1902-09-20-New York Times Slayer of Mrs. Anna Pulitzer Is Known

New York Times

20 September 1902, page 1

SLAYER OF MRS. ANNA PULITZER IS KNOWN.

Police After William H. Young of This City.

Capt. Titus, Chief of the Detective Bureau, announced at 10:30 o'clock last night that Mrs. Anna Pulitzer was murdered by William Hooper Young, a grandson of Brigham Young, the famous Mormon leader. The murder, said the chief detective, was committed in the apartment of Young's father, at 103 West Fifty-eighth Street.

It was said by the police that this man Young, aged about thirty years, was the son of John W. Young, promoter, of 130 Broadway, the man who engineered the organization of the Shipbuilding Trust, and who is now in Europe, where he has been trying to get foreign capital into the company of which Lewis Nixon is President. The accused man is supposed to have been living temporarily in his father's apartments at the above-named address, the house being called The Clarence. Evidencess of a most repulsive murder were discovered in the flat, which is on the second floor.

The body of Mrs. Pulitzer was round in the Morris Canal, just outside of Jersey City, on Thursday afternoon. After thirty hours of investigation the police of New York, Hoboken, and Jersey City had established the fact that the heavy weight found on the body was rented by a stranger who got a horse and a buggy from a Hoboken liveryman, and last night information was received pointing toward Young as the man who hired the rig, took the dead woman from New York to Jersey City, and finally rid himself of his ghastly cargo by sinking it in the shallow waters of the canal.

TRACKING THE MURDERER.

It was through a Hoboken newspaper man named Anzer that Young's name was learned. He and Anzer were connected with The Weekly Crusader not long ago, and late yesterday afternoon Anzer went to Chief Donovan of the Hoboken Police Department and said to him:

"Shortly after 7 o'clock Thursday morning Young came to my home in Seventh Street and said he was going to return a hired rig to Charles K. Evans's livery stable. He had the rig with him at the time."

Chief Donovan knew that Evans had been to New York Police Headquarters and recounted the hiring of a buggy by a stranger, who took away with him the weight that was later found on the woman's body. So, accompanied by Anzer, the Chief hastened to the livery stable, carrying with him a photograph furnished by Anzer. The photograph showed a group of men formerly employed on The Weekly Crusader, and the liveryman immediately picked out the face of Young, saying:

"That's the man. He hired the buggy and never returned the hitching weight which the police found in the canal."

After this Anzer and the Hoboken Chief rushed over to New York. They went to the West Forty-seventh Street Station and found Capt. Schmittberger, and then Anzer, who knew Young's home address, led the way to the flathouse at 103 West Fifty-eighth Street. In the party, besides those already named, were another Hoboken newspaper man, Mr. Hamilton, and two precinct detectives, Devanney and Higgins.

In the first bedroom of the apartment were bloody sheets, pools of blood in a closet, and a large knife. Capt. Schmittberger said he believed the murderers gave the woman knockout drops and lured her to the place, intending at first to cut up the body and get rid of the pieces. From the blood stains under the kitchen sink and in the bedroom closet it is inferred that the body might have been concealed temporarily in either one of those places.

From people in the flat house it was learned that Young had left there Wednesday afternoon, some hours before the stranger hired the buggy in Hoboken. He had returned hight before last, carrying two large packages. During the evening he had gone to the Wells-Fargo Express Company's office, in Sixth Avenue, near Fifty-ninth Street, and had given orders that a trunk at his flat should be shipped to some faraway place.

It was 8 o'clock when Capt. Schmittberger and his companions reached the scene of the murder. They found that the apartment was an elegantly appointed one, consisting of three flats thrown into one. besides the blood stains, some empty beer and whisky bottles were found in the first bedroom, as well as a half-filled bottle of chloral. This last was taken by the Captain as supporting his theory about the knockout drops.

Coroner Scholer was called to the place by telephone, and made an examination of all the rooms. He agreed with Schmittberger in the latter's theory.

