After Crime
… “About three weeks ago I met a man named Charles Elling in Central Park. He accosted me. We talked andgot acquainted, though he was a degenerate. After that he called on me several times in my flat. On the night Mrs. Pulitzer died Elling and I met her at Broadway and Forty-sixth Street by an appointment I had made. We went to the flat together. I went out for some whiskey after we got there, leaving Elling and the woman alone. When I got back I found Mrs. Pulitzer lying across the bed with a gag in her mouth. Elling had gone.
“I ripped open her clothing and moved her hands back and forth over her head to induce respiration. When she didn’t breathe I put my hand under her waist and felt her heart. It was not beating. Then I decided to notify the police, but thought I would go to Police Headquarters instead of calling a policeman. I thought Police Headquarters was in the City Hall. I got on a train and started downtown, and on the way I got to thinking what a lot of disgrace the affair would bring on me and my father. That made me decide to get rid of the body.
“I took a long knife and cut into the body, intending to cut it up so that I could get it into a trunk, but after I had made the first cut my courage failed and I could go no farther….”
Mrs. Pulitzer’s murder has not lost all its mystery, as the police had expected it would as soon as Young was caught. The prisoner told them that he could not remember where he had been since he left New York. Nor did he explain the injuries to the head and face of the dead woman.
Captain Schmittberger was eager to point out the similarities between the murder of Anna Pulitzer and the 1900 murder of Kate Feeley in New York. Feeley disappeared after speaking to someone of Young’s appearance. Her body was spread throughout the city, dismembered, though the head itself was never found. Schmittberger felt that Young’s indication that he wanted to dismember the body linked the murders.
Young, sleeping in jail, took an “unflagging interest in newspaper reports of the murder.” Police, searching for someone matching Elling’s description, discovered nobody. They continued to claim that no such person existed. There was a man of similar description who had checked himself into Harlem Hospital, suffering from a dose of muriatic acid, under the name of Charles Garnett, hinting he was from Bridgeport, Connecticut, the town Young claimed Elling was from.
“I want to die,” Garnett suggested as he checked himself in.
“What have you done?” asked a surgeon.
“I know what I’ve done,” he said, “and I want to die.”
He declined to say anything about himself. Later when told that he would die, he answered: “All right.” Then he was asked if he came from Bridgeport.
“If I tell you where I came from,” he said, “you’ll hang me.”
Yet, police continued to claim that 1) Elling did not exist and that 2) Garnett was certainly not Elling even if he did exist.
It was discovered who Young had purchased his trunk from, though this raised certain complications. The trunk dealer insisted Young had no mustache when he purchased the trunk, though numerous people had seen him with a mustache on that day and on the day before and after. “He didn’t have a mustache, but he looked like the pictures of Young.” This led some to believe that Young had an accomplice after all.
In October of 1902, a coroner’s jury declared that “from the evidence adduced we find she came to her death by violence at the hands of William Hooper Young.” Seven days later a grand jury indicted Young for murder in the first degree. Mention of Young disappeared from the paper for more than three months, reappearing in February, as his trial approached and as several of the witnesses against him disappeared, the district attorney placing the blame for their disappearance on the Mormon Church. On February 4 was the article that Rudd had first seen. He read it through
… “About three weeks ago I met a man named Charles Elling in Central Park. He accosted me. We talked andgot acquainted, though he was a degenerate. After that he called on me several times in my flat. On the night Mrs. Pulitzer died Elling and I met her at Broadway and Forty-sixth Street by an appointment I had made. We went to the flat together. I went out for some whiskey after we got there, leaving Elling and the woman alone. When I got back I found Mrs. Pulitzer lying across the bed with a gag in her mouth. Elling had gone.
“I ripped open her clothing and moved her hands back and forth over her head to induce respiration. When she didn’t breathe I put my hand under her waist and felt her heart. It was not beating. Then I decided to notify the police, but thought I would go to Police Headquarters instead of calling a policeman. I thought Police Headquarters was in the City Hall. I got on a train and started downtown, and on the way I got to thinking what a lot of disgrace the affair would bring on me and my father. That made me decide to get rid of the body.
“I took a long knife and cut into the body, intending to cut it up so that I could get it into a trunk, but after I had made the first cut my courage failed and I could go no farther….”
Mrs. Pulitzer’s murder has not lost all its mystery, as the police had expected it would as soon as Young was caught. The prisoner told them that he could not remember where he had been since he left New York. Nor did he explain the injuries to the head and face of the dead woman.
Captain Schmittberger was eager to point out the similarities between the murder of Anna Pulitzer and the 1900 murder of Kate Feeley in New York. Feeley disappeared after speaking to someone of Young’s appearance. Her body was spread throughout the city, dismembered, though the head itself was never found. Schmittberger felt that Young’s indication that he wanted to dismember the body linked the murders.
Young, sleeping in jail, took an “unflagging interest in newspaper reports of the murder.” Police, searching for someone matching Elling’s description, discovered nobody. They continued to claim that no such person existed. There was a man of similar description who had checked himself into Harlem Hospital, suffering from a dose of muriatic acid, under the name of Charles Garnett, hinting he was from Bridgeport, Connecticut, the town Young claimed Elling was from.
“I want to die,” Garnett suggested as he checked himself in.
“What have you done?” asked a surgeon.
“I know what I’ve done,” he said, “and I want to die.”
He declined to say anything about himself. Later when told that he would die, he answered: “All right.” Then he was asked if he came from Bridgeport.
“If I tell you where I came from,” he said, “you’ll hang me.”
Yet, police continued to claim that 1) Elling did not exist and that 2) Garnett was certainly not Elling even if he did exist.
It was discovered who Young had purchased his trunk from, though this raised certain complications. The trunk dealer insisted Young had no mustache when he purchased the trunk, though numerous people had seen him with a mustache on that day and on the day before and after. “He didn’t have a mustache, but he looked like the pictures of Young.” This led some to believe that Young had an accomplice after all.
In October of 1902, a coroner’s jury declared that “from the evidence adduced we find she came to her death by violence at the hands of William Hooper Young.” Seven days later a grand jury indicted Young for murder in the first degree. Mention of Young disappeared from the paper for more than three months, reappearing in February, as his trial approached and as several of the witnesses against him disappeared, the district attorney placing the blame for their disappearance on the Mormon Church. On February 4 was the article that Rudd had first seen. He read it through
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