“Sherlock Holmes in skirts”
On a crisp New York morning in September 1906, a brewery watchman was patrolling a warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, when he happened upon an unusual cloth sack. He gingerly opened the bag. Inside – to his horror – he found a decapitated torso.
The city had been abuzz with tales of what Pennsylvania’s The Morning Call dubbed “the darkest murder-mystery New York has faced”, when the New York Police Department (NYPD) received a tip about strange comings-and-goings in a tenement house near the brewery. Three brothers lived in one of the tenement rooms: a 10-year-old child and two men, but one of the latter was mysteriously missing. Newspapers detailed how, despite many “revolting murder clews [sic]” incriminating the other adult brother, the police lacked definitive proof.
Officers entrusted the young boy to the care of Ada Murray, a female matron at the local police precinct. One report described how the child “hadn’t been talking to her a minute when he blurted out: ‘I saw my brother tie up my [other] brother’s head in paper and take it out.’” Thousands of New Yorkers reportedly gathered to watch the police wagon take the murderer downtown. They caught the
