Public excitement continued on the increase; the public were waiting with all anxiety for a report from the pursuing officers, when, on Friday night, at a late hour, a dispatch was received from Providence, intimating that the murderer had been tracked to a private house, where he had taken lodgings, and would be arrested during the night. On Saturday, this news having been ventilated, the public excitement became greatly intensified, and it was anticipated that an effort would be made to lynch the prisoner on his arrival in the city. Crowds repaired to the railway depot, at Twenty-seventh street and Fourth avenue, also at Forty-second street, at the upper end of the Harlem Railroad. At 5 o’clock, P.M., the train arrived, containing the officers and their prisoner. But the multitudes who waited and looked for the prisoner were doomed to disappointment, for the officers had prepared themselves before reaching the city for avoiding any attack from infuriated mobs, by taking their places in the first or baggage car, thus avoiding suspicion. In this way they came down to the lower depot, and were transferred to an express wagon, and rolled down to the Second Ward station-house.
THE ARREST AND HOW IT WAS EFFECTED.
We give the account of the arrest in the words of Officer Nevins:
Captain Smith and myself left the city on Thursday, in the twelve o’clock train of the Long Shore Railroad, for Stonington and Providence. The same afternoon we arrived at Stonington, and went on board the Stonington boat Commonwealth, to make inquiries for a sailor man, his wife, and child. The boat arrived that morning about two o’clock, and of course our only chance of getting trace of the murderer was from the officers of the boat. We heard of several women and children, but they did not answer the description; so we waited until nine o’clock that night, when Mr. Howard, the baggage-master, arrived in the Boston night train. He gave us information of two or three different women who stopped on the route between Stonington and Boston. The description of one man, woman, and child, who stopped at Canton, Massachusetts, was so near, that on the arrival of the boat from New York, at two o’clock on Friday morning, we left in the train which carried forward her passengers. On arriving at Canton, however, we found that the woman was not the one we were in search of, so we immediately returned to Providence, being satisfied that the murderer could not have taken the Stonington route. In Providence we called upon Mr. George Billings, detective officer, who, with several other officers, cheerfully rendered us every assistance. We drove around the city to all the sailor boarding-houses, and to all the railroad depots, questioning baggage-masters and every one likely to give us information, but could get no satisfactory clew, so we concluded they had probably come by the Fall River route, and Captain Smith went down to the steamboat Bradford Durfee, to make inquiry there. The deck hand remembered that on the previous morning a sailor and a little sore-eyed woman and child came up with them, and asked him if he knew any quiet boarding-house, in a retired part of the city, where he could go for a few weeks. He told him he did not, but referred him to a hackman, who took him off to a distant part of the city. The hackman was soon found, and at once recollected the circumstances, and where he had taken the party. It was then arranged, to guard against accidents, that the hackman should go into the house, and inquire of the landlady if this man was in, pretending that two of the three quarter dollars which he had given him were counterfeit. He went there, and the landlady told him that the man was not in, but would be in that night. Arrangements were then made for a descent upon the house at two o’clock on Saturday morning. At this hour I knocked at the door, and at first the landlady did not seem inclined to let me in. I told her I was an officer who had arrested the hackman for passing counterfeit quarters, and as he had stated that he got them from the sailor, I had come to satisfy myself of the truth of the story. She opened the door, and we went up to this man’s room, some seven or eight of us, and found him in bed, apparently asleep. I woke him up, and he immediately began to sweat—God, how he did sweat! I charged him with passing counterfeit money, because I did not want his wife to know what the real charge was. We got his baggage together, and took him with it to the watch-house. I searched him, and found in his pocket the silver watch, since identified as Capt. Burr’s, also, his knife, pipe, and among the rest, two small canvas bags, which have since been identified as those used by the captain to carry his silver. In his pocket-book was $121, mostly in five and ten dollar bills of the Farmers’ and Citizens’ Bank of Brooklyn. There was no gold in his possession. I didn’t take his wife’s baggage, and I felt