The Detective Corps of New York consists of twenty-five men, under the
command of a Captain, or Chief. Though they really constitute a part of
the Municipal Police Force, and are subject to the control of the
Commissioners and higher officers of that body, the detectives have a
practically distinct organization. The members of this corps are men of
experience, intelligence, and energy. These qualities are indispensable
to success in their profession. It requires an unusual amount of
intelligence to make a good Detective. The man must be honest,
determined, brave, and complete master over every feeling of his nature.
He must also be capable of great endurance, of great fertility of
resource, and possessed of no little ingenuity. He has to adopt all
kinds of disguises, incur great personal risks, and is often subjected to
temptations which only an honest man can resist. It is said that the
Detective's familiarity with crime is in itself a great temptation, and
often leads him from the path of right. However this may be, it is
certain that a member of the New York force committing an act savoring of
dishonesty is punished by immediate expulsion from his post.
The Detectives have a special department assigned them at the Police
Head-quarters in Mulberry street. There they may be found when not on
duty, and the Chief, when not in his office, is always represented by
some member of the corps. They are kept quite busy. The strangers who
visit the city throw an immense amount of work upon the Detectives.
These people often get drunk over night, and frequent houses of bad
repute, where they are robbed. They naturally invoke the aid of the
police in seeking to recover their property. Frequently, by making a
plain statement of their cases, they recover their money or valuables,
through the assistance of the Detectives. Sometimes the stolen property
cannot be regained at all. These people, as a rule, refuse to prosecute
the thieves, and declare their determination to submit to the loss rather
than endure the publicity which would attend a prosecution. Thus the
Detectives are forced to compound felonies. The injured party refuses to
prosecute, and the Detective knows that to make an arrest in the case
would simply be to take trouble for nothing. Consequently, if the
plunder is returned, the thief is allowed to escape without punishment.
None but those whose duty it is to search out and punish crime, can tell
how much the administration of justice is embarrassed, how much the
officers of the law are hampered, and how greatly their labors are
increased by the refusal of respectable persons to prosecute criminals.
These refusals are not confined to those who seek to avoid such an
exposure as is mentioned above. Merchants and bankers who have been
robbed by thieves, seem to care for nothing but the recovery of their
money or property. They will even sacrifice a portion of this to regain
the remainder. The Detective may fairly work up his case, and fasten the
crime upon the perpetrator, but he is not sure of meeting with the
cooperation upon the part of the injured person that he has a right to
demand. The thief seeing that an arrest is inevitable, may offer to
return a part or the whole of the property on condition of his being
allowed to escape. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the proposal is
accepted. The merchant recovers his property, and immediately exerts
himself to secure the escape of the thief. He refuses to prosecute the
wretch, or if the prosecution is carried on in spite of him, his evidence
amounts to nothing. He has protected his own interests, and he cares
nothing for society or justice. He throws his whole influence against
both, and aids the thief, in going free, to commit the same crime in
another quarter. The Detectives complain, and with justice, that it is
of no use for them to arrest a burglar where the stolen property can be
recovered. If persons who have been wronged in this way would refuse all
proposals for a compromise, and would endeavor to secure the punishment
of the offender, the criminal class would be wonderfully thinned out, and
the Detectives would not, as now, be obliged to arrest the same person
over and over again, only to see him go free every time.
In June, 1870, a gentleman, passing through Bleecker street, on his way
home, at two o'clock in the morning, was knocked down and robbed of his
watch and money. He was struck with such violence by the highwayman that
his jaw was permanently injured. He was very eloquent in his complaints
of the inefficiency of a police system which left one of the principal
streets of the city so unguarded, and was loud in his demands for the
punishment of his assailant, and the recovery of the property stolen from
him. The best Detectives in the force were put in charge of the case,
and the highwayman was tracked, discovered and arrested. The friends of
the culprit at once returned the stolen property to its owner, and
promised to reward him liberally if he would not press the prosecution of
their comrade, who was one of the leading members of a notorious and
dangerous gang of ruffians from whose depredations the city had been
suffering for some time. The offer was accepted, and the gentleman
flatly refused to prosecute, and when compelled by the authorities to
state under oath, whether the prisoner was the man who had robbed him,
became so doubtful and hesitating that his identification was worth
nothing. This, too, in the face of his previous assertion that he could
readily identify the criminal. In spite of his misconduct, however,
there was evidence enough submitted to secure the conviction of the
prisoner, who was sentenced to an imprisonment of ten years.
