1902-09-23-New York Times-Will Wave Extradition

New York Times

23 September 1902, page 1

WILL WAIVE EXTRADITION.

Young, on Verge of Collapse, Is Overcome by His Fathers Message -- Watched to Prevent Suicide.

DERBY, Conn., Sept. 22.--William Hooper Young, who was arrested here last night, has admitted his identity, after having pretended all day thta his name was Bert Edwards. Not only has he acknowledged that he is the son of John W. Young, Wall Street promoter, but it is stated on good authority that he has made a confession of the murder of Mrs. Anna Pulitzer in his apartment, 103 West Fifty-eighth Street, New York City, last Tuesday night.

The prisoner did not know where he was, when two policement took him in custody, while he was walking along the railroad track with a tramp named Cunningham. He did not know where he had been during the last few days. He was crazed with drink and stood the officers at bay like a hunted animal until they managed to frighten him into submission. As far as is known, he not only failed to account for his movements since he left his flat after the murder, but he would give the New York detectives, who came here to get him, no information as to his movements during the time the body of the woman remained in his room nor any description of how he disposed of the body in the Morris Canal, near Jersey City.

When the local Chief of Police notified Capt. Titus of New York that a man resembling Young had been caught, the New York official sent Detective Sergt. Findley here to see if the suspect was really the right man. With Findley came Gustav A. Ernest, a young man who is employed in the Brooklyn gymnasium of Mac Levy, the instructor, who gave Young work recently, having previously had him as a patron. Ernest was taken to the prisoner's cell by Chief Arnold. After looking Young over he retired, and said to the police officers:

"I'm sure its Young, but I can't swear to it, because he has shaved off his mustache. He has tghe same hands and eyes and voice, though, and I don't think there's any doubt about it."

Until Ernest saw him, Young had not had any intimation of the particular suspicion under which he reseted. He started visibly at the sight of the new-comer, who had worked with him for a little while in Levy's establishment, but retained some measure of composure and looked away. The information that Ernest had partially identified him was telephoned to Capt. Titus, who sent another Detective Sergeant, Hughes, together with Mac Levy himself, to complete the identification.

"HELLO, HOOPER!"

Levy and Hughes arrived soon after 6 o'clock, having left New York on the 4:02 train. The athletic instructor was taken into the jail corridor, and Young was led out of his cell. When they met, Levy said:

"Hello, Hooper!"

There was no response. Young turned his eyes on the speaker deliberately and looked hard at him, with no sign of recognition. If there was any effort in his assumption of indifference it was not visible. There was a long pause. Finally, as if he thought he was expected to say something, he answered:

"I don't know you."

"Of course you know me," said Levy, placing his hand on his former friend's shoulder.

Young, without a trace of emotion, responded:

"You should be sure of your identification. This is a terrible crime for which I am held."

After this, at the command of the officers, the prisoner divested himself of his clothing, so that Levy might make the identification more certain. He did not undress altogether, however, but was led back to his cell in a few minutes. Max Levy and Hughes went with him and told him formally the cause of his arrest, dwelling on the mention of the crime, for which he was committed to jail. It was then that the man admitted for the first time that his name was William Hooper Young.

While the three were talking, Dixie Anzer, the Hoboken newspaper man with whom Young used to be associated in the publication of The Crusader, walked through the corridor outside the cell. As he passed the door, the prisoner raised his head and exclaimed:

"Why, there's Anzy!"

Confinement told on Young early in the afternoon, and he showed signs of nervousness soon after Ernest had seen him. When first arrested, though the dark rings around his eyes and the wild expression on his face gave evidence of prolonged mental and physical strain, he was game to the core, and the police officers managed to get him only after he had tried to throw red pepper in their eyes. As he reached for the pepper they thought he was after a pistol, so they made him hold up his hands. After he had been handcuffed he told them that he would have blinded them if they had given him a minute longer.

One of the first good reasons Capt. Titus of New York and the local police had for believing they had the right man was the fact that red pepper was found in the trunk sent by Young to Chicago. Capt. Titus telephoned to Chief Arnold during the afternoon, before any identification had been made, that the trunk, when opened at New York, was found to contain a package of the pepper.

ON THE VERGE OF COLLAPSE.

