in some detail to show the desperation with which the stranger
trespassed, and attempted murder. It was not an affair which suggested
a motive of robbery, but apparently a cold attempt at assassination.
The Capitol explosion had been fruitless in its results so far as the
loss of human life was concerned, and its origin was at that time a
complete mystery. The Muenter affair had long since passed out of my
memory. How to get evidence to establish motives for the crimes, fix
the entire responsibility, and punish the offenders?
Never, probably, has long-distance communication played a swifter or
more helpful part in a case. In order to show just how a nation which
has been called to the hunt can enter into the pursuit, let us follow
the developments in their strict chronological order.
At seven o’clock Saturday morning, before Lester had appeared at the
door of the Morgan house, the newspapers in Washington received a
typewritten form letter, signed “R. Pearce,” protesting in excited
terms against the shipment of munitions to the nations at war. Its
second paragraph read:
“In connection with the Senate affair would it not be well to
stop and consider what we are doing?”
The writer stated further:
“Sorry, I, too, had to use explosives (for the last time I
trust). It is the export kind, and ought to make enough noise
to be heard above the voices that clamor for war and blood
money. This explosion is the exclamation point to my appeal for
peace.”
Again he wrote:
“By the way, don’t put this on the Germans or Bryan. I am an
old-fashioned American...”
And he added, in a penned postscript:
“We would, of course, not sell to the Germans if they could buy
here, and since so far we only sold to the Allies, neither side
should object if we stopped.”
At half-past nine o’clock the shooting occurred at Glen Cove. About the
same time Dr. Charles Munroe, consulting expert of the Bureau of Mines,
was called to the Capitol to make an examination of the wreckage of the
explosion. He soon arrived at the conclusion that the shock had been
caused by no spontaneous combustion, but by a fair quantity of high
explosive.
While he was prying about among the débris, Lester was being lodged in
the Glen Cove jail. His bonds were loosened, leaving him a very sore
set of ankles and wrists, his cut forehead was bound up, and when he
was questioned, he gave out the following statement:
“I, Frank Holt, of Ithaca, N. Y., and lately professor of
German at Cornell, do hereby freely make to William E. Luyster,
justice of the peace, the following statement of the facts
concerning my visit to the home of J. P. Morgan at East Island,
Glen Cove, N. Y.
“I have been in New York City about ten days and had made a
previous trip to the home of Mr. Morgan last week. My motive in
coming here was to try to force Mr. Morgan to use his influence
with the manufacturers of munitions in the United States, and
with the millionaires who are financing the war loans, to have
an embargo put on shipments of war munitions, so as to relieve
the American people from complicity in the death of thousands
of our European brothers.
“If Germany should be able to buy munitions here we would of
course positively refuse to sell to her. The reason that the
American people have not as yet stopped the shipments seems
to be that we are getting rich out of this traffic, but do we
not get enough prosperity out of non-contraband shipments?
And would it not be better for us to make what money we can
without causing the slaughter of Europeans?
“I am very sorry that I had to cause the Morgan family this
unpleasantness, but I believe that if Mr. Morgan would put
his shoulder to the wheel he could accomplish what I have
endeavored to do. I wanted him to do the work I could not do.
I hope that he will do his share anyway. We must stop our
participation in the killing of Europeans, and God will take
care of the rest.”
Lester, then, was not Lester at all, but Frank Holt.
Meanwhile I knew nothing of what had transpired. I had risen that
Saturday morning looking forward to a day of relaxation and pleasure,
for there was to be a field day for the police at Gravesend Bay. On the
way down to the track I read with some interest of the explosion in the
Capitol, and then dismissed it from my mind: the newspapers, which had
been printed about one o’clock of that morning, carried no news except
a description of the effects of the explosion. Furthermore, it was a
holiday, with another to follow, and I proposed to enjoy it.
About noon Police Commissioner Woods called me to the telephone, told
me hurriedly that Mr. Morgan had been “shot by a German,” and told me
to get down to Glen Cove as fast as possible. “Find out the man’s
motives and any accomplices he had,” the commissioner said. “Keep in
touch with me.” And hung up. I found Detective Coy of the Bomb Squad,
and a patrolman who knew German in case we should need an interpreter,
and after some delay in getting a car, we hastened to the little Glen
Cove jail.
