AN ACCIDENTAL CLUE--FRANK WOODRUFF'S ARREST--HOW HE WAS HIRED TO GET A
WAGON TO CARRY THE MYSTERIOUS TRUNK TO LAKE VIEW--A CORPSE IS DUMPED
OUT--HE THINKS IT WAS THAT OF A WOMAN--HIS SENSATIONAL CONFESSION--THE
POLICE ON A WILD GOOSE CHASE.
Despite the small army of professional and amateur detectives at work on
the case and the untiring labors of the missing man's friends, it was an
accident rather than a clue that brought about the first important
development of this sensational tragedy. On Thursday morning, May 9th,
five days after the physician had disappeared as completely as though
the ground had opened and swallowed him up, a stable owner named Foley,
having barns on Fifteenth Street near Centre Avenue, entered the Twelfth
Street Police Court while the hearing of a case was in progress, and
informed Lieutenant Beck that a young man had been trying to sell him a
horse and wagon and that he had agreed to purchase the rig for $10, in
order that he might detain the supposed horse-thief until the police
could be notified. Two officers, O'Malley and Halle, were at once sent
to the barn. The man, upon being placed under arrest, at once fainted.
Upon regaining consciousness, he was started for the station. His
peculiar agitation was noticed by the officers, and one of them, in
joking about a horse-thief having such a nervous temperament, made a
slight remark in which he mentioned the name of Dr. Cronin. The prisoner
evinced a strong tendency to faint again, and gasped:
"I'll tell you all when I get to the station."
The officers laughed. Their dull comprehensions failed to connect the
remark with the trunk mystery. When the station was reached, however,
and the attention of Lieutenant Beck had been called to what the man had
said, he at once jumped to the conclusion that the horse was the one
attached to the wagon that had hauled the mysterious trunk. He ordered
the man into his private office and at once began to put him in what is
known in police parlance as "the sweat box," or in other words, to put
him through a rapid course of questioning. At first the man--a mild
mannered young fellow, attired in clothes of cheap material, with bad
complexion, square features, heavy jaws, and a pronounced squint in one
eye--gave his name as Frank J. Black, although he afterwards admitted
that it was Woodruff. He was, he said, 26 years of age, a Canadian by
birth, and a railroad laborer by occupation.
"I want to make a confession," he remarked, after the preliminaries had
been completed. He was warned that it would have to be entirely
voluntary, and that no immunity could be promised. To this understanding
he gave his assent, and Sergeant Cosgrove, having been called in as a
witness, the prisoner commenced his story:
"A week ago last Wednesday," (May 1) he said, "I was in Sol Van Praag's
gambling house, at 392 South State Street, playing poker. I lost $8,
and, just before 11 o'clock, I got up from the table saying: I ought not
to gamble, I can't afford to lose any money. Just then William H. King,
an old friend of mine, who was standing by, said to me: 'I'll put you on
the road to make a few dollars if you want to.' I told him I was
willing," went on Woodruff, "and that I could be found at D. G. Dean's
livery stable, at 406 Webster Avenue, where I was working. We had
several drinks, and then went down State Street to Madison, where King
left me. He did not say how I was to make the money. But last Sunday he
came up to the stable in the afternoon, and called me out. We went into
a saloon near by, and King said to me: 'I want you to get a horse and
some light rig in which to carry a trunk, about 2 o'clock to-morrow
morning, if you can. I want you to do it quietly, and be sure to come
out before three or four o'clock. If you can't get out as early as that,
I don't want you at all.'"
Woodruff had been talking rapidly. He paused a moment for breath, and
then went on.
WOODRUFF'S LURID STORY.
