The professional prosecutor is continually surprised at the
insignificant amount of crime existing in comparison with the
extraordinary scope of criminal opportunity. To be sure, the number of
crimes actually detected is infinitesimal as contrasted with those
committed, but even so the conviction constantly grows that the world is
astonishingly honest when one considers the unlikelihood that any
specific prospective offence will be discovered. How few dishonest
servants there are, for example, out of the million or so composing that
class of persons who have an unlimited opportunity to snap up not only
unconsidered trifles, but personal property of great value. The actual
honesty of the servants is probably greater than that of the masters--in
the final analysis.
Men are not only "presumed to be innocent" in the eyes of the law, but
are found to be so, as a matter of daily experience, so far as honesty
in the ordinary affairs of life is concerned, and the fact that we rely
so implicitly upon the truthfulness and integrity of our fellows is the
principal reason why violations of this imperative social law should be
severely dealt with. If it were possible adequately to determine or deal
with any such issue mere lying should be made a crime.
It is matter of constant wonder that shrewd business men will put
through all sorts of deals, when thousands of dollars are at stake,
relying entirely upon the word of some single person, whom they do not
in fact know. John Smith is looking for a house. He finds one he likes
with an old lady, who says her name is Sarah Jones, living in it, and
offers her forty thousand dollars for her real estate. She accepts. His
lawyer searches the title and finds that Sarah Jones is the owner of
record. The old lady is invited to the lawyer's office, executes a
warranty deed, and goes off with the forty thousand dollars. Now in a
great number of instances no one really knows whether the aged dame is
Sarah Jones or not; and she perhaps may be, and sometimes is, only the
caretaker's second cousin, who is looking after the house in the
latter's absence.
There are thousands of acres of land and hundreds of millions of money
waiting at compound interest to be claimed by unknown heirs or next of
kin. Even if the real ones cannot be found one would think that this
defect could be easily supplied by some properly ingenious person.
"My Uncle Bill went to sea in '45 and was never heard from again. Will
you find out if he left any money?" wrote a client to the author.
Careful search failed to reveal any money. But if the money had been
found _first_ how easy it would have been to turn up a nephew! Yet the
industry of producing properly authenticated nephews, heirs, legatees,
next of kin and claimants of all sorts has never been adequately
developed. There are plenty of "agents" who for a moderate fee will
inform you whether or not there is a fortune waiting for you, but there
is no agency within the writer's knowledge which will supply an heir for
every fortune. From a business point of view the idea seems to have
possibilities.
Some few years after the Civil War a Swede named Ebbe Petersen emigrated
to this country to better his condition. Fortune smiled upon him and he
amassed a modest bank account, which, with considerable foresight, he
invested in a large tract of unimproved land in the region known as "The
Bronx," New York City.
In the summer of 1888 Petersen determined to take a vacation and revisit
Sweden, and accordingly deeded all his real estate to his wife. Just
before starting he decided to take his wife and only child, a little
girl of ten or twelve, with him. Accordingly they set sail from Hoboken
Saturday, August 11, upon the steamer _Geiser_, of the Thingvalla Line,
bound for Copenhagen. At four o'clock Tuesday morning, at a point thirty
miles south of Sable Island and two hundred miles out of Halifax, the
_Geiser_, in the midst of a thick fog, crashed suddenly into a sister
ship, the _Thingvalla_, of the same line, and sank. The _Thingvalla_ was
herself badly crippled, but, after picking up thirty-one survivors,
managed to limp into Halifax, from which port the rescued were brought
to New York. Only fourteen of the _Geiser's_ passengers had been saved
and the Petersens were not among them. They were never heard of again,
and no relatives came forward to claim their property, which, happening
to be in the direct line of the city's development, was in course of
time mapped out into streets and house lots and became exceedingly
valuable. Gradually houses were built upon it, various people bought it
for investment, and it took on the look of other semi-developed suburban
property.