Then, at four o’clock, for the first time, I was told the facts as
Glen Cove knew them. A search of Holt’s person had disclosed two
revolvers, three sticks of dynamite, a number of loose cartridges, a
cartoon clipped from a Philadelphia newspaper, an express receipt, and
a scrap of paper bearing the names in pencilled handwriting of Mr.
Morgan’s children. Frank McCahill, the constable in charge, showed
me the statement Holt had made, and supplied the further information
that Holt had been identified by some of Mr. Morgan’s employees as a
man who had been seen on the estate two days before--on Thursday. Glen
Cove had been in a turmoil since the shooting. Newspaper reporters
and photographers had flocked to the jail, had taken photographs of
the prisoner, and already prints of the photographs were on their way
to every large newspaper in the country. His statement, as well as a
description of the man, had been telegraphed over the Associated and
United Press wires in every direction. So I decided to have a talk with
the prisoner himself.
He was brought out of his cell, and we sat in comparative privacy on
two camp-stools in the corridor. He was a frail, slight fellow, with
deep eye-sockets, a prominent hook-nose, and a retreating chin. His
accent was certainly German. His name, he said, was Frank Holt, and
he was born in the United States. He told me he was forty years old,
that his father and mother had been born in America, although they had
both French and German ancestors, and that his wife and two children
were in Dallas. For several years, he said, he had taught in Vanderbilt
University, and during the year just past had been instructor in German
in Cornell University, at Ithaca. He had left Ithaca two weeks before,
and had stopped at a Mills Hotel in New York before coming down to Glen
Cove.
“What did you try to kill Mr. Morgan for?” I asked.
“I didn’t intend to kill him. I want to persuade him to use his
influence to stop the shipment of ammunition to Europe.”
“Well, you chose a pretty strong means of persuading him, didn’t you?
What was the dynamite for?”
“I was going to show him what was causing all the trouble--explosives.”
He answered frankly, but not completely. The scrap of paper bearing
the names of the Morgan children, he said, was only a memorandum;
he had intended to hold them hostage until Mr. Morgan promised to
exert himself to stop the export of supplies to the Allies. No amount
of questioning would bring an answer as to where he had bought the
dynamite, but he readily volunteered the approximate addresses of the
shops where he had purchased the revolvers and cartridges. These facts
gave me something to work on, and I went outside to a telephone while
he was locked up again.
Meanwhile the whole United States had been taking a keen interest in
the case. Holt’s statement had reached Washington on the Associated
Press wire, and was delivered to Captain Boardman of the Washington
Police. Captain Boardman had been busy all morning throwing out lines
on the Capitol case, and attempting to trace the author of the R.
Pearce letters, which had been mailed in the city about nine o’clock of
the previous evening. He read the Pearce letter over several times in
search of some clue to the writer. Presently the Holt statement came
in. From the two communications these sentences met the Captain’s eyes:
_Pearce_
“We would, of course, not sell to the Germans if they could buy
here, and since so far we only sold to the Allies, neither side
should object if we stopped.”
_Holt_
“If Germany should be able to buy munitions here we would, of
course, positively refuse to sell to her.”
Captain Boardman’s next move was to wire to his chief, Major Pullman,
who happened to be in New York to attend that same field day that Coy
and I had missed. His message, dated 2 P. M. (while we were on the way
to Glen Cove), read:
“Ascertain from F. Holt, in custody at Glen Cove, N. Y., for
shooting J. P. Morgan, his whereabouts Thursday and Friday, as
he may have placed the bomb in the Capitol here Friday night.”
This message, sent in care of Inspector Faurot, was relayed to us at
Glen Cove by Guy Scull, deputy commissioner, but not until after the
Associated Press man at the jail had had a tip telegraphed from his
Washington office to ask Holt the same question. Holt denied that he
had been in Washington, flatly. But McCahill knew he had been in Glen
Cove Thursday, so at 5 P. M. he telegraphed Captain Boardman:
“F. Holt was in Glen Cove Thursday, July 1, P. M.”
I telephoned headquarters the numbers of the revolvers, and the
neighborhood in which Holt said he had bought them. Several members of
the squad started out from headquarters to identify the pawnshops, and
to find out what they could of the history of three sticks of dynamite
marked “Keystone National Powder Company. 60 per cent. Emporium, Pa.”
