THE PERSON WHO CAUSED KENKOWSKY’S CAPTURE ARRESTED AS AN ACCOMPLICE.—HOW KENKOWSKY SPENT SUNDAY.
At half-past one o’clock on the morning of May 22d, Detectives Heidelberg and Dolan arrested Philip Emden of 414 West Thirty-ninth street, on the charge that he was an accomplice of Martin Kenkowsky. Emden was locked up in a cell at the Police Headquarters. In the morning, however, he was liberated. It was said that he was arraigned at the Jefferson Market Police Court and liberated; but on the other hand it was reported that he was not taken to court at all, but that Captain Washburn of the Twentieth Precinct called at headquarters, and that after a conversation the captain had with Inspector Byrnes, Emden was liberated. The police were reticent about the procedure, but the result was that Emden was freed.
Capt. Washburn was indignant at Emden’s arrest. He said: “Emden was the first man to give a clue to Kenkowsky, and I promised to keep his name a secret. We are in the habit of taking informers’ names in confidence; otherwise people wouldn’t give us information. Prosecutor McGill also promised me that he would not disclose the name. I think Kenkowsky’s wife found out that Emden had given me information, and she tried, out of revenge, to throw suspicions on him. Emden has lived three years in the district, and is a quiet, well-behaved man. Chief Donovan was perfectly willing that Emden should be set at liberty. Emden will accompany me to testify at the inquest. He certainly has not behaved like a man who has committed a murder.”
Philip Emden was found at his house, 414 West Thirty-ninth street. According to his statement he met Kenkowsky shortly after the latter came to this country. Emden is a mason, and found odd jobs for Kenkowsky, who is of the same trade. On Feb. 19 last Emden married Bertha Himmelsbach, and Kenkowsky was one of the witnesses to the ceremony, though on the certificate his name appears as Martin Karkowsky. Shortly after the marriage Emden was told by Kenkowsky that Mina Muller, a friend of his, knew Bertha Himmelsbach, who, she said, was a bad woman. This led to difficulties between Emden and his wife, which ended in their separation on April 17. Since that time he has seen very little of Kenkowsky, but he says that on one occasion the prisoner showed him a gold watch and chain corresponding to those owned by Mina Muller. Emden does not know whether this was before or after the murder.
On Thursday morning he read of the identification, and in H. Luhr’s liquor store, 587 Tenth avenue, he mentioned that Kenkowsky had known Mina Muller. Luhr, who knew Kenkowsky, suggested that the description of the man who was married in Guttenberg tallied with Kenkowsky’s appearance. Emden made up his mind to see if Kenkowsky was still at his house, 510 West Thirty-sixth street. As his pretence for calling, he determined to say that he had a job for the alleged murderer. He found him in bed, and, when he asked if he wanted the job, Kenkowsky said that he was engaged as a cook in a Jewish family on Fifth avenue, and only came home nights. After working hours, Emden went to Capt. Washburn and informed him of his suspicions, and a policeman was sent with him to watch the house. In front of the house they found Strang, the trunkman, who in the meantime had been tracked by Seide. Strang asked Emden if he could speak German, and, when the latter answered in the affirmative, requested him to ask the German woman up stairs if a trunk he was to deliver belonged to her, saying he had left three trunks there some time previously. Emden went up stairs and asked Mrs. Kenkowsky if three trunks had been delivered there, and she said they had not. When Emden came back to Strang with this answer, Strang requested him to ask again, and this time she replied in the affirmative; and when Strang brought up Kenkowsky’s trunk, she said, in surprise: “Why, he told me he had taken it to where he was working in Fifth avenue.”
Kenkowsky’s wife was found at 510 West Thirty-sixth street. She had just returned from a visit to her husband in jail. Her eyes were red as though she had been weeping.
“Philip Emden,” she said, “has been a good friend to me and my poor little ones. When I told my husband this afternoon in jail that Philip had been arrested, he threw up his arms and exclaimed: ‘Philip arrested! Philip, who has always been so good to us? He is innocent, Katrina, as innocent as I am myself.”
Martin Kenkowsky spent Sunday quietly in his cell in the Hudson County Jail at Jersey City. He ate his meals regularly and with much relish, and slept for an hour after dinner. In the afternoon his wife and two children visited him. He embraced them and had a long conversation with them in the presence of a turnkey. In the course of their talk the woman charged him with having stolen a five-dollar gold piece from her room on the evening of May 3d. That was the day on which the murder was committed. Kenkowsky admitted that he had taken the money. He said that after he had left Mina with the two men at Union Hill, he returned to New York city and went home. There he found the $5 piece, which his wife had saved, and put it in his pocket. When he was told of the arrest of Emden he seemed to be very much surprised. He said he knew Emden, and had become acquainted with him only a short time ago.
“But,” he exclaimed, “he is as innocent as I am.”
The prisoner referred frequently to his former narrative as to the circumstances under which he parted with Mrs. Muller in New Jersey. He stated that one of the two men who accosted her in the Schuetzen Park, and with whom he says he left her, was tall, and had a red moustache, and the other was shorter and thinner. He was convinced, he declared, that they murdered her.
City Missionary Verrinder held divine service in the corridor of the jail on Sunday morning. Kenkowsky, at his own request, was permitted to attend the exercises. He sat on the foremost bench, directly in front of the minister, and although he did not understand the sermon, he bowed his head reverently whenever the name of Jesus was uttered by the preacher. At an early hour he went to bed, and fell asleep a few moments later.
The reader who has followed us thus far will perceive that scarcely ever in the records of modern murder cases has such a steel coil of circumstantial evidence, in such a small space of time, so completely woven itself around a murderer. Kenkowsky attempted to prove an alibi by asserting that on the day of the murder, and several hours before it could have taken place, he was on his way to cross the river, and that on his way he had asked the direction to the ferry of a carpenter whom he saw putting up posts for a fence. This carpenter was found, and testified that a man on that date had asked him the way to the ferry, but he failed to recognize Kenkowsky as that man. The bottom of the alibi leaked, however, when the gentleman on whose property the fence was being put up showed his diary, in which was recorded a mem. of that particular job, dated several days after the date of the murder. What verdict could a coroner’s jury bring in but one fastening the crime on Kenkowsky? The trial will be read with great interest.
THE END.
MARTIN KENKOUWSKY, ALIAS KETTLER, IN HIS CELL.
Augustus A. Seide,
THE JERSEY CITY REPORTER WHO SOLVED THE WEEHAWKEN MYSTERY.
Transcriber’s Note
Efforts have been taken to transcribe this work as originally published, including inconsistent capitalization and punctuation, and alternative titles, names and spelling, except on page 37 where “ogether” has been changed to “[together]”.