Other arrests were made, Rupprecht’s maid reported that three troopers belonging to the regiment in garrison had called on her master the very day of the murder; one of them owed him money which he could not pay, and the others, it was thought, had joined him in trying to intimidate the usurer. But the case of these troopers, men who could handle the very weapon that did the deed, broke down on clear proof that they were elsewhere at the time of the murder. The one flaw in the otherwise acute investigation was that the sabres of all the troopers had not been examined before so much noise had been made about the murder. But from the first attention had been concentrated on axes, wielded by woodcutters, and the probable use of a sabre had been overlooked. After the troopers, two other callers had come, and Rupprecht had given them a secret interview. One proved to be the regimental master-tailor, who was seeking a loan and had brought with him a witness to the transaction. Their innocence also was clearly proved; and although many other persons were arrested they were in all cases discharged.
The murder of this Rupprecht has remained a mystery. The only plausible suggestion was that he had been murdered by some aggrieved person, some would-be borrower whom he had rejected, or some debtor who could not pay and thought this the simplest way of clearing his obligation. The authorities could not fix this on anyone, for Rupprecht made no record of his transactions; he could neither read nor write, and kept all his accounts “in his head.” Only on rare occasions did he call in a confidential friend to look through his papers when there was question of arranging them or finding a note of hand. No one but Rupprecht himself could have afforded the proper clue; and, as it was, he had led the police in the wrong direction.
Numerous murder mysteries have been contributed by American criminal records. Special interest attaches to the case of Mary Rogers, “the pretty cigar seller” of New York, who was done to death by persons unknown in 1840, because it formed the basis of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous story, “The Mystery of Marie Roget.” The scene of that story is Paris, but the murder was actually committed near New York. Mary Rogers had many admirers, but her character was good, her conduct seemingly irreproachable. She was supposed to have spent her last Sunday with friends, but was seen with a single companion late that afternoon at a little restaurant near Hoboken. As she never returned home her disappearance caused much excitement, but at length her body, much maltreated, was found in the water near Sybil’s Cave, Hoboken. Many arrests were made, but the crime was never brought home to anyone.
Poe’s suggested solution, the jealous rage of an old lover returned from sea, was no more than ingenious fiction. Among others upon whom suspicion fell was John Anderson, the cigar merchant in whose employ Mary Rogers was, and it was encouraged by his flight after the discovery of the murder. But when arrested and brought back, he adduced what was deemed satisfactory proof of an alibi. Anderson lived to amass enormous wealth, and about the time of his death in Paris in 1881 the evil reports of his complicity in the murder were revived, but nothing new transpired. It was said that in his later years Anderson became an ardent spiritualist, and that the murdered Mary Rogers was one among the many spirits he communed with.
The murder of Mary Rogers was not the only unsolved mystery of its class beyond the Atlantic. It was long antedated by that known as the Manhattan Well Mystery. This murder occurred as far back as 1799, when New York was little more than a village compared to its present size. The Manhattan Company, now a bank, had then the privilege of supplying the city with water. The well stood in an open field, and all passers-by had free access to it. One day the pretty niece of a respectable Quaker disappeared; she had left her home, it was said, to be privately married, and nothing more was seen of her till she was fished out of the Manhattan well. Some thought she had committed suicide, but articles of her dress were found at a distance from the well, including her shoes, none of which she was likely to have removed and left there before drowning herself. Her muff, moreover, was found in the water; why should she have retained that to the last? Suspicion rested upon the man whom she was to have married, and who had called for her in his sleigh after she had already left the house. This man was tried for his life, but the case broke down, and the murder has always baffled detection.
Later, in 1830, there was the mystery of Sarah M. Cornell, in which suspicion fell upon a reverend gentleman of the Methodist persuasion, who was acquitted. Again, in 1836, there was the murder of Helen Jewitt, which was never cleared up; and more recently that of the Ryans, brother and sister; while the murder of Annie Downey, commonly called “Curly Tom,” a New York flower-girl, recalls many of the circumstances of the murders in Whitechapel.
A great crime that altogether baffled the New York police occurred in 1870, and is still remembered as an extraordinary mystery. It was the murder of a wealthy Jew named Nathan, in his own house in Twenty-third Street. He had come up from the country in July for a religious ceremony, and slept at home. His two sons, who were in business, also lived in the Twenty-third Street house. The only other occupant was a housekeeper. The sons, returning late, one after the other, looked in on their father and found him sleeping peacefully. No noise disturbed the house during the night, but early next morning Mr. Nathan was found a shapeless mass upon the floor; he had been killed with brutal violence, and the weapon used, a ship carpenter’s “dog,” was lying close by the body besmeared with blood and grey hairs. The dead man’s pockets had been rifled, and all his money and jewellery were gone; a safe that stood in the corner of the bedroom had been forced and its contents abstracted.
Various theories were started, but none led to the track of the criminal. One of Mr. Nathan’s sons was suspected, but his innocence was clearly proved. Another person thought to be guilty was the son of the resident housekeeper, but that supposition also fell to the ground. Some of the police were of opinion that it was the work of an ordinary burglar; others opposed this view, on the ground that the ship carpenter’s “dog” was not a housebreaking tool. One ingenious solution was offered, and it may be commended to the romantic novelist; it was to the effect that Mr. Nathan held certain documents gravely compromising the character of a person with whom he had had business dealings, and that this person had planned and executed the murder in order to become repossessed of them. This theory had no definite support from known fact; but Mr. Nathan was a close, secretive man, who kept all the threads of his financial affairs in his own hands; and it was said that no one in his family, not even his wife, was aware what his safe held or what he carried in his pockets. It is worth noticing that this last theory resembles very closely the explanation suggested as a solution of the undiscovered murder of Rupprecht in Bavaria, which has been already described.
There are one or two striking cases in the records of Indian crime of murders that have remained undiscovered. Mr. Arthur Crawfurd[3] describes that of an old Marwari money-lender, which repeats in some particulars the cases of Rupprecht and Nathan. This usurer was reputed to be very wealthy. His business was extensive, all his neighbours were more or less in his debt, and, as he was a hard, unrelenting creditor, he was generally detested throughout the district.