The Detectives are in constant telegraphic communication with other
cities, and intelligence of crimes committed is being constantly received
and transmitted. Criminals arrested for serious offences are
photographed, and their pictures placed in the collection known as the
"Rogues' Gallery." These likenesses are shown to strangers only under
certain restrictions, but they aid the force not a little in their
efforts to discover criminals. The amount of crime annually brought to
light by the Detectives is startling, but it does not exhibit all the
evil doings of the great city. "The Police Commissioners of New York,"
says Mr. Edward Crapsey, "have never had the courage to inform the public
of the number of burglaries and robberies annually committed in the
metropolis; but enough is known in a general way for us to be certain
that there are hundreds of these crimes committed of which the public is
not told. The rule is to keep secret all such affairs when an arrest
does not follow the offence, and hardly any police official will venture
to claim that the arrest occurs in more than a moiety of the cases.
There are hundreds of such crimes every year where the criminal is not
detected, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property stolen
of which the police never find a trace."
The individuality of crime is remarkable. Each burglar has a distinct
method of conducting his operations, and the experienced Detective can
recognize these marks or characteristics as he would the features of the
offender. Thanks to this experience, which comes only with long and
patient study, he is rarely at a loss to name the perpetrator of a crime
if that person be a "professional." Appearances which have no
significance for the mere outsider are pregnant with meaning to him. He
can determine with absolute certainty whether the mischief has been done
by skilled or unskilled hands, and he can gather up and link together
evidences which entirely escape the unpractised eye. He rejects nothing
as unimportant until he has tested it, and is able to conduct his search
in a systematic manner, which in the majority of cases is crowned with
success.
A few years ago a man came into one of the police stations of the city,
and complained that his house had been robbed. He had pursued the thief
without success, but the latter had dropped a chisel, and had torn up and
thrown away a piece of paper in his flight. The captain commanding the
station and an experienced Detective were present when the complaint was
made. They carefully examined the owner of the house as to the mode by
which the entrance had been effected, the marks left by the tools, the
kind of property taken, and the action and bearing of the thief while
running away. When these facts were laid before them, the two officers,
without a moment's hesitation, concluded that the robbery had been
committed by a certain gang of thieves well known to them. This settled,
it became necessary to identify the individual or individuals belonging
to this gang, by whom the robbery had been committed. The chisel was
examined, but it could give no clue. The house-owner had fortunately
secured the bits of paper which the thief had thrown away. The officers
spread a layer of mucilage over a sheet of paper, and on this fitted the
scraps which were given them. This at once disclosed the name of the
robber, who was well known to the police as a member of the gang to whom
the officers attributed the robbery. Their suspicions were at once
confirmed, and the next step was to make the arrest. The Detective said
that the thief would certainly be at one of three places, which he named.
Three policemen were accordingly sent after him, one to each of the
places named, and in an hour or two the culprit was safely lodged in the
station-house.
It would require a volume to relate the incidents connected with the
exploits of the Detective Corps of New York. Sometimes the search for a
criminal is swift and short, and the guilty parties are utterly
confounded by the suddenness of their detection and apprehension.
Sometimes the search is long and toilsome, involving the greatest
personal danger, and abounding in romance and adventure. Some of the
best established incidents of this kind would be regarded simply as
Munchausen stories, were they related without the authority upon which
they rest. Such adventures are well known to the reading public, and I
pass them by here.
But the Detectives are not always successful in their efforts. If they
are ingenious and full of resource, the criminals they seek are equally
so, and they find their best efforts foiled and brought to naught by the
skill of this class in "covering up their tracks." To my mind the most
interesting cases are not those in which the Detective's labors have been
crowned with success, but those in which he has been baffled and
perplexed at every step, and which to-day remain as deeply shrouded in
mystery as at the time of their occurrence.
Inspector James Leonard, in the spring of 1869, related the following
case to Mr. Edward Crapsey, in whose words it is presented here:
"One spring morning, during the first year of the war, a barrel of pitch
was found to have disappeared from a Jersey City pier, and the porter in
charge, when reporting the fact to his employers, took occasion to speak
of the river-thieves in no very complimentary terms.
"On the same day, Ada Ricard, a woman of nomadic habits and dubious
status, but of marvellous beauty, suddenly left her hotel in New York,
without taking the trouble to announce her departure or state her
destination. The clerks of the house only remarked that some women had
queer ways.
"A few days after these simultaneous events, the same porter who had
mourned the lost pitch, happening to look down from the end of his pier
when the tide was out, saw a small and shapely human foot protruding
above the waters of the North River. It was a singular circumstance, for
the bodies of the drowned never float in such fashion; but the porter,
not stopping to speculate upon it, procured the necessary assistance, and
proceeded to land the body. It came up unusually heavy, and when at last
brought to the surface, was found to be made fast by a rope around the
waist to the missing barrel of pitch. There was a gag securely fastened
in the mouth, and these two circumstances were positive evidence that
murder had been done.
