Twenty-five years in the Secret Service: The recollections of a spy

by Henri Le Caron

On the evening of May 3 there was a meeting of “Camp 20.” A member asked if the secret committee appointed in February to inquire into the alleged publication of the report of the Triangle Trial Committee in Cronin’s “Camp” had itself reported. The State alleged that Beggs, the Senior Guardian, answered, “That committee is to report to me. The ‘Camp’ has nothing to do with that.”

Between eleven and one o’clock on May 4, the convict Coughlin went to Dinan’s livery stable and ordered a horse and buggy to be ready about seven that evening “for a friend.” Later he telephoned to the convict O’Sullivan to go out. About 7.15 in the evening Coughlin’s friend came and asked for the buggy. The ostler harnessed a white horse. The stranger objected to the colour, but the ostler said it was the only horse he could have. The stranger then drove to Dr. Cronin’s. He reached Cronin’s home about 7.20, gave him one of O’Sullivan’s cards, saying, “O’Sullivan is out of town, and here is his card”—the very words used by O’Sullivan himself when he made his contract with Cronin—and told Cronin that one of O’Sullivan’s men had his leg crushed, and that the doctor was wanted immediately. The doctor took his instruments and some cotton with him and drove hastily off in the buggy. He was never seen alive again.

The State allege that the convict Burke was at the Carlson cottage on the night of May 3, together with another man, after the meeting of “Camp 20.” On the night of May 4 Burke was also there, and he bade good-night to his landlord and neighbour, old Mr. Carlson, at a late hour that evening. A casual passer-by saw a man whose description answers to that of Cronin get out of a buggy and hastily enter Carlson cottage, and she afterwards heard blows and cries. Between eight and nine that night, two men, whose descriptions answer to those of Coughlin and Kunze, were also seen to drive up to Carlson cottage, and Coughlin was seen to enter it.

On the night of May 4-5 a waggon was seen at three different points by policemen and night-watchmen in the neighbourhood of Lake Michigan. There were three men in the waggon, a driver and two others, who, when the waggon was first observed, sat on a large chest which the policemen took to be a tool-chest. At one in the morning of May 5, the watchman at Edgewater challenged these men in the waggon, and asked them what they were doing. They said they were trying to find the lake shore drive. The drive is not continued up to this point, and the watchman gave them some directions, after which they drove away. They were seen later on in the same waggon, but without the chest. The catch-basin in which Dr. Cronin’s body was subsequently found is half a mile from Edgewater. On the morning of May 5, a trunk identical in all respects with that purchased by the tenant of 117 Clark Street, in February, and afterwards removed by Burke to the Carlson cottage, was found between this catch-basin and the city, about three-quarters of a mile from the catch-basin. During the trial Dr. Cronin’s clothes were found in a valise in the sewer about a quarter of a mile further on from the point where the trunk was found. This valise corresponded in all respects with that bought by Simonds and delivered to him at 117 Clark Street, and afterwards removed by Burke from Clark Street to Carlson cottage. It will be remembered that Cronin took cotton with him to dress the wounds of his expected patient on the evening of May 4. Cotton was found in the trunk on May 5. It was smeared with blood, as also were the sides of trunk.

On May 6 the convict Martin Burke called at a tinsmith’s shop, and asked the smith to solder up a box for him. The smith wanted to raise the lid to do his work. Martin Burke told him not to do so, and made him secure the box by passing a metal band round it and soldering the band. The smith had read some report as to the disappearance of Dr. Cronin two days before. While he was soldering the box he asked Burke what he thought of the matter. Burke replied with coarse abuse of Cronin, denounced him as a spy, and declared he would turn up all right.

On May 13, two men called on old Mrs. Carlson, the wife of the owner of Carlson cottage, and tendered her another month’s rent. She refused the offer, as she said she wished the cottage to be occupied, and she added that no rent was due until May 20. Shortly afterwards the Carlsons received a letter from their tenants saying that they were sorry to give up the building, and sorry that they had had to paint the floor, but that that was done for their sister.

On May 20, the date of the expiry of “Williams’” lease of the cottage, the Carlsons entered the building by the window. They found the whole of the house in confusion and signs that a severe struggle had taken place therein. All the Clark Street furniture was there, but the trunk was gone, the valise was gone, and the carpet was gone. The walls and the floor were stained with blood. Paint had been hastily daubed over the floor. The arm of the rocking-chair was wrenched off and a key, which afterwards proved to fit the lock of the bloodstained trunk discovered on May 5 near Edgewater, was found under a bureau, stained with some of the paint which had been applied to the floor.

On May 21, the Carlsons reported the state of their cottage to the police, and on May 22 some men engaged in cleaning the sewers found the naked body of Cronin in the catch-basin. Some cotton similar to that taken away by the doctor on the evening of May 4, and similar to that found in the bloody trunk on May 5, was also found with the body in the catch-basin. The head of the corpse was cut in a dozen different places on the back and temples.

As soon as the body was identified, Martin Burke fled from Chicago. He crossed the Canadian frontier, and was finally traced to Winnipeg, where he was arrested under an assumed name. He had taken a ticket from Winnipeg to Liverpool.

Kunze has rightly escaped with a much less severe sentence than his co-conspirators. The more material of the allegations against him, in addition to the fact mentioned above of his having driven Coughlin to the cottage on the night of the murder, are that he was seen in the rooms hired by Simonds at 117 Clark Street, and that he told a fellow-workman after the murder, but before the discovery of the body, that he knew Cronin was murdered, and that the body would never be found.