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.

"It's the same one," he said. "I helped to carry it down stairs, when Young put it into the buggy last Wednesday afternoon, and I helped to carry it up again when he brought it back the next day. Soon after that he had it sent to Chicago."

After reaching Police Headquarters at 2 o'clock in the morning, the trunk was kept under close guard until Capt. Titus and Assistant District Attorney Garvan were ready to examine it later in the day. When they raised the lid, the first thing that came into sight was a sword-shaped stiletto, with a blade several inches long and an ivory handle. The blade was covered with bloodstains.

In a paper back touching the knife were half a dozen mixed cakes, the same which the murdered woman had bought in the bakery at Seventh Avenue and Forty-eighth Street ten minutes after she left her husband last Tuesday night, and a few minutes before she was lured or consented to go to the place where death awaited her. The next thing to come in sight was her set of false teeth, one of which was missing, and under them, covered with blood stains, were skirts and underwear. A switch of false hair and a pair of gloves were sandwiched in with the other articles. The sides of the trunk were streaked with blood. In one corner was a big splotch.

Besides the things already mentioned there were found in the trunk the missing bedclothes from the Young apartment, two men's opera hats, a pair of blue-and-white corsets, Mrs. Pulitzer's slippers, three pairs of men's old shoes, Young's trousers and coat, vest, and undershirt, a piece of paper with the name of a Hoboken outfitter written on it, some red pepper, a hairpin, a bent safety pin, and a newspaper clipping of Sept. 10. Each piece of clothing was closely examined by Capt. Titus and Mr. Garvan. Most of the woman's garments were stained, as were the bedclothes. Some of the clothing was torn. There were also stains on the man's clothing and on a broken comb and pocketbook found at the very bottom of the trunk.

Two pawn tickets were picked out of the mass of clothing. On one of them it was recorded that Young had pledged, under his own name, for $4.25, a hand satchel, shaped like a telescope, on Thursday afternoon. The other showed that he had pawned twenty-three plated spoons for 75 cents, again using his own name. In neither case were the initials given, but simply the surname. The first ticket came from L. Davidow, a Sixth Avenue pawnbroker, and the second from William Simpson, 91 Park Row, the same with whom Mrs. Steiner's earrings were located. "It seems," remarked Capt. Titus, "that the man was getting rid of the things in his father's flat. This find just adds to our conclusion that he was hard up for money."

It was deduced from the finding of these tickets for small amounts that Young might never have had the jewelry belonging to Mrs. Pulitzer, or else, if he had it, that he did not realize upon it. For if he had pledged the earrings and her other valuables, he would not have needed the money raised by these other articles. In case he did not get her valuables, the police do not pretend to know what became of them.

Capt. Titus said that every article known to have been missing from the Young apartment had been found in the trunk. The name of the Hoboken outfitter whose name was on the scrap of paper found among the clothing was "I. Salomon, 305 First Street."

It was at 7:15 o'clock at night that Capt. Titus received from Derby the verification of Young's capture. Detective Sergt. Hughes having telephoned that the second and positive identification was made by Max Levy, the Brooklyn gymnasium instructor, with whom the fugitive was associated so closely last Summer and Spring. The Chief Detective had no sooner got the news than he hastened to call up the various near-by towns and tell their respective Chiefs of Police about it. In twenty minutes every precinct in all Greater New York, Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark, and other places within a short radius were notified that they might forget all about Young. The great drag net woven of thousands of detectives and uniformed officers was drawn in; the fly had been inextricably entangled.

In the meantime, Pulitzer, the murdered woman's husband, had come to Headquarters to look at the trunk and its contents. He became very much excited while identifying his wife's belongings. There was no doubt, he said, that all the feminine garments, except the corsets, were hers. It was some minutes before the Captain could calm him.

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FATHER THINKS HIM INNOCENT.

What His Lawyer Has to Say Before Starting for Derby.

That John W. Young, father of the man captured in Derby yesterday, believes him to be innocent of the murder of Mrs. Pulitzer was shown by a cablegram received yesterday. It came to William F. S. Hart, the lawyer whom Mr. Young had previously engaged to look after his son's interests. Mr. Hart gave out the message at his office, 5 Beekman Street. It was as follows:

To William Hooper Young:

     I hear you are suspected of a heinous crime, and being sought for. I advise you to surrender to the officers of the law, facing the charge like a man. I have engaged counsel for your defense. No one knowing you can believe you guilty. You owe it to yourself, your family, and the religion you forsook, to prove your innocence. If you take this course we will stand by you.               JOHN W. YOUNG.

The lawyer said he had received from the father other messages that he could not make public. Mr. Young had said, among other things, that he would send funds for the case at once. When Mr. Hart was asked whether he had been engaged or retained by any members of the Mormon faith, he said:

"I have seen no one of the Mormon faith or any one connected with the crime. I have been known to Mr. Young, the senior, for a long time through business associations, and I suppose for this reason I was retained."

"Do you expect that the members of the Mormon faith in this country will come to his defense, inasmuch as he is a close descendant of Brigham Young?"

"I don't know nor have I talked with any of the Elders here. I have only communicated with his father. You will note his father mentions his desertion from the faith."

Mr. Hart called up Capt. Titus at Police Headquarters on the telephone and kept constantly posted on the latest reports from Derby. When the positive indentification of Young was reported, the lawyer went to the Grand Central Station and left for the Connecticut town at 8 o'clock last night. He was due in Derby at 10:25 o'clock.

Before going he expressed the opinion that Young, if guilty, was certainly insane. He did not think him guilty, however, he said. He said he would waive extradition papers at once and allow the prisoner to be brought to this city. That was easy he said, as the prisoner was in Connecticut, the only three States wherein one could not waive the ceremony being New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.