"When the body was landed upon the pier, it was found to be in a
tolerable state of preservation, although there were conclusive signs
that it had been in the water for some time. It was the body of a
female, entirely nude, with the exception of an embroidered linen chemise
and one lisle-thread stocking, two sizes larger than the foot, but
exactly fitting the full-rounded limb. The face and contour of the form
were, therefore, fully exposed to examination, and proved to be those of
a woman who must have been very handsome. There was the cicatrice of an
old wound on a lower limb, but otherwise there was no spot or blemish
upon the body.
"In due time the body was buried; but the head was removed, and preserved
in the office of the city physician, with the hope that it might be the
means of establishing the identity of the dead, and leading to the
detection of the murderer.
"The police on both sides of the river were intensely interested in the
case; but they found themselves impotent before that head of a woman, who
seemed to have never been seen upon earth in life. They could do
nothing, therefore, but wait patiently for whatever developments time
might bring.
"Chance finally led to the desired identification. A gentleman who had
known her intimately for two years, happening to see the head, at once
declared it to be that of Ada Ricard. The Detectives eagerly clutched at
this thread, and were soon in possession of the coincidence in time of
her disappearance and that of the barrel of pitch to which the body was
lashed. They further found that, since that time, she had not been seen
in the city, nor could any trace of her be discovered in other sections
of the country, through correspondence with the police authorities of
distant cities. They had thus a woman lost and a body found, and the
case was considered to be in a most promising condition.
"The next step was to establish the identity by the testimony of those
who had known the missing woman most intimately. The Detectives,
therefore, instituted a search, which was finally successful, for Charles
Ricard, her putative husband. He had not lived with her for some time,
and had not even seen or heard of her for months; but his recollection
was perfect, and he gave a very minute statement of her distinguishing
marks. He remembered that she had persisted in wearing a pair of very
heavy earrings, until their weight had slit one of her ears entirely, and
the other nearly so, and that, as a consequence, both ears had been
pierced a second time, and unusually high up. He regretted that her
splendid array of teeth had been marred by the loss of one upon the left
side of the mouth, and told how a wound had been received, whose
cicatrice appeared upon one of her limbs, stating exactly its location.
He dwelt with some pride upon the fact that she had been forced, by the
unusual development, to wear stockings too large for her feet, and gave a
general description of hair, cast of face, height, and weight that was
valuable, because minute.
"When he gave this statement he was not aware of the death of his wife,
or of the finding of her body, and without being informed of either fact
he was taken to Jersey City, and suddenly confronted with the head. The
instant he saw it he sank into a chair in horror.
"His statement having been compared with the head and the record of the
body, the similitude was found to be exact, except as to the teeth. The
head had one tooth missing on each side of the mouth, and this fact
having been called to his attention, Ricard insisted that she had lost
but one when he last saw her, but it was highly probable the other had
been forced out in the struggle which robbed her of her life, and the
physician, for the first time making a minute examination, found that the
tooth upon the right side had been forced from its place, but was still
adhering to the gum. He easily pushed it back to its proper position,
and there was the head without a discrepancy between it and the
description of Ada Ricard.
"The Detectives found other witnesses, and among them the hair-dresser
who had acted in that capacity for Ada Ricard during many months, who, in
common with all the others, fully confirmed the evidence of Charles
Ricard. The identity of the murdered woman was therefore established
beyond question.
"Naturally the next step was to solve the mystery of her death. The
Detectives went to work with unusual caution, but persisted in the task
they had assigned themselves, and were slowly gathering the shreds of her
life, to weave from them a thread that would lead to the author of her
tragical death, when they were suddenly 'floored,' to use their own
energetic expression. Ada Ricard herself appeared at a down-town New
York hotel, in perfect health and unscathed in person.
"The explanation was simple. The whim had suddenly seized her to go to
New Orleans; and she had gone without leave-taking or warning. It was no
unusual incident in her wandering life, and her speedy return was due
only to the fact that she found the Southern city only a military camp
under the iron rule of General Butler, and therefore an unprofitable
field for her.
"The ghastly head became more of a mystery than before. The baffled
Detectives could again only look at it helplessly, and send descriptions
of it over the country. At last it was seen by a woman named Callahan,
living in Boston, who was in search of a daughter who had gone astray.
She instantly pronounced it to be that of her child, and she was
corroborated by all the members of her family and several of her
neighbors. The identification was no less specific than before, and the
perplexed authorities, glad at last to know something certainly, gave
Mrs. Callahan an order for the body. Before, however, she had completed
her arrangements for its transfer to Boston, a message reached her from
the daughter, who was lying sick in Bellevue Hospital, and so the head
once more became a mystery. And such it has always remained. The body
told that a female who had been delicately reared, who had fared
sumptuously, and had been arrayed in costly fabrics, had been foully done
to death, just as she was stepping into the dawn of womanhood--and that
is all that is known. Her name, her station, her history, her virtues,
or it may be, her frailties, all went down with her life, and were
irrevocably lost. There is every probability that her case will always
be classed as unfinished business."
On Friday, July 20th, 1870, Mr. Benjamin Nathan, a wealthy Jewish
resident of New York, was foully and mysteriously murdered in his own
dwelling by an unknown assassin. All the circumstances of the case were
so mysterious, so horribly dramatic, that the public interest was wrought
up to the highest pitch.
Mr. Nathan was a millionaire, a banker and citizen of irreproachable
character, well known for his benevolence, and highly esteemed for his
personal qualities. His residence stood on the south side of
Twenty-third street, one door west of Fifth Avenue, and immediately
opposite the Fifth Avenue Hotel, in one of the most desirable and
fashionable neighborhoods of the city. The mansion itself was palatial,
and its owner had not only surrounded himself with every luxury, but had
taken every precaution to exclude housebreakers and thieves. But a short
time before his death, he remarked to a friend that he believed that his
house was as secure as a dwelling could be made.
On the night of the 28th of July, Mr. Nathan slept at his residence, his
family, with the exception of two of his sons, being then at their
country-seat in New Jersey, where they were passing the summer. One of
these sons accompanied his father to his sleeping room towards eleven
o'clock, but the other, coming in later, and finding his father asleep,
passed to his chamber without saying "good-night," as was his custom.
On the morning of the 29th, at six o'clock, Mr. Washington Nathan
descended from his chamber to call his father to a devotional duty of the
day. Entering the chamber of the latter, a most appalling spectacle met
his view. His father was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood,
dead, with five ghastly wounds upon his head. The young man at once
summoned his brother Frederick, and the two together rushed to the street
door and gave the alarm. The police were soon on the spot, and, taking
possession of the house, they prepared to investigate the horrid affair.
The newspapers spread the intelligence over the city, and the murder
created the profoundest interest and uneasiness on the part of the
citizens. All classes felt an interest in it, for it had been committed
within the sacred precincts of the dead man's home, where he believed
himself to be safe. If a murderer could reach him there, men asked, who
could tell who would not be the next victim. This feeling of insecurity
was widespread, and the whole community demanded of the police
extraordinary efforts in tracking and securing the assassin.
The Superintendent of Police at that time was Captain John Jourdan, who
was acknowledged to be the most accomplished detective on the Continent,
and his principal assistant was Captain James Kelso (the present
Superintendent), who was regarded as next to Jourdan in ability. These
two officers at once repaired to the Nathan mansion, and took personal
charge of the case.
At the first glance Jourdan pronounced the murder to be the work of a
thief. The house was carefully searched. The room bore evidences of a
struggle between the dead man and his assassin, and three diamond studs,
a sum of money, a Perregaux watch, No. 5657, and the key of a small safe,
had been stolen from the clothing of the dead man which had been hung on
a chair placed at some distance from the bed. The safe stood in the
library beside the door opening into the bed room. Jourdan's theory was
that the thief, having stolen the watch and other articles from the
clothing, had gone to the safe to open it, and had aroused Mr. Nathan by
the noise he made in opening it. Alarmed by this noise, Mr. Nathan had
sprung from his bed, and at the same moment the thief had raised himself
up from his kneeling posture, with his face toward Mr. Nathan, and
lighted up by a small gas jet which was burning in the chamber. The two
men had met in the doorway between the rooms, and the thief, seeing
himself identified, had struck Mr. Nathan a blow with a short iron bar
curved at the ends, and known as a ship carpenter's "dog." A struggle
ensued, which resulted in the murder, the assassin striking his victim on
the head nine times with terrible force. Then, rifling the safe of its
valuable contents, he had gone stealthily down the stairs, had unfastened
the front door, which had been carefully secured at half an hour after
midnight, and, laying the "dog" down on the hall floor, had passed out
into the street. His object in carrying the "dog" to the place where it
was found by the police had been to be prepared to make sure of his
escape by striking down any one whom he might chance to meet in the hall.