In the month of December, 1905, over seventeen years after the sinking
of the _Geiser_, a lawyer named H. Huffman Browne, offered to sell "at a
bargain" to a young architect named Benjamin Levitan two house lots
adjacent to the southwest corner of One Hundred and Seventy-fourth
Street and Monroe Avenue, New York City. It so happened that Browne had,
not long before, induced Levitan to go into another real-estate deal, in
which the architect's suspicions had been aroused by finding that the
property alleged by the lawyer to be "improved" was, in fact, unbuilt
upon. He had lost no money in the original transaction, but he
determined that no such mistake should occur a second time, and he
accordingly visited the property, and also had a search made of the
title, which revealed the fact that Browne was not the record owner, as
he had stated, but that, on the contrary, the land stood in the name of
"William R. Hubert."
It should be borne in mind that both the parties to this proposed
transaction were men well known in their own professions. Browne,
particularly, was a real-estate lawyer of some distinction, and an
editor of what were known as the old "New York Civil Procedure Reports."
He was a middle-aged man, careful in his dress, particular in his
speech, modest and quiet in his demeanor, by reputation a gentleman and
a scholar, and had practised at the New York bar some twenty-five years.
But Levitan, who had seen many wolves in sheep's clothing, and had
something of the Sherlock Holmes in his composition, determined to seek
the advice of the District Attorney, and having done so, received
instructions to go ahead and consummate the purchase of the property.
He, therefore, informed Browne that he had learned that the latter was
not the owner of record, to which Browne replied that that was true, but
that the property really did belong to him in fact, being recorded in
Hubert's name merely as a matter of convenience (because Hubert was
unmarried), and that, moreover, he, Browne, had an unrecorded deed from
Hubert to himself, which he would produce, or would introduce Hubert to
Levitan and let him execute a deed direct. Levitan assented to the
latter proposition, and the fourteenth of December, 1905, was fixed as
the date for the delivery of the deeds and the payment for the property.
At two o'clock in the afternoon of that day Browne appeared at Levitan's
office (where a detective was already in attendance) and stated that he
had been unable to procure Mr. Hubert's personal presence, but had
received from him deeds, duly executed, to the property. These he
offered to Levitan. At this moment the detective stepped forward, took
possession of the papers, and invited the lawyer to accompany him to the
District Attorney's office. To this Browne offered no opposition, and
the party adjourned to the Criminal Courts Building, where Mr. John W.
Hart, an Assistant District Attorney, accused him of having obtained
money from Levitan by means of false pretences as to the ownership of
the property, and requested from him an explanation. Browne replied
without hesitation that he could not understand why this charge should
be made against him; that he had, in fact, received the deeds from Mr.
Hubert only a short time before he had delivered them to Levitan; that
Mr. Hubert was in New York; that he was the owner of the property, and
that no fraud of any sort had been attempted or intended.
Mr. Hart now examined the supposed deeds and found that the signatures
to them, as well as the signatures to a certain affidavit of title,
which set forth that William R. Hubert was a person of substance, had
all been executed before a notary, Ella F. Braman, on that very day. He
therefore sent at once for Mrs. Braman who, upon her arrival,
immediately and without hesitation, positively identified the defendant,
H. Huffman Browne, as the person who had executed the papers before her
an hour or so before. The case on its face seemed clear enough. Browne
had apparently deliberately forged William R. Hubert's name, and it did
not even seem necessary that Mr. Hubert should be summoned as a witness,
since the property was recorded in his name, and Browne himself had
stated that Hubert was then actually in New York.
But Browne indignantly protested his innocence. It was clear, he
insisted, that Mrs. Braman was mistaken, for why, in the name of
common-sense, should he, a lawyer of standing, desire to forge Hubert's
name, particularly when he himself held an unrecorded deed of the same
property, and could have executed a good conveyance to Levitan had the
latter so desired. Such a performance would have been utterly without an
object. But the lawyer was nervous, and his description of Hubert as "a
wealthy mine owner from the West, who owned a great deal of property in
New York, and had an office in the Flatiron Building," did not ring
convincingly in Mr. Hart's ears. The Assistant District Attorney called
up the janitor of the building in question on the telephone. But no such
person had an office there. Browne, much flustered, said the janitor was
either a fool or a liar. He had been at Hubert's office that very
morning. He offered to go and find him in twenty minutes. But Mr. Hart
thought that the lawyer had better make his explanation before a
magistrate, and caused his arrest and commitment on a charge of forgery.
Little did he suspect what an ingenious fraud was about to be unearthed.