By the time Hughes and Max Levy arrived here Young looked to be on the verge of collapse. He was so nervous that he jumped every time any one spoke to him, and his self-possession was not restored until several hours after he had acknowledged himself and agreed to go back to New York without requisition papers. it was understood that the officers prevailed on him to consent to return by telling him how his counsel, engaged by his father to defend him, had said he would advise such a course of action, and how the father had cabled from Paris to say he thought the son innocent.

It is said that Young made a confession during his talk with the officer and Mac Levy, but the exact nature of his statement was not made public. The officers would only say that he had been asked: "Are you guilty?" and that he had answered "Yes and no." When one of the detectives was questioned for further information, he replied:

"If you say simply that a confession was made, you will tell the whole story."

It was said on authority, however, that the confession had implicated some one else in the crime.

The officers said that Young, in explaining how he happened to have red pepper in his pockets and in his trunk, related how a dose of that article with milk was good for the stomach.

"I heard," he said, "that it was good to sober one up."

Shortly after 9 o'clock the officers left the man alone for the night. The announcement had been made that they would carry him to New York on the 10:55 train, but this plan was abandoned on account of the accident on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.

Late this evening, several hours after Young had admitted his identity, he was shown a copy of a cablegram sent by his father, John W. Young, from Paris, advising him to surrender, and declaring that his family would stand by him. Young read the message, and for the first time gave evidence of strong emotion. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he turned to the wall of his cell, while he made a strong effort to repress his sobs. He refused to speak of the message afterward.

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Capt. Titus announced late last night that it was decided not to bring the prisoner to New York until this morning. This was agreed upon after a long conversation over the long-distance telephone between Capt. Titus and Detectives Hughes and Finley, who are in Derby. The prisoner's counsel did not arrive in Derby up to a late hour last night, and Capt. Titus commissioned both Hughes and Finley to take turns in watching Young till the time came for his departure for New York. Capt. Titus is inclined to believe that the man may commit suicide if he is given the chance.

In company with the two detectives Young will leave Derby at 5:30 o'clock this morning, and come to Bridgeport, where the party will board a train for New York after taking breakfast. It is expected that they will reach here sometime between 8 and 9 o'clock.

The prisoner will be taken directly to Police Headquarters and then to the Coroners' office in the Criminal Courts Building. He will be remanded then to the Tombs for examination.

His lawyer, W. F. S. Hart, who left in the late afternoon to look after his interests, was detained by a railroad wreck on the way. An axle on the engine of the Portchester local snapped, derailing the engine, hurling the engineer and fireman out, and shaking up the passengers. It was 9 o'clock last night before the wreck was cleared so that trains might proceed. All the incoming and outgoing trains were delayed.

YOUNG'S CABMAN FOUND.

Capt. Schmittberger Locates Man Who Drove Couple to the Clarence Apartment House.

Capt. Schmittberger and his detectives located yesterday the cabman who drove Young and Mrs. Pulitzer to the Clarence apartment house in West Fifty-eighth Street. He is Edward Crystal of 249 West Sixty-eighth Street. From the first Crystal has suspected that his two mysterious fares of early last Wednesday morning were Young and his victim.

Capt. Schmittberger said last night: " 'Cherchez la femme' may be a good motto for the French detective, but I prefer 'search for the cabman,' and this I have done from the start, only to land him just as the murderer was apprehended."

Crystal was brought to the West Forty-seventh Street Station shortly after 9 o'clock last night and was closeted with the Captain and a notary, before whom he took an affidavit as to the statement he made public. Crystal said:

"I was standing--at least my rig was standing--at the southwest corner of Broadway and Forty-sixth Street on Wednesday morning last. It was about 12:40 o'clock. I was in a hallway half asleep. I had been sitting there for a couple of hours and was very sleepy. A man, who wore a slouch hat and a gray suit of clothes, came up to me and said he wanted to be driven up town. I jumped up, took the blanket off the horse, and then I saw a woman. I hadn't seen here before, as he came round the corner. She jumped in the cab first and I didn't see her face and I don't think I would know here if I saw her again, though I am certain I would know him, as I always do, just to satisfy myself that he is good for the fare, by the way he is dressed. The man says to me:

" 'Drive up town.'

"I says 'Where?'

" 'To Sixth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street,' he said.

