Guest
The conjecture was consequently made that Y had appointed a late meeting with his murderous guest and given him a key to his house that he might enter quietly. Of fully twenty-five persons in the house at the time, not one heard the slightest sound of distress or noise of any kind from the “den” at the hour of the murder.
Even more futile than in the case of X were the efforts of the investigators to round up the many young men [evidently bachelors from eighteen to twenty-five] whose acquaintance Y was constantly making.
Three diamond rings of a value of $2,000 had been stripped from the dead man’s fingers, and his gold watch and chain were taken. But as at X’s assassination, many articles of jewelry and of gold and silver easily accessible were not touched.
A Conscientious Murderer.
Alike in mystery, the cases of both X and Y manifest the strong likelihood that the same man effected both murders, with a suggestion of a deeper motive than robbery, of a desire to do violence aroused to frenzy, judging by the stark ferocity with which both crimes were committed.
[The motive of course was to rid New York of androgynes; at least, extensively promiscuous ones. It is quite likely the same prude was guilty of both murders. Perhaps at first the assassin had known merely through hearsay that both X and Y were sexual eccentrics. But he was reasonable and merciful enough not to put them out of the way until he possessed ocular evidence. (I have myself associated with torturers who would act only on such.) For X’s and Y’s murderer was solemnly and conscientiously acting as the mandatory of society.]
[From the murder of X he had learned that an androgyne might put up resistance. Therefore in the case of his second quarry, Y, he must adopt a safer, more sudden, and an absolutely noiseless means of execution. In sabre-slaughtering, there was too much risk of the victim calling for help. Moreover, X lived all by himself, whereas Y’s residence was alive with people. Androgynes like to be treated by their virile associates as if women, and the ultra-virile always humor that liking. The assassin probably started in with a pretended “love” embrace, and, before Y could realize, turned it into a strangling death-grip.]
X and Y Offenceless.
[I will admit that X and Y were extensively promiscuous. But they could not have been particularly intemperate because my own experience proved that excessive venery soon wrecks the health of an androgyne. As both were close to sixty, their lives had doubtless been temperate. They had probably indulged (the more humiliating role in fellatio) not more than once a week throughout their adulthood. But although they apparently sought intimacy with almost every adolescent Adonis or Hercules (only one out of every twenty adolescents could qualify under either of these types) whose acquaintance they made, they harmed these youthful rakes not in the least; nor did they, throughout their lives, bring detriment to any one else since all androgynes possess the inoffensive psyche of women. For proof of the harmlessness to an adolescent of an androgyne intimate, I refer to my Autobiography of an Androgyne, pages 88, 89, and 194.]
[Far from the adolescent suffering harm, he is loaded with material benefits by the well-to-do androgyne who worships him. He is pre-eminently a “lucky dog.”]
[X and Y were entirely irresponsible for being androgynes and sexual eccentrics. Absolutely no harm came to any individual or to society collectively through their condition or instinctive functioning. They did not deserve that any one interfere with their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.]
Newspaper Accounts of Murders.