It was learned soon after the flat had been entered that Patrolman James Lynch of the West Forty-seventh Street Police Station had been on duty in West Fifty-eighth Street during Wednesday afternoon. He said she saw a man answering the description of Young leave the Clarence in the boggy. The trunk was lifted into the vehicle with the help of the bellboy of the apartment house. Lynch added that there was nothing to make him think the affair suspicious, so he did not pay any further attention to it.

The bellboy corroborated the officer's story. He remembered having seen the hitching weight, which he had whirled around his shoulders to see how heavy it was. The trunk, he said, was one of the steamer kind, and it had been brought back to the house by some one on Thursday. Later on the same day it had been shipped, he was positive, to Chicago, and he thought it left the city on a train soon after 7 o'clock.

Capt. Schmittberger and the other officers concluded that the clothes of the murdered woman were in the trunk and word was sent to the Chicago police at once, asking them to find out what they could about it.

Capt. Titus expressed himself as confident that Young would be apprehended before this evening, probably early in the day. He and the other officers agreed that the case looked like "Jack the Ripper" over again, the murderer in this case having been seemingly afflicted with an insane mania to mutilate bodies as had the notorious Whitechapel murderer.

In the apartment were found many letters to Young. They came from all parts of the country, showing that the man had been a traveler of wide range. Only one of them was from a woman. It was signed "Ray."

From people in the house it was learned that the accused man, who is about 35 years old, was recently an attendant at a local business school and later an employee in various establishments, ranging in character from restaurants to tobacco factories.

The Hoboken police added the information that the man's position on The Weekly Crusader had been that of business manager. While in Hoboken he boarded at various places, and had the reputation of being a reckless character and a debauchee. He claimed to have run newspapers in Seattle, San Francisco, and other far away cities.

No one gave any explanation of how he managed to get charge of his father's apartment. It was said that he had been estranged from the latter, but that occasionally he worked himself back into favor for a time. He is described as being estremely dark, with a sallow complexion, a slender figure, and bushy eyebrows that stand out conspicuously over small black eyes.

A MAN OF GOOD FAMILY.

John W. Young, mentioned by the police as the father of William Hooper Young, is a man well known in Wall Street, where he has made and lost fortunes. Besides promoting the shipbuilding trust, he has been interested of late in getting up a Franco-American banking company, the purpose of which is to market American industrial securities in France.

With him in this undertaking, it is said, are interested Baron Eugene Oppenheim of Paris and the French Minister of Finance. The Oppenheims of Paris are just such bankers as the Vermilyes of New York, with a reputation wherever money is handled.

Mr. Young, who is a son of Brigham Young, has his office in the Equitable Building, across the corridor from the law offices of Alexander & Green. Col. John J. McCook of the law firm is his intimate friend and associate.

Soon after the Shipbuilding Company was perfected Mr. Young went to Europe to get foreign capital for the new concern and to complete his arrangements for the Franco-American Banking Company. It has been said in Wall Street that, although he put through the shipbuilding concern, he was later eliminated by the Schwab-Pam influences at the time that the Bethlehem Company was absorbed by the new combination.

Much of Mr. Young's experience has been in Mexico, where he is said to have made one of the fortunes he afterward lost. He is about fifty years old. As far as anybody knows, he belongs to no clubs or churches. Wall Street knows him as a man of continual activity, always ready with a new scheme as soon as the last one is behind and out of the way.

Anzer, who said he first knew the son in the West, described the latter as half-adventurer, half-newspaper man. Capt. Titus announced that the accused man had been employed recently in a cheap New York restaurant, in what capacity was not known.

Before it was announced that any one was under suspicion for the murder the police had been busy tracing scores of clues and discussing equally as many theories. A Coroner's autopsy, held in the Jersey City morgue of Mr. Speers, had resulted in the decision that the young woman's death was caused by a murderous cut in the abdomen. While Joseph Pulitzer, the husband, had been held at Headquarters in this city, the many detectives were scouring the three cities for evidence, in what appeared to promise another unsolved mystery.