Holt had proved obstinate to all questions of the source of his supply
of dynamite. The man was getting tired: he had had a hard day, had been
considerably battered, had been interviewed, photographed, harried with
questions, his ankles and wrists ached, his head throbbed, and his
mind, which though alert and active, was none too stable, was showing
signs of exhaustion. His condition suggested that he might be in a mood
to supply some of the further information we needed, so I suggested
that we take an automobile ride and he could show me where he had been
the day before. He protested at once.
“No! My head is aching, and you want to take me on a ride and make a
show of me to the morbid crowd. I will not tell you--not until later.
Later perhaps, but not now!”
“All right,” I answered. “Later.”
Then I decided we had better get our information down on paper in a
formal examination.
The meeting convened at once, with Coy, McCahill, a county detective
from Mineola, two deputy sheriffs, two patrolmen, a stenographer and
myself as board of inquiry. It may serve to describe the fellow’s
manner, as well as to bring out what the examination further disclosed,
if we make use here of extracts from the proceedings:
_Question._ Where were you born?
_Answer._ Somehow my brain is in such a shape that I can’t
remember--Wisconsin, I know. I don’t know what it is that affected
me--something inside of me--maybe it is the shock I got from that.
_Q._ You speak with a German accent. Were you born in Germany, or in
any of the European countries--tell me the truth.
_A._ Now listen. That has been said before--that I speak with a foreign
accent. That is because I speak several languages. I speak French,
German, Spanish, and all that. That is the cause of that, you see?
_Q._ We will eliminate the trouble of asking you questions if you will
tell us the town or city in which you were born.
_A._ Yes. Now I am trying to think (a pause) I will have to disappoint
you.
_Q._ Your memory is very clear on other things.
_A._ As I told you, I have been lying there, thinking, thinking.
I took up the matter of the express receipt found on him:
_Q._ On June 11, 1915, you shipped a box by the American Express
Company to D. F. Sensabaugh, 101 South Marsalis Street, Dallas, Texas.
What did that box contain?
_A._ It evidently must have been a typewriter. I would not be sure now,
I think it was a typewriter.
And then the cartoon, clipped from the Philadelphia paper, brought out
a very unexpected fact:
_Q._ How many times have you been in Philadelphia?
_A._ No time.
_Q._ You came to New York from Ithaca?
_A._ Yes.
_Q._ Do you mean to truthfully answer my question by saying that you
have not been to Philadelphia at any time since you left Ithaca?
_A._ At no time.
_Q._ You have a clipping of a Philadelphia newspaper in your
possession. Where did you get that?
_A._ I think I got that out of a Philadelphia paper of course, that I
found lying around. I think it was a cartoon.
_Q._ Were you not in Philadelphia when you purchased that paper?
_A._ I did not purchase that. I saw that lying around somewhere,
probably in the Mills Hotel.
_Q._ Where did you sleep last night?
_A._ Now, I will tell you. A reporter from the Associated Press asked
me about this Washington business, and he was trying to connect me with
that. I suppose that is what you are trying to do.
_Q._ I am not trying to connect you with anything. I want truthful
answers. I am very frank and honest with you. I will fairly investigate
every answer that you make.
_A._ Yes, I thought that over since he was here, and I think it is just
as well to say that I wrote that R. Pearce letter. I was in Washington
yesterday and came back on the train. I think it is just as well to say.
Here was news! McCahill slipped out of the room, and sent this telegram
to Captain Boardman:
“Holt was in Washington Friday. Will wire full particulars later,” and
returned for the particulars, which Holt continued to unfold.
He had gone to Washington early Friday, arriving at 2 P. M., hired a
furnished room near the Union Station, and two hours later walked over
to the Capitol and found the Senate wing deserted. He placed a bomb
near the telephone booth, timed so as to explode in eight hours. He
idled away the evening, mailed the R. Pearce letters, took a midnight
train to New York, stopped at the Mills Hotel for mail, and took an
early train to Glen Cove Saturday morning. What his activities had been
since then we well knew. But while the confession of his responsibility
for the Washington outrage was a really surprising bit, it did not
conclude our work, for he had pointed out several new alleys of
possibility which we must search.