so bad for her that I gave her $10 of the money. Poor woman! as it was she cried bitterly, but if she had known what her husband was really charged with, it would have been awful. I took the $6 from the landlady that he had paid in advance, because I didn’t know but the money might be identified. When we got him to the watch-house, I told him to let me see his hands, for if he was a counterfeiter, and not a sailor, as he represented, I could tell. He turned up his palms, and said, “Those are sailor’s hands.” I said yes, and they are big ones, too; and then I told him I did not want him for counterfeiting, and he replied, “I thought as much.” So I up and told him what he was charged with, and he declared upon his soul that he was innocent, and knew nothing of the matter, and was never on the sloop. I don’t think his wife knew anything about it. Some time before he had picked up a yacht, and was to get $300 salvage, and when he came home so flush with money he told his wife he had got the prize money. I asked him if he would go on to New York quietly with us, or stay in jail ten or fifteen days for a requisition. He said he would go with us, and we started at 7 o’clock in the morning. He behaved so coolly and indifferently that I at one time almost concluded we had mistaken our man. At the New London depot there was an immense crowd of people waiting to see the prisoner, and, when we went through the crowd, they cried out, “There’s the murderer; lynch him—lynch him!” I told him that I would shoot the first man who touched him. At every station after that, as we came through there were large crowds curious to see the prisoner.
THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE PRISONER.
Soon after the arrival of the prisoner, the man John Burke, with whom he had lived in Cedar street, was confronted with the prisoner, whom he identified at once as William Johnson, the man who, with his wife and child, had left No. 129 Cedar street on Wednesday afternoon, and went on the Fall River boat. Mr. Simmons also stepped forward, and recognized the prisoner as one of the hands who sailed from this port with Captain Burr on board the sloop E. A. Johnson. Upon being asked if he knew Captain Burr, he said he did not, he never saw him, and never sailed in the vessel commanded by him.
On Sunday afternoon, an old man, named Charles La Coste, who keeps a coffee and cake stand near the East Broadway stage terminus at the South Ferry, identified Johnson as the man who, on Wednesday morning last, at about eight o’clock, stopped opposite to his stand, apparently looking to see what he sold thereat, when he asked him if he wanted some coffee. He afterward went into the booth and sat down, leaving what appeared to be his clothes-bag outside against the railings. He had coffee and cakes which amounted to the sum of six cents. When about to leave, he handed him a ten dollar gold piece in payment, when he asked him if he had no less change. He said he had, and pulled from his pocket a handful of gold, silver, and some cents, and, abstracting half a dime and a cent paid his bill. About this time some boot-blacks came round, and wanted to black his boots. He looked down at his feet, and said his boots were not worth the trouble. He then asked if he could get a carriage, when La Coste told him it was too early; he ought to get into an East Broadway stage, and ride up to French’s Hotel, as he had asked for the whereabouts of a respectable place to put up at. To this suggestion he demurred, when a newsboy came up to him, took hold of his bag, and implored him for the privilege of conveying his bag to any given point of the metropolis. The boy took the bag and followed the man.
At a later hour the prisoner was brought from his cell and taken into the officers’ room in the back part of the station-house, where a promiscuous assemblage of men had gathered in. The prisoner took his place among them. The boy, Wm. Drum, was then brought into the room, and in a moment rested his finger upon the man whose clothes-bag he had carried from La Coste’s stand to the house No. 129 Cedar street, one morning last week, about eight o’clock; he did not recollect which morning. The man thus pointed out was the prisoner. The same boy immediately afterward saw the bag, and identified it as the one which he had carried from the South Ferry to Cedar street. He asked Johnson fifty cents for the job, but, on his refusal, he compromised, and took three shillings.
Abram Egbert was introduced in the same manner as the boy, and selected Johnson as the man who spoke to him on the bridge of the Vanderbilt landing, on Staten Island, last Wednesday morning, between six and seven o’clock. He was not certain, but he thought he was the man.
Augustus Gisler, the boy who sold Johnson the oyster stew, the eggs, and the numerous hot gins, was also introduced in the same manner. He at once pointed out Johnson, and said, “That is the man.”