Martin Kenkouwsky
Mina Muller.
The detectives next went to 1247 Third avenue, N. Y. city, the number that had been given to Mr. Mabon by the bride as her residence. There they were unable for a long time to find any trace of Mina Schmidt. Finally the daughter of the janitor remembered that a woman answering Miss Schmidt’s description had been living at service with a family in the house. But the family had moved, and the servant had gone with them. An expressman named Body had taken away her trunks. After a tedious search Body was found. The young woman whose trunks he had removed proved not to have been the murdered woman. But Body said that about the 1st of May a woman whom he knew as Mrs. Mina Muller offered to sell him some articles of furniture, as she was about to move. They were unable to agree on the price. Mrs. Muller returned shortly afterward and left an order to have an express wagon call for her baggage at 1511 Second avenue, where she was then staying. Body sent William Norke, one of his drivers, to the place, and the man received from Mrs. Muller four trunks, a bundle of bedding, and a valise, which, by her directions, he carried to Theodore Scherrer’s Hotel, at 178 Christopher street. Body and Norke described Mrs. Muller, and the detectives were satisfied that she was the woman who, under the name of Mina Schmidt, was married by Mr. Mabon in the Grove Church. A man whom the driver did not know, but who, from his appearance, he believed to have been the murderer, superintended the transfer of her packages, and rode in the wagon with Norke to the hotel. On the way there he told Norke that he intended soon to sail for Europe.
At 1511 Second avenue, whither the detectives next proceeded, they found a German woman named Mrs. Schwan, who keeps a dyeing establishment. She did not know any man named Kettler, but she said that a man who answered in every respect the description of Kettler had lived in the house, but had moved about the first of May. He had lived, she said, with a young widow, to whom she had heard he was married. Mrs Schwan described the woman, and again the description tallied with that of the murdered woman. Mrs. Schwan had been told that the woman had another husband living in Thirty-ninth street. Charles Rost, the landlord, said that on March 3d Mrs. Muller had engaged three rooms, front, on the top floor, and had furnished them comfortably. She told Rost that she was working for Hahn, the butcher, in Third Avenue. Her husband, Mr. Muller, she said, had died of consumption, and had left her $1,000 insurance on his life. She was away all day as a rule, and returned to her apartments in the evening.
“One day,” said Mr. Rost, “about five weeks after she came here, I had occasion to go to the roof. Her room door was wide open, and Mrs. Muller was at work within fixing up her curtains and arranging her room. I said to her in fun: