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.]