Once in the street, the assassin had disappeared in safety.
Both Jourdan and Kelso were agreed that this theory of the commission of
the crime was correct, and this led to the inevitable conclusion that the
murder was the work of an "outsider," that is, of some one not properly
belonging to the criminal class. The weapon with which the murder had
been committed was one which the Detectives had never before encountered
in the annals of crime, and its appearance indicated long use in its
legitimate sphere. No burglar or professional thief would have used it,
and none of the inmates of the house recognized it as belonging to the
mansion. Again, the professional thief would have despatched his victim
with more speed and less brutality. There was not the slightest sign of
the thief having forced an entrance into the mansion, and the most rigid
search failed to reveal the mark of a burglar's tool on any of the doors
or windows. This fact warranted the conclusion that the murderer had
secreted himself in the house during the day. From the first Jourdan was
convinced that the assassin was one of a class who pursue an honest trade
during the day, and seek to fill their pockets more rapidly by committing
robberies at night. From this conviction he never wavered.
As he stood by the side of the murdered man, Jourdan recognized the
difficulty of the task of finding the assassin. The "dog" bewildered
him. Had the weapon been any kind of a burglar's tool, or anything that
any description of thief had ever been known to use, he would have been
able to trace it to some one in the city; but the facts of the case
plainly indicated that the assassin was an "outsider," and even Jourdan
and Kelso were at a loss to know how to proceed to find him.
At the time of the murder, the only inmates of the house were Washington
and Frederick Nathan, sons of the dead man, and Mrs. Kelly, the
housekeeper, and her grown son, William Kelly. Had the murder been
committed by any of these they must of necessity have stolen the missing
articles, and as they had not left the house, must have destroyed or
concealed them on the premises. Without the knowledge of these persons,
Jourdan caused a rigid and thorough search of the house and lot to be
made from cellar to garret. Every crack and crevice, every nook and
corner was rigidly and minutely searched by experienced persons. Even
the furniture and carpets were examined, the flooring of the stable was
taken up, the water-tank was emptied, the basins, closets, and
waste-pipes of the house were flushed, and the street-sewers were
examined for a long distance from the house, but no trace of the missing
articles could be found; nor could any mark of the "dog" be discovered
anywhere save on the body of the victim. One by one, the inmates of the
house were subjected to the most searching cross-examination, and within
six hours after the discovery of the deed, Captain Jourdan was satisfied
that the inmates of the mansion were entirely innocent of the crime. The
evidence drawn out by the inquest subsequently confirmed the innocence of
these parties.
The only clew left by the assassin was the "dog." At the inquest, the
policeman on the beat swore that when he passed the house on his rounds
at half-past four A.M., he tried both front doors, and that they were
fastened, and that when he passed again a little before six o'clock, he
noticed that the hall-door was closed. Another witness testified that
about five o'clock, a man in a laborer's dress, carrying a dinner-pail,
ascended the steps of the Nathan mansion, picked up a paper from the
topmost step, and passed on down the street. The introduction of this
man in the laborer's dress but deepened the mystery and increased the
labors of the Detectives.
The entire police force of the city was set to work watching the
pawn-shops and jewelry stores where the thief might try to dispose of the
stolen property. Every ship-yard and boat-yard was searched for the
identification of the "dog," but without success, and almost every
mechanical establishment in the city where the instrument could have been
used, was subjected to the same inspection, but without discovering
anything. A list of the missing property, and the marks by which it
could be identified, was given to the public and telegraphed all over the
Union. Captain Jourdan declared that it was well to have as many people
as possible looking for these articles. Every known or suspected
criminal in the city was waited on by the police, and required to give an
account of himself on the night of the murder, and it is said that there
was a general exodus of the professional thieves from New York. The ten
days immediately succeeding the murder were singularly free from crime,
so close was the espionage exercised over the criminals by the police.
It is safe to assert that the police never made such exertions in all
their history, to secure a criminal, as in this case. Every sensible
suggestion was acted upon, no matter by whom tendered. Neither labor nor
expense was spared, and all with the same result. Captain Jourdan
literally sank under his extraordinary exertions, his death, which
occurred on the 10th of October, 1870, being the result of his severe and
exhausting labors in this case. His successor, Superintendent Kelso, has
been equally energetic, but thus far--nearly two years after the
commission of the deed--no more is known concerning it than was presented
to Jourdan and Kelso as they stood in the chamber of death, and nothing
has occurred to destroy or shake their original theory respecting the
murderer and his mode of committing the deed. The mystery which
enshrouded it on that sad July morning still hangs over it unbroken.