By seven o’clock we had, first, a sketch of Holt’s recent career as
a teacher. This we proceeded to verify by telephone to New York and
by telegraph thence to Ithaca, Dallas, Nashville, and Philadelphia.
His account of the Washington bombing Mr. Scull telephoned to
Washington, and Major Pullman left at once for Long Island to secure
a more complete confession. We had the numbers of his revolvers and
were already at work upon that clue. We had no information except
the trade-mark of where he had got his dynamite, and knowing the
strict city restrictions on its sale, I felt confident that he had
accomplices who supplied it to him. The chances were, too, that Holt
had more dynamite than the three sticks which he said had made up the
Capitol bomb, and the three on his person. We knew he had called at
the Mills Hotel, and we sent a man to search his room. We had a wholly
unsatisfactory statement of his birthplace, which he had already
contradicted once, and which lent color to the Germanic origin of his
accent. And finally, Holt had given a description of the methods he
used in making his bomb which I cannot detail here for obvious reasons,
but which from my acquaintance with explosives I knew to be untrue. By
no means all the particulars of his acquaintance with dynamite had
been explained, and the fact that this remarkable teacher of foreign
languages, a man apparently of fair intellect, had committed one major
crime and confessed to another all in the same day, made the motive all
the more obscure. But we had learned that he talked freely, and that
meant that he would give us more information, either consciously or
unconsciously.
Holt was moved about half past seven that night to safer keeping in
the county jail at Mineola, and we reconvened there an hour later for
further examination. Major Pullman joined us in the course of the
evening and took part in the questioning. By that time I had word from
New York that a telegram had arrived for Holt at the Mills Hotel signed
by D. F. Sensabaugh, and inquiring for particulars. Thinking that this
was a clue to possible accomplices I tried, taking several different
angles of attack, to find out whether Holt had told Sensabaugh (who
he said was his father-in-law), what he was going to do, and why he
had written that evening to his wife. The result of this questioning
was nil. Then we went over his course in Washington, step by step, and
brought out nothing of significance; then returned to the topic of his
views on the shipment of munitions, and tried to draw out any talks
which he might have had with friends on that subject. His answer to
this was:
“I have not talked to my friends about it, because my friends, in
my position, they are not the kind of people who would talk on such
things. Do you suppose that a university professor would undertake that
sort of thing? I think that can be easily figured out that I could not
have anybody else with me.”
That was the conclusion which we were being forced to accept. But the
mystery of the dynamite purchase was still unsolved. Holt said we could
not guess the reason why he was withholding the answer to it. I was
inclined to agree with him just then. I couldn’t guess. But he betrayed
in one of his replies the real factor which was to solve the mystery.
Major Pullman asked:
“Why did you decide to go to the Capitol?”
“Merely,” replied the thin figure in the chair, “to get the most
prominent place in the country. You see I wanted to call attention to
my appeal.”
In this he had succeeded. The whole country was working on the case.
If our feeling that Holt had bought more explosives was no more than a
theory at first, it was strengthened when he admitted that he had spent
nearly $275 in two weeks, had only six sticks of dynamite to show for
it, and was able to account for only $50. He denied that he had ever
been in the German Club in New York, reiterated that he was born in the
United States, dodged the exact city, then suggested Milwaukee, said
that the name of the college he had attended in Texas “wouldn’t come,”
and sidestepped cleverly any admission which might allow us to trace
the dynamite purchase. Thus ended Saturday, July 3, which had started
out as a holiday. I left two men to watch Holt, and went home, tired
out, and not at all satisfied.