The days went by and Browne stayed in the Tombs, unable to raise the
heavy bail demanded, but no Hubert appeared. Meantime the writer, to
whom the case had been sent for trial, ordered a complete search of the
title to the property, and in a week or so became possessed, to his
amazement, of a most extraordinary and complicated collection of facts.
He discovered that the lot of land offered by Browne to Levitan, and
standing in Hubert's name, was originally part of the property owned by
Ebbe Petersen, the unfortunate Swede who, with his family, had perished
in the _Geiser_ off Cape Sable in 1888.
The title search showed that practically all of the Petersen property
had been conveyed by Mary A. Petersen to a person named Ignatius F. X.
O'Rourke, by a deed, which purported to have been executed on June 27,
1888, about two weeks before the Petersens sailed for Copenhagen, and
which was signed with Mrs. Petersen's mark, but that this deed had not
been recorded until July 3, 1899, _eleven years_ after the loss of the
_Geiser_.
The writer busied himself with finding some one who had known Mrs.
Petersen, and by an odd coincidence discovered a woman living in the
Bronx who had been an intimate friend and playmate of the little
Petersen girl. This witness, who was but a child when the incident had
occurred, clearly recalled the fact that Ebbe Petersen had not decided
to take his wife and daughter with him on the voyage until a few days
before they sailed. They had then invited her, the witness--now a Mrs.
Cantwell--to go with them, but her mother had declined to allow her to
do so. Mrs. Petersen, moreover, according to Mrs. Cantwell, was a woman
of education, who wrote a particularly fine hand. Other papers were
discovered executed at about the same time, signed by Mrs. Petersen with
her full name. It seemed inconceivable that she should have signed any
deed, much less one of so much importance, with her _mark_, and,
moreover, that she should have executed any such deed at all when her
husband was on the spot to convey his own property.
But the strangest fact of all was that the attesting witness to this
extraordinary instrument was H. Huffman Browne! It also appeared to have
been recorded _at his instance_ eleven years after its execution.
In the meantime, however, that is to say, between the sinking of the
_Geiser_ in '88 and the recording of Mary Petersen's supposed deed in
'99, another _equally mysterious_ deed to the same property had been
filed. This document, executed and recorded in 1896, purported to convey
part of the Petersen property to a man named John J. Keilly, and was
signed by a person calling himself Charles A. Clark. By a later deed,
executed and signed a few days later, John J. Keilly appeared to have
conveyed the same property to Ignatius F. X. O'Rourke, the very person
to whom Mrs. Petersen had apparently executed her deed in 1888. And H.
Huffman Browne was the attesting witness to both these deeds!
A glance at the following diagram will serve to clear up any confusion
which may exist in the mind of the reader:
[Sidenote: (Not Recorded until 1899)]
1888 MARY A. PETERSEN 1896 CHARLES A. CLARK
by her (X) deed conveys _same property_
conveys to to
I.F.X. O'ROURKE JOHN J. KEILLY.
|
| 1896 JOHN J. KEILLY
| conveys to
| I.F.X. O'ROURKE
|_________________________|
O'ROURKE thus holds land through two sources.
Browne was the witness to both these parallel transactions! Of course it
was simple enough to see what had occurred. In 1896 a mysterious man,
named Clark, without vestige of right or title, so far as the records
showed, had conveyed Ebbe Petersen's property to a man named Keilly,
equally unsubstantial, who had passed it over to one O'Rourke. Then
Browne had suddenly recorded Mrs. Petersen's deed giving O'Rourke the
very same property. Thus this O'Rourke, whoever he may have been, held
all the Petersen property by two chains of title, one through Clark and
Keilly, and the other through Mrs. Petersen. Then he had gone ahead and
deeded it all away to various persons, through one of whom William R.
Hubert had secured his title. But every deed on record which purported
to pass any fraction of the Petersen property was witnessed by H.
Huffman Browne! And Browne was the attesting witness to the deed under
which Hubert purported to hold. Thus the chain of title, at the end of
which Levitan found himself, ran back to Mary Petersen, with H. Huffman
Browne peering behind the arras of every signature.
MARY PETERSEN CLARK BROWNE,
to to attesting witness.
O'ROURKE KEILLY
|
|
| KEILLY BROWNE,
| to attesting witness.
| O'ROURKE
| |
|____________________|
O'ROURKE BROWNE,
to attesting witness.