"I drove over to Sixth Avenue and then went right up town. When I got to Fifty-eighth Street the man told me to stop at the southwest corner near a saloon. It was the first words I had heard spoken between the two, and she said she wanted to get out on the other side of the street, where there is a drug store. I turned the cab around and drove them to the other side of the street. The man was very polite to the woman all night. He helped her into the cab and also helped her out of it and was very gentle. My rig was then facing east. The man gave me $1.25, the sum that I asked. The woman walked ahead toward the apartment house. I did not see her enter the Clarence, but I am certain they did not get any further.

"I heard nothing of any conversation held between the man and woman during the ride up town, but I cannot remember anything that I did hear, which would indicate that the pair were quarreling. The woman was not what might be called well-dressed when she entered the cab and she carried two bundles. They looked as if they contained provisions of some kind."

Capt. Schmittberger announced that he had secured the only missing link in the evidence needed for the conviction of Young in the finding of the cabman.

"As far as the theory of an accomplice is concerned," said the Captain, "I place very little faith in it. The man accomplished the deed alone.

When told that Young had exclaimed after his arrest: "I am guilty and I am not guilty." and that it was interpreted as meaning he had an accomplice, Capt. Schmittberger said:

"I think it means that he did admit to killing the woman, but that he did not premeditate the deed. There was no accomplice."

Capt. Schmittberger passed a few more backward compliments toward Capt. Titus.

"In my opinion," he said, "the newspapers were the real detectives in this case. They spread the news of the murder broadcast, or else Young would never have been caught. The widest publicity should always be given to any case wherein the culprit has escaped."

Schmittberger's detectives have discovered many haunts formerly frequented by Young. He went under several assumed names, the most usual of which was "Billy" Smith. The name under which he passed in Derby, Conn., "Bert" Edwards, is that of a friend of his. They quarreled about a year ago and have not had much to do with each other since then. The police say, too, that the name Eiling, to which the trunk was addressed when sent to Chicago, was that of another friend of the prisoner, this last friend being a woman of the Tenderloin.

CONTENTS OF TRUNK EXAMINED.

Pulitzer Identifies Garments as Those of His Wife--Earnings Found Not Hers.

Capt. Titus's theory that robbery was the sole motive for the murder of Mrs. Pulitzer was disturbed yesterday. The earrings found in Simpson's pawnshop were not those of the dead woman. The husband identified them so positively that fifty detectives who were looking for them were called back to headquarters. But it was discovered yesterday that the pawned jewels were the property of a Mrs. Steiner, who lives up in Harlem, and her husband had pawned them.

Mr. Steiner read in the newspapers that the police had identified as Mrs. Pulitzer's property some jewelry pledged in the name of "Stiner" at Simpson's pawnshop last Wednesday. Knowing that he had placed the earrings there on that day, he hastened to Police Headquarters and told the Chief Detective about it.

"We'll have to start all over again," Capt. Titus said later, "in our hunt for the jewelry the woman wore on the night of her death. On learning that the earrings were not hers, I sent out fifty men to renew the search in pawnshops of this city, Hoboken, and Jersey City. Besides the earrings, Mrs. Pulitzer wore a stick pin worth $12 and a wedding ring. We have no trace of any of the three articles."

The discovery about the jewelry was made before Young was identified in Derby. Capt. Titus had no substitute theories. "Wait till we hear from Derby," he said.

To add to the complexity of the situation, Capt. Schmittberger of the West Forty-seventh Street Station, who has been trying to beat Titus in the hunt for Young, discovered evidence during the afternoon that he thought proved the earrings of Mrs. Pulitzer to have been stolen before they came into her possession. A Mrs. Mildred Brooks of 227 West Thirty-seventh Street paid a visit to Schmittberger. She told him she had once taken Mr. and Mrs. Pulitzer, then known under another name, as boarders. While they were there, she said, a pair of diamond earrings had disappeared from her room. These earrings, she declared, were exactly like those which Mrs. Pulitzer was described as wearing on the night of the murder.

The trunk, with its load of evidence, arrived from Chicago early yesterday morning. It was identified as the trunk that was shipped through the Wells-Fargo Express Company by W. Hooper Young on Thursday night, about twenty-four hours after it had been carried to and from Jersey, presumably with Mrs. Pulitzer's body inside it. Dolbey, the hallboy of the apartment house in which the crime was committed, identified the trunk.