Read Online Deranged by Harold Schechter - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Harold Schechter
Ads: Link
distance.
So it was with that terrible sequence of crimes that commenced with the killing of Francis McDonnell and climaxed, several years later, with the kidnapping of Grace Budd. Overwhelmed with a welter of tips, leads, rumors, and clues—countless bits and pieces of information and hearsay—the police failed to perceive a connection among the three cases. It was only from the distance of years that those scattered facts came together and formed themselves into a single, distinct identity, and the shadowy figures of the “gray man,” the “boogey man,” and the “gentleman farmer,” Frank Howard, merged into the same monstrous individual.
For the present, in early June, 1928, all the police—and the city—knew was that another child was missing.
Early Monday morning, after a torturous night of sleeplessness and mounting alarm, Grace’s parents had sent Edward off to the West 20th Street stationhouse to report their daughter’s disappearance. A short time later, Lieutenant Samuel Dribben and three of his men—Detectives Jerry Mahar, James McGee, and James Murphy—arrived at the Budd’s apartment, where they questioned the distraught couple closely about Frank Howard of Farmingdale, Long Island, who had promised to bring their daughter home from his niece’s birthday party by nine o’clock Sunday night and never returned.
Lieutenant Dribben, after inquiring where the party was supposed to have taken place, informed Grace’s parents that 137th Street and Columbus Avenue was a fictitious address. Dribben’s news hit the Budds like a physical blow.
Dribben did what he could to comfort Mr. and Mrs. Budd—who seemed to have passed beyond panic into a state of glazed stupefaction—then ordered Maher and McGee to make a thorough search of neighborhood rooming houses.
Meanwhile, Detective Murphy escorted young Edward and his chum Willie Korman back to the stationhouse, where the boys spent an hour or so searching through the rogue’s gallery in the hope of identifying Gracie’s abductor.
Two more detectives were put on the case that day. One was dispatched to the main office of the Motor Vehicles Bureau to check its records for Howard’s name and address.
Another was assigned the task of tracing the Western Union message that the old man had sent to Edward Budd on Saturday and whose contents Grace’s parents had detailed for Lieutenant Dribben. Mr. Budd remembered something else about the message, too. He described the way Howard had asked about and then pocketed the telegram virtually the moment he arrived—an act which Albert Budd had noted with only casual curiosity at the time but whose full, ominous import had suddenly become all too clear.
The news broke on Tuesday, June 5—“HUNT MAN AND CHILD HE TOOK TO ‘PARTY,’” read the headline in The New York Times. During the next few weeks, the public must have experienced a disconcerting sense of déjà vu, since the story was, in so many respects, a grim replay of the Gaffney abduction, which had dominated the news the year before. The Budd case contained all the ingredients of the earlier tragedy—the clues that led nowhere but to blind alleys and dead ends, the suspects hauled in and promptly released, the well-meaning tipsters and anonymous cranks, the kidnap-hysteria that swept through the boroughs, the cheap melodrama of the tabloid press (“Follow the search for little Grace Budd and her kidnapper in tomorrow’s DAILY NEWS!”).
There were, however, a few elements peculiar to the Budd case that, right from the start, made it even more gripping—and sensational—than the snatching of little Billy Gaffney: a fiend in the guise of a benevolent old man; a trusting mother and father beguiled by a smoothtalking tempter; and, most riveting of all, a lovely little girl in a communion dress, a victim whose very name seemed emblematic of her unprotected innocence and who—believing she was being taken to a birthday party—was lured to a
So it was with that terrible sequence of crimes that commenced with the killing of Francis McDonnell and climaxed, several years later, with the kidnapping of Grace Budd. Overwhelmed with a welter of tips, leads, rumors, and clues—countless bits and pieces of information and hearsay—the police failed to perceive a connection among the three cases. It was only from the distance of years that those scattered facts came together and formed themselves into a single, distinct identity, and the shadowy figures of the “gray man,” the “boogey man,” and the “gentleman farmer,” Frank Howard, merged into the same monstrous individual.
For the present, in early June, 1928, all the police—and the city—knew was that another child was missing.
Early Monday morning, after a torturous night of sleeplessness and mounting alarm, Grace’s parents had sent Edward off to the West 20th Street stationhouse to report their daughter’s disappearance. A short time later, Lieutenant Samuel Dribben and three of his men—Detectives Jerry Mahar, James McGee, and James Murphy—arrived at the Budd’s apartment, where they questioned the distraught couple closely about Frank Howard of Farmingdale, Long Island, who had promised to bring their daughter home from his niece’s birthday party by nine o’clock Sunday night and never returned.
Lieutenant Dribben, after inquiring where the party was supposed to have taken place, informed Grace’s parents that 137th Street and Columbus Avenue was a fictitious address. Dribben’s news hit the Budds like a physical blow.
Dribben did what he could to comfort Mr. and Mrs. Budd—who seemed to have passed beyond panic into a state of glazed stupefaction—then ordered Maher and McGee to make a thorough search of neighborhood rooming houses.
Meanwhile, Detective Murphy escorted young Edward and his chum Willie Korman back to the stationhouse, where the boys spent an hour or so searching through the rogue’s gallery in the hope of identifying Gracie’s abductor.
Two more detectives were put on the case that day. One was dispatched to the main office of the Motor Vehicles Bureau to check its records for Howard’s name and address.
Another was assigned the task of tracing the Western Union message that the old man had sent to Edward Budd on Saturday and whose contents Grace’s parents had detailed for Lieutenant Dribben. Mr. Budd remembered something else about the message, too. He described the way Howard had asked about and then pocketed the telegram virtually the moment he arrived—an act which Albert Budd had noted with only casual curiosity at the time but whose full, ominous import had suddenly become all too clear.
The news broke on Tuesday, June 5—“HUNT MAN AND CHILD HE TOOK TO ‘PARTY,’” read the headline in The New York Times. During the next few weeks, the public must have experienced a disconcerting sense of déjà vu, since the story was, in so many respects, a grim replay of the Gaffney abduction, which had dominated the news the year before. The Budd case contained all the ingredients of the earlier tragedy—the clues that led nowhere but to blind alleys and dead ends, the suspects hauled in and promptly released, the well-meaning tipsters and anonymous cranks, the kidnap-hysteria that swept through the boroughs, the cheap melodrama of the tabloid press (“Follow the search for little Grace Budd and her kidnapper in tomorrow’s DAILY NEWS!”).
There were, however, a few elements peculiar to the Budd case that, right from the start, made it even more gripping—and sensational—than the snatching of little Billy Gaffney: a fiend in the guise of a benevolent old man; a trusting mother and father beguiled by a smoothtalking tempter; and, most riveting of all, a lovely little girl in a communion dress, a victim whose very name seemed emblematic of her unprotected innocence and who—believing she was being taken to a birthday party—was lured to a
Similar Books