WILLIAM P. COLLITON
WILLIAM P. COLLITON
to BROWNE,
JOHN GARRETSON attesting witness.
JOHN GARRETSON
to BROWNE,
HERMAN BOLTE attesting witness.
HERMAN BOLTE
to BROWNE,
BENJ. FREEMAN attesting witness.
BENJ. FREEMAN
to BROWNE,
WILLIAM R. HUBERT attesting witness.
The Assistant District Attorney rubbed his forehead and wondered who in
thunder all these people were. Who, for example, to begin at the
beginning, was Charles A. Clark, and why should he be deeding away Ebbe
Petersen's property? And who were Keilly and O'Rourke, and all the
rest--Colliton, Garretson, Bolte and Freeman? And who, for that matter,
was Hubert?
A score of detectives were sent out to hunt up these elusive persons,
but, although the directories of twenty years were searched, no Charles
A. Clark, John J. Keilly or I. F. X. O'Rourke could be discovered. Nor
could any one named Colliton, Freeman or Hubert be found. The only
persons who did appear to exist were Garretson and Bolte.
Quite by chance the Assistant District Attorney located the former of
these, who proved to be one of Browne's clients, and who stated that he
had taken title to the property at the lawyer's request and as a favor
to him, did not remember from whom he had received it, had paid nothing
for it, received nothing for it, and had finally deeded it to Herman
Bolte at the direction of Browne. Herman Bolte, an ex-judge of the
Municipal Court, who had been removed for misconduct in office, admitted
grumblingly that, while at, one time he had considered purchasing the
property in question, he had never actually done so, that the deed from
Garretson to himself had been recorded without his knowledge or his
authority, that he had paid nothing for the property and had received
nothing for it, and had, at the instruction of Browne, conveyed it to
Benjamin Freeman. Garretson apparently had never seen Bolte, and Bolte
had never seen Freeman, while William R. Hubert, the person to whom the
record showed Freeman had transferred the property, remained an
invisible figure, impossible to reduce to tangibility.
Just what Browne had attempted to do--had done--was obvious. In some
way, being a real-estate lawyer, he had stumbled upon the fact that this
valuable tract of land lay unclaimed. Accordingly, he had set about the
easiest way to reduce it to possession. To make assurance doubly sure
he had forged two chains of title, one through an assumed heir and the
other through the owner herself. Then he had juggled the title through a
dozen or so grantees, and stood ready to dispose of the property to the
highest bidder.
There he stayed in the Tombs, demanding a trial and protesting his
innocence, and asserting that if the District Attorney would only look
long enough he would find William R. Hubert. But an interesting question
of law had cropped up to delay matters.
Of course, if there was anybody by the name of Hubert who actually owned
the property, and Browne had signed his name, conveying the same, to a
deed to Levitan, Browne was guilty of forgery in the first degree. But
the evidence in the case pointed toward the conclusion that Browne
himself _was_ Hubert. If this was so, how could Browne be said to have
forged the name of Hubert, when he had a perfect legal right to take the
property under any name he chose to assume? This was incontestable. If
your name be Richard Roe you may purchase land and receive title thereto
under the name of John Doe, and convey it under that name without
violating the law. This as a general proposition is true so long as the
taking of a fictitious name is for an honest purpose and not tainted
with fraud. The Assistant District Attorney felt that the very strength
of his case created, as it were, a sort of "legal weakness," for the
more evidence he should put in against Browne, the clearer it would
become that Hubert was merely Browne himself, and this would necessitate
additional proof that Browne had taken the property in the name of
Hubert for purposes of fraud, which could only be established by going
into the whole history of the property. Of course, if Browne were so
foolish as to put in the defence that Hubert really existed, the case
would be plain sailing. If, however, Browne was as astute as the
District Attorney believed him to be, he might boldly admit that there
was no Hubert except himself, and that in taking title to the property
and disposing thereof under that name, he was committing no violation of
law for which he could be prosecuted.