Out of the mass of information that was forthcoming yesterday through the officials on this and the other side of the North River, the following facts stand out as most interesting:

Charles Boeckh, waiter in the bakery of F. Facompr�, at Seventh Avenue and Forty-eighth Street, was the last person known to have seen the woman alive, having sold some rolls to her at 11:40 o'clock Tuesday night.

Mrs. John W. Oliver, who lives at 160 West Forty-sixth Street, the house in which Mr. and Mrs. Pulitzer lived for a month under the name of Kingston, had told of a man who visited Mrs. Pulitzer Tuesday afternoon. The description of this visitor did not agree with the description of the man who hired the buggy in Hoboken. Both were being sought by the police.

Joseph Pulitzer, the husband, is still detained, although Capt. Titus says he is not held under suspicion.

The baker's waiter, Charles Boeckh, first told Pulitzer about seeing the woman at 11:40 Tuesday night. Later he repeated it to one of Titus's men.

"I knew her only by name, not at all well," he said last night. "When she had paid for the rolls, she started back toward Forty-sixth Street. I did not notice whether she wore any jewelry nor how she was dressed. I had seen her often. She was always quiet, well-dressed, and polite. I never saw her husband to know him."

The fact that Mrs. Pulitzer bought the rolls was regarded by the police as proof positive that she had no appointment to meet anybody when she left her husband in their room at 11:30. Pulitzer's statement was to the effect that she left him to get something to eat.

A LIVERYMAN'S STORY.

It was inferred that the man who accosted her knew her very well, for the officers argue that only such a person could have sidetracked her from a purpose which she wished so evidently to accomplish.

Mr. Evans, the liveryman, of 151 Washington Avenue, Hoboken, came to Police Headquarters in this city early in the afternoon with Chief Inspector Archibald of the Jersey City police. It was at about 6:15 o'clock Wednesday afternoon, said the liveryman, that a strange man called at the stable and asked for a buggy. This was hitched up for him, and then he inquired if he could have a hitching weight. Evans replied that there was no use for such a weight, as the horse would stand wherever he was left,--but the stranger insisted on having the weight.

"He took the rig for two hours," said Evans, in telling his story. "As the hours passed I grew uneasy. I waited all night for the man to come back. He didn't show up until 8:30 o'clock yesterday (Thursday) morning, after I had already sent out a general alarm for a stolen buggy. He said he had not driven much and that he had taken good care of the horse, having put him in a livery stable in Fifty-ninth Street, New York.

"I noticed that my hitching weight and strap were missing, but I was so glad to get the horse and rig back that I didn't raise much fuss about them. Later in the day the police showed me the weight and strap that had been tied to the body of the woman found in the Morris Canal. They were mine, the same I let the stranger have. The man had returned the buggy to me only a few hours before the body was seen in the canal."

The liveryman told Capt. Titus that the stranger had agreed to pay $2 for the hire of the buggy for two hours. When he brought it back, after fourteen hours, its owner was so overjoyed that he took the $2 and was half content, especially as the stranger said he would pay up later.

Evans said that there was not room in the vehicle for the body to have been concealed, as the bottom of the buggy measured only twenty-four inches across. A trunk might have been tied on behind, however.

The stranger was described by Evans as being a man between thirty and thirty-five years old, weighing something like 130 pounds, dressed in dark clothes and a black slouch hat, with a small, dark mustache.

"When he called the first time," said the liveryman, "he was very slouchy-looking. He appeared to be a laboring man. But on his return in the morning, his clothes looked newer, and he had changed the dark trousers for light ones. He said he was a newspaper man, and worked for a weekly paper called The Crusader."

A thorough inquiry at all the stables on Fifty-ninth Street, this city, disclosed the fact that Evans's patron had not left a buggy in any of them Wednesday night.