While we had been busy with the prisoner, the wires to Boston and
the trains to Chicago had been carrying out their routine tasks
of syndicating news. A police officer in Cambridge in reading the
description of Holt which had flashed out to the newspapers detected
a familiar ring to the natural phrase “shambling walk” which had been
used to describe Holt’s gait. Thousands of men whom we encounter in
daily life have shambling walks, but to this officer only one man had
a shambling walk in which he was interested, and that man was Erich
Muenter, a Harvard instructor, whom he had suspected of wife-murder
nine years before. Nine years is a long time, and the average person
cannot recall offhand the gait of anyone whom he last saw nine years
ago, but those two words had evidently typified to the Cambridge
officer the murderer who got away. When the news photographs followed
the description to Boston and the Cambridge police saw them, they
were not so sure, for Muenter had had a beard, and in his Cambridge
days his head was not bandaged. But suspicion had been aroused, and
that was enough to issue the news throughout the country during the
night. Reporters in Ithaca tried to verify it from Holt’s associates at
Cornell, and failed, reporters two thousand miles away in Dallas tried
to verify it from Holt’s confused father-in-law, and failed. Dallas,
however, supplied the particulars of his previous life so far as
anyone seemed to know them, and these particulars were again relayed,
verified, and amplified in every city in which Holt had ever been known
in recent years.
Sunday morning, Independence Day, I went early to Mineola and
questioned Holt again, with little result. Meanwhile the Bomb Squad
at work in New York had found one of the shops in Jersey City where
Holt had purchased a revolver. He gave his name to the proprietor as
“Henderson,” and his address as Syosset, Long Island--a little station
not far from Glen Cove. I asked him why he gave this fictitious name
and address; he replied he had happened to see Syosset on a timetable,
and that the name Henderson popped into his head. We then returned to
my favorite subject, dynamite, and Holt finally said that he would tell
me on the following Wednesday, July 7, where he had bought it. Why
Wednesday, July 7? He would not answer, and no amount of questioning
served any end except that of further confusion.
The day was not without developments, however. During the afternoon
District Attorney Smith of Nassau County paid a visit to the jail, and
identified the wretched Holt as a former acquaintance in Cambridge,
Erich Muenter. At almost the same hour the Chicago authorities came
into possession of the news photograph of the man mailed from New York
the day before. They hurried with it to the home of two spinsters,
known to be sisters of the missing Muenter, and obtained from them an
unqualified identification: it was their lost brother, and “the news
would kill their mother.” This Pearce-Lester-Holt-Henderson-Muenter
was becoming more interesting every minute. Wife-poisoner, dynamiter,
gunman--what next?
“Next” was Monday. The second revolvershop had been discovered, and
again the use of the alias Henderson and the address Syosset. Holt,
when I called on him in the morning, repeated only what he had told
the day before, and reiterated, “Wednesday I will tell you,” until it
became almost a refrain. He denied that he was Muenter, and that he had
ever heard the name. I returned to New York to spend the rest of the
daylight in investigation among the explosives’ manufacturers. From the
records of the Ætna Company, of which the Keystone was a subsidiary, we
learned during the afternoon that one Henderson had telephoned an order
for 200 sticks of dynamite to be delivered at Syosset. I was just ready
to start for Syosset with Commissioner Scull when, as if we had not
already had enough to interest us, our friends the anarchists exploded
a bomb in Police Headquarters itself. Curiously enough, although it was
a delay, this did not prove the disturbing incident which one might
believe. We had had anonymous threats of it some weeks before; it was
one year and a day after the accidental death of the anarchist Berg,
who was killed making a bomb, and it seemed to have no connection
whatever with the Holt case. No one was injured, and after steps had
been taken to follow the case, I went home to sleep what was left of
the night.
Tuesday arrived.
I went to Syosset, and interviewed the station agent, George D. Carnes.
Carnes said he knew a man named Henderson. Henderson had seen him first
about three weeks before when he came to the little station to claim a
new trunk which had been shipped down from New York, apparently empty,
as it weighed only thirty-six pounds. Henderson had signed for the
trunk, and gone away. He reappeared some days later and asked Carnes
whether he had received two boxes of dynamite and two boxes of fuses
and detonating caps--he had to blow up some stumps and he expected the
explosives. They had not arrived. Henderson made inquiries for several
days, and when the boxes came, claimed them, signed the name of Frank
Hendrix to the receipt, and drove away in a Ford. At last we seemed to
be on the right trail.
He had received the material, we knew, but where was it? In the trunk,
perhaps. Had the trunk been shipped out of Syosset? No, Carnes said.
We telephoned several stations in the vicinity, and finally at Central
Park, a few miles west, we struck the trail again. The baggage records
there revealed that a Henderson had checked a trunk to the Pennsylvania
station, New York, on July 2--Friday. That was enough to take us to
Central Park.