The case was moved for trial on the twelfth of March, 1906, before Judge
Warren W. Foster, in Part Three of the Court of General Sessions in New
York. The defendant was arraigned at the bar without counsel, owing to
the absence of his lawyer through sickness, and Mr. Lewis Stuyvesant
Chanler, the later Lieutenant-Governor of the State, was assigned to
defend him. At this juncture Browne arose and addressed the Court. In
the most deferential and conciliatory manner he urged that he was
entitled to an adjournment until such time as he could produce William
R. Hubert as a witness; stating that, although the latter had been in
town on December 14th, and had personally given him the deeds in
question, which he had handed to Levitan, Hubert's interests in the West
had immediately called him from the city, and that he was then in
Goldfields, Nevada; that since he had been in the Tombs he, Browne, had
been in correspondence with a gentleman by the name of Alfred Skeels, of
the Teller House, Central City, Colorado, from whom he had received a
letter within the week to the effect that Hubert had arranged to start
immediately for New York, for the purpose of testifying as a witness for
the defence. The prosecutor thereupon demanded the production of this
letter from the alleged Skeels, and Browne was compelled to state that
he had immediately destroyed it on its receipt. The prosecutor then
argued that under those circumstances, and in view of the fact that the
People's evidence showed conclusively that no such person as Hubert
existed, there was no reason why the trial should not proceed then and
there. The Court thereupon ruled that the case should go on.
A jury was procured after some difficulty, and the evidence of Mr.
Levitan received, showing that Browne had represented Hubert to be a man
of substance, and had produced an affidavit, purported to be sworn to
by Hubert, to the same effect, with deeds alleged to have been signed by
him. Mrs. Braman then swore that upon the same day Browne had himself
acknowledged these very deeds and had sworn to the affidavit before her
as a notary, under the name of William R. Hubert.
Taken with the fact that Browne had in open court stated that Hubert was
a living man, this made out a _prima facie_ case. But, of course, the
District Attorney was unable to determine whether or not Browne would
take the stand in his own behalf, or what his defence would be, and, in
order to make assurance doubly sure, offered in evidence all the deeds
to the property in question, thereby establishing the fact that it was
originally part of the Petersen estate, and disclosing the means whereby
it had eventually been recorded in the name of Hubert.
The prosecution then rested its case, and the burden shifted to the
defence to explain how all these deeds, attested by Browne, came to be
executed and recorded. It was indeed a difficult, if not impossible,
task which the accused lawyer undertook when he went upon the stand. He
again positively and vehemently denied that he had signed the name of
Hubert to the deed which he had offered to Levitan, and persisted in
the contention that Hubert was a real man, who sooner or later would
turn up. He admitted knowing the Petersen family in a casual way, and
said he had done some business for them, but stated that he had not
heard of their tragic death until some years after the sinking of the
_Geiser_. He had then ascertained that no one had appeared to lay claim
to Mrs. Petersen's estate, and he had accordingly taken it upon himself
to adveritse for heirs. In due course Charles A. Clark had appeared and
had deeded the property to Keilly, who in turn had conveyed it to
O'Rourke. Just who this mysterious O'Rourke was he could not explain,
nor could he account in any satisfactory manner for the recording in
1899 of the deed signed with Mary Petersen's mark. He said that it had
"turned up" in O'Rourke's hands after O'Rourke had become possessed of
the property through the action of the heirs, and that he had no
recollection of ever having seen it before or having witnessed it. In
the latter transactions, by which the property had been split up, he
claimed to have acted only as attorney for the different grantors. He
was unable to give the address or business of O'Rourke, Clark, Keilly or
Freeman, and admitted that he had never seen any of them save at his own
office. He was equally vague as to Hubert, whose New York residence he
gave as 111 Fifth Avenue. No such person, however, had ever been known
at that address.
[Illustration: With the exception of the upper left hand signature and
the four immediately below it of H. Huffman Browne, these are all the
signatures of imaginary persons invented by Browne to further his
schemes. The upper right-hand slip shows the signatures to the Wilson
bond, among which appears that of W.R. Hubert.]