"The wagon was to be brought to a corner a few blocks from our stable,
where King was to be in waiting. At three o'clock in the morning I
hitched a white horse to a light wagon and drove to the corner, where I
found King. He told me it was all right, and that there was $25 in it
for me. King got into the wagon and told me to drive to the rear of 528
North State Street. When we got there, we met a man that I supposed was
Dr. Cronin, also a sporting man named Dick Fairburn, who I knew to be a
desperate character. They went into the barn and hauled out a trunk. The
man I supposed was Cronin was extremely impatient and nervous, and urged
the others to hurry up. They called him 'Doc.' and when he was inclined
to get mad, Fairburn said, 'all right, Doc., we'll hurry.' When the
trunk was put into the wagon, King and Fairburn got in and the rig
started north, 'Doc.' being left behind. The horse was guided up the
Lake Shore drive to the north end of Lincoln Park. Here a strange man in
a high cart, driving a buckskin-colored horse, approached the wagon from
behind, and the men told me to hurry out of the way. I turned off the
road into a parallel driveway and went up about a quarter of a mile.
Then King told me to stop. While going up the driveway, King gave me
$25, and I heard him say:
'If we'd have let Tom alone, we'd have had the Doc. in here too.'
When the wagon stopped, King remarked as he jumped off:
"Here's where we drop Alice."
"Then the trunk was opened and a stench came out. The horse became
restless and I had to get out and attend to him. What I saw led me to
believe that the body removed from the box was that of a woman in a
mutilated condition. I saw a leg that had been cut off at the thigh. The
corpse was wrapped in cotton batting. After the remains had been dumped
near a clump of bushes, the batting was placed in the trunk, which was
then thrown into the wagon. Then King said: "Leave us here. You drive
on a piece and hide the trunk some way or another, and then go home."
"I drove on for about fifteen minutes," the fellow resumed, "and then I
stopped at a hole and threw the trunk into it. Then I made straight for
the barn, driving as fast as I could. I reached there at five o'clock,
and managed to get in without any one seeing me."
"How was it possible for you to get the rig out without being detected,"
Woodruff was asked.
"O, that's easy enough," he replied, with a laugh. "You could go there
yourself, almost any night, and do the same thing. Howard (one of the
employes) is usually out, seeing his girl, and as for Charlie (another
employe), you might fire a sixteen-pound cannon under his ears, and he'd
never wake up. I went to bed as usual that night, just about eleven
o'clock, in the room near the stable. I lay quiet until I knew that the
boys were asleep, and then I slipped out and went down the stairway to
the floor where the horses were, carrying my shoes in my hand. I had
left the wagon in the alley outside, so as to be sure of it."
"What kind of a rig was it," asked the Lieutenant.
"It was a red gear wagon, with a black box and a high dashboard in
front. The doors leading to the barn are folding doors, which open
easily, and the floor is sprinkled with sawdust. I got the horse out all
right, after muffling its hoofs, and led it to the wagon in the alley,
where I hitched it up. I am sure nobody saw me when I got back. Somebody
used the mare later in the day (Sunday), and said when she came out, 'It
doesn't seem to me she's fresh, to-day.' I heard it all, but I didn't
say a word."
Woodruff was sharply questioned, with the view of testing his veracity,
but he stuck closely to his statements. He admitted that he had taken
the horse and wagon that he was charged with stealing from Dean's stable
two days before, and inquiry by telephone developed the fact that Dean
had reported his loss at the nearest police station. The prisoner
admitted that he had made up his mind to leave the city just before
being arrested, because he was afraid of Fairburn, who had told him to
say nothing about the midnight ride, and had warned him that if he
"peached" he would kill him (Woodruff), if he had to wait twenty years
to do it. Fairburn, he described as being short, heavy-set, with gray
hair and moustache. He was a desperate man, and one not afraid to commit
murder. King was about thirty-two, six feet tall, stout,
dark-complexioned, and of gentlemanly appearance.
No time was lost by Lieutenant Beck in communicating the developments of
the day to his superiors, and Captains Schaack and O'Donnell were at the
station as fast as horseflesh could bring them. The records of the two
men mentioned by the horse-thief were first looked up, and both turned
out to be hard cases. Fairburn was recognized from the description as a
desperate thief, and who, under the alias of Neil White, had "done time"
in the penitentiary. At one time he was a resident of Minneapolis.