Meanwhile the detectives up town had been getting the description of another man, the one who called on Mrs. Pulitzer--or Mrs. Kingston as she was called in the boarding house--on Tuesday afternoon. The visitor, whom Mrs. Oliver, a boarder, described as very stout, came at 3 o'clock.

"Mr. Pulitzer was away from home," said Mrs. Oliver. "The man rang the doorbell, which I answered. He asked for Mrs. Kingston, as we called Mrs. Pulitzer. I said I didn't know whether Mrs. Kingston was at home or not, and then I called to Mrs. Flemming to find out. While the latter was on her way to find out, the man walked by me, saying, 'She expects me,' and ran up the stairs."

As to the past of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer, the detectives learned much yesterday, but there is a great deal that is still mysterious.

The police learned that Mrs. Pulitzer had once lived in a flat at 236 West Thirty-eighth Street; that she was known there as Mrs. Potts, and that a man called Potts lived with her. It was stated, too, that she formerly had a home at 249 West Forty-sixth Street, where there is a factory building, where it was said last night that no one knew whether or not she had ever been there. Late in the afternoon Detective Lohmeyer announced that he had not only discovered one of the woman's former residences, but had gotten a fine clue. He found a little boy named Henry Tryben, who lives with his parents at 66 West Forty-sixth Street. The boy told this story:

"I was reading a paper to-day, and noticed the name Pulitzer. Several weeks ago I was sent to a grocery store to buy some sugar. I was stopped on my way back by a big man, who wore a striped suit, and he said I could make some money by takinga note for him to Mrs. Pulitzer at 146 West Forty-sixth Street.

"I took the note to the place he named. A servant took it, and returned soon with an envelope. I took it back to the man who sent me. He opened it, and drew out a roll of bills. After counting them he walked off, and did not pay me."

The house mentioned by young Tryben is the same in which live Mrs. Mortimer and Miss Rose, the two women who appeared at the Jersey City Morgue with Pulitzer. Tryben described the sender of the note as a clean-shaven man, very heavy, dark, and rather Jewish or German in appearance. He took particular notice that the man had a heavy good watch chain and a gold cigar cutter hanging to his vest.

The description was similar to that given by Mrs. Oliver when speaking of the strange man who called to see Mrs. Pulitzer eight hours before her disappearance.

It was learned that Mrs. Pulitzer was a Miss Nilsen of Perth Amboy, N. J., where she is well remembered as a village belle. Her family lives there, but her father is visiting relatives in Denmark now. Her brother was one of those who went to Jersey City yesterday and identified the body.

At Speer's Morgue, Jersey City, the autopsy on the body of the dead woman was performed last night by County Physician Charles H. Converse of Jersey City, assisted by Coroner's Physician Otto H. Schultze of this city and Dr. Hamilton Williams, who represented District Attorney Jerome. At the close of the autopay they gave out the following joint statement:

"The woman's death was due to violence. There was no fracture of the skull. The cause of death was the abdominal wound and the blows onthe head. This would didnot penetrate the intestines, had any interior organs been injured by the incision.

"The incision was made either by a knife with blunt and ragged edge or by a knife in the hand of a nervous person. There was no cerebral hemorrhage, but an extravasation of blood was found, resulting from the wounds in the forehead. The absence of a cerebral hemorrhage shows that the blow had been dealt by a man of no extraordinary strength, and might have been caused by a fist or a sand bag, but not by any blunt or hard weapon.

"The absence of water in the lungs tends to show that the woman had been dead when placed in the water. No attempt was made to fix the time which had elapsed from her death to when the body was found, because the autopsy had not developed anything by which this could be determined."

Besides the three physicians there were present at the autopsy Chief Prosecutor James S. Erwin of Hudson County, Assistant Prosecutor George J. Vickers, and Assistant District Attorney Garvan, who represented District Attorney Jerome.