Browne gave his testimony in the same dry, polite and careful manner in
which he had always been accustomed to discuss his cases and deliver his
arguments. It seemed wholly impossible to believe that this
respectable-looking person could be a dangerous character, yet the
nature of his offence and the consequences of it were apparent when the
State called to the stand an old broom-maker, who had bought from Browne
one of the lots belonging to the Petersen estate. Holding up three
stumps where fingers should have been, he cried out, choking with tears:
"My vriends, for vifteen years I vorked at making brooms--me und my
vife--from fife in the morning until six at night, und I loose mine
fingern trying to save enough money to puy a house that we could call
our own. Then when we saved eight hundred dollars this man come to us
und sold us a lot. We were very happy. Yesterday anoder man served me
mit a paper that we must leave our house, because we did not own the
land! We must go away! Where? We haf no place to go. Our home is being
taken from us, und that man [pointing his stumps at Browne]--that man
has stolen it from us!"
He stopped, unable to speak. The defendant's lawyer properly objected,
but, with this piece of testimony ringing in their ears, it is hardly
surprising that the jury took but five minutes to convict Browne of
forgery in the first degree.
A few days later the judge sentenced him to twenty years in State's
prison.
Then other people began to wake up. The Attorney-General guessed that
the Petersen property had all escheated to the State, the Swedish
Government sent a deputy to make inquiries, the Norwegian Government was
sure that he was a Norwegian, and the Danish that he was a Dane. No one
knows yet who is the real owner, and there are half a dozen heirs
squatting on every corner of it. Things are much worse than before
Browne tried to sell the ill-fated lot to Levitan, but a great many
people who were careless before are careful now.
It soon developed, however, that lawyer Browne's industry and ingenuity
had not been confined to the exploitation of the estate of Ebbe
Petersen. Before the trial was well under way the City Chamberlain of
New York notified the District Attorney that a peculiar incident had
occurred at his office, in which not only the defendant figured, but
William R. Hubert, his familiar, as well. In the year 1904 a judgment
had been entered in the Supreme Court, which adjudged that a certain
George Wilson was entitled to a one-sixth interest in the estate of
Jane Elizabeth Barker, recently deceased. George Wilson had last been
heard of, twenty years before, as a farmhand, in Illinois, and his
whereabouts were at this time unknown. Suddenly, however, he had
appeared. That is to say, H. Huffman Browne had appeared as his
attorney, and demanded his share of the property which had been
deposited to his credit with the City Chamberlain and amounted to
seventy-five hundred dollars. The lawyer had presented a petition signed
apparently by Wilson and a bond also subscribed by him, to which had
been appended the names of certain sureties. One of these was a William
R. Hubert--the same William R. Hubert who had mysteriously disappeared
when his presence was so vital to the happiness and liberty of his
creator. But the City Chamberlain had not been on his guard, and had
paid over the seventy-five hundred dollars to Browne without ever having
seen the claimant or suspecting for an instant that all was not right.
It was further discovered at the same time that Browne had made several
other attempts to secure legacies remaining uncalled for in the city's
treasury. In how many cases he had been successful will probably never
be known, but it is unlikely that his criminal career dated only from
the filing of the forged Petersen deed in 1896.
Browne made an heroic and picturesque fight to secure a reversal of his
conviction through all the State courts, and his briefs and arguments
are monuments to his ingenuity and knowledge of the law. He alleged that
his conviction was entirely due to a misguided enthusiasm on the part of
the prosecutor, the present writer, whom he characterized as a
"novelist" and dreamer. The whole case, he alleged, was constructed out
of the latter's fanciful imagination, a cobweb of suspicion, accusation
and falsehood. Some day his friend Hubert would come out of the West,
into which he had so unfortunately disappeared, and release an innocent
man, sentenced, practically to death, because the case had fallen into
the hands of one whose sense of the dramatic was greater than his logic.
Perchance he will. Mayhap, when H. Huffman Browne is the oldest inmate
of Sing Sing, or even sooner, some gray-haired figure will appear at the
State Capitol, and knock tremblingly at the door of the Executive,
asking for a pardon or a rehearing of the case, and claiming to be the
only original, genuine William R. Hubert--such a dénouement would not be
beyond the realms of possibility, but more likely the request will come
in the form of a petition, duly attested and authenticated before some
notary in the West, protesting against Browne's conviction and
incarceration, and bearing the flowing signature of William R.
Hubert--the same signature that appears on Browne's deeds to
Levitan--the same that is affixed to the bond of George Wilson, the
vanished farmhand, claimant to the estate of Jane Elizabeth Barker.