WOODRUFF GOES OVER THE ROUTE.
As a result of the conference of the two police officials it was decided
that, in order to test the truthfulness of the prisoner, he should be
taken out and allowed to drive over the route that he claimed to have
taken on that memorable Saturday night. Just as soon as darkness had set
in this idea was carried into effect. Starting from Webster and Lincoln
avenues, he proceeded directly to North State and Schiller streets,
turned into the alley between State and Dearborn, and stopped in front
of the barn in the rear of 528 North State street. This, he claimed, was
the place from which the trunk was taken. From here the drive was north
to North avenue, where he turned to the right, and struck the Lake Shore
drive. Woodruff stopped the horse directly opposite the artesian well,
and, pointing to a clump of bushes, told the officers that that was the
place where the trunk had been emptied and the mutilated body taken out
and left with Fairburn and King. This spot was directly below the
sand-hills, and a little while before had been planted with evergreens
and shrubbery. Resuming the trip, Woodruff drove straight and without
prompting or hesitation to the spot where the empty trunk was found, on
the Evanston road, north of Sulzer street. His course was along the Lake
Shore drive to Belmont avenue, thence to Evanston avenue, and from
thence north until the spot was reached. At the ditch he stopped long
enough to explain how the trunk fell sideways on the ground, and in
doing so burst open, the lid breaking off at one end. His description of
the trunk corresponded in every detail with the one that at that time
was locked away in the Lake View Station.
What between the story and the trip, the police were considerably
mystified. It seemed impossible that, even with the newspaper accounts
of the disappearance and the details as material to work upon, a man of
only average intelligence could invent such a story and strike the
localities with such accuracy. At the same time outside investigation
failed to substantiate what he had said. The keeper of the gambling
house denied that any men answering to the description of King and
Fairburn had ever frequented his place, or been seen in conversation
with Woodruff, although he recognized the latter as an occasional
visitor to the den. Liveryman Dean and his employes were equally
positive that it would have been impossible for the horse and wagon to
have been taken from the stable and returned without detection. Finally,
the occupier of the barn scouted the idea that the trunk had been taken
from that place as ridiculous, in view of the fact that it was always
kept well locked and provided in addition with burglar alarms
communicating with the house. Diligent inquiry in a dozen different
directions failed to locate either of the two men named by the prisoner,
or to corroborate any other portion of the story. But Woodruff, when
confronted with these contradictions, held his ground well, even in the
face of a vigorous cross-examination. His description of the mysterious
"Doc" tallied with that of Dr. Cronin to the life. He was positive,
moreover, that the corpse was that of a woman, not only because the men
had referred to "Alice," or "Allie," but also because the hand that was
exposed was soft and white and slender. This afforded ground for the
theory that the remains might have been those of a woman who had fallen
a victim to a criminal operation, but a little reasoning showed that
this was untenable. It was hardly likely that King would have arranged
with Woodruff to haul the trunk three days before the nefarious job was
to be done, for he could not very well have known that the operation
would result in the death of the victim and that, consequently, there
would be a corpse to dispose of. Nor could the crime have been committed
on the Wednesday, the day upon which Woodruff claimed to have been first
approached, without the decomposing body attracting suspicion. The only
effect, therefore, of Woodruff's first confession--for several more were
to follow at later stages of the case--was to deepen the mystery and,
incidentally, to start the authorities and friends of Dr. Cronin on
another wild goose chase. The ponds and river were dragged a second
time, sand hills and prairie trudged over for miles, until the weary and
dispirited men were ready to drop the work as well as the idea that any
connection existed between the blood-stained trunk and the disappearance
of the physician. Twenty-four hours later, as an outcome of sinister
influences that emanated from Canada, and which are dealt with at length
in another chapter, the search was practically abandoned by almost every
one concerned.