The Open Curtain Read online

  Autopsy reports indicated that it was this gash that killed her, despite there being no interior hemorrhage, nor any punctured or slit internal organs. “The incision was made either by a knife with blunt and ragged edge or by a knife in the hand of a nervous person.” The blows to the head, because of the absence of cerebral hemorrhaging, were thought to “have 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.”

  Though at high tide the ditch was full and the body thus covered, at low tide the ditch drained to about six inches of water. The murderer was apparently either unfamiliar with the area or was in such hurry to dispose of the body that he was imprudent. The body was seen at one in the afternoon by the motorman of a passing trolley car, who notified the inspector at a nearby drawbridge, who in turn notified the police.

  According to that first report, it was “beyond a doubt that two men were concerned with the disposition of the body, if not in the murder itself.” A bridgeman spoke of a closed cab passing at eleven p.m. on the night before the discovery of the body—a quite uncommon occurrence—driven by two “rather young and well-dressed men” who kept their heads averted when the bridgeman stopped them and held up his lantern. The cab’s curtains were tightly drawn. The vehicle went through the bridge and along the road that paralleled the ditch in which the body was discovered, but no other bridgeman could recall it coming out.

  The corpse was Mrs. Anna Pulitzer, wife of tailor Joseph Pulitzer. Her husband, reading of the body’s discovery in the morning papers, called police and asked to see the body, which he immediately identified as his wife of five years. A civil-minded citizen, Pulitzer had worked as an election captain on the day the murder was thought to have occurred, arriving home shortly before eleven p.m. “His wife, who had not gone to bed at that hour, said she wanted to buy some fruit, and started out to buy some. She took off all her rings except her wedding ring, and left them at the house. Then she went out, and was never seen again by him alive.” She was last seen in a bakery at 11:40 at night, where she bought some rolls. When Pulitzer identified the body, he was immediately locked up until his story was investigated and, to the degree it could be, corroborated.

  By the next day, the paper announced, Slayer of Mrs. Anna Pulitzer Is Known. It identified him as “William Hooper Young, grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young.” Young was described as “extremely dark, with a sallow complexion, a slender figure, and bushy eyebrows that stand out conspicuously over small black eyes.” He was between thirty and thirty-five years old, weighed 130 pounds. He had worked for newspapers on both coasts, was known as “a reckless character and a debauchee.” He was described as “half-adventurer, half-newspaperman.” He was the son of John W. Young, a financier. One of Young’s coworkers on the Weekly Crusader, a fellow named Anzer, had heard Young speak of returning a borrowed horse and rig to a particular stable. Anzer, having read of the murder, felt the fact worth mentioning to police. Police approached the liveryman, who positively identified Young as the man who had taken the rig and returned it without either weight or leather strap. When they went to Young’s father’s apartments, where Young had been staying while his father was in Europe, “Evidences of a most repulsive murder were discovered”:

  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 in either one of those places.

  Two days earlier, Young had left the house with a steamer trunk, which the bellboy had helped him load into the rented rig. The following day the trunk had been brought back to the house, then had been shipped, according to the bellboy, to Chicago.

  Yet, despite declaring Young guilty, the Times in the same article pointed to other details that seemed to implicate another man, an unidentified gentleman described as “very stout” who called upon Mrs. Pulitzer the afternoon of her disappearance, rushing upstairs saying “She expects me.” He was described as “a clean-shaven man, very heavy, dark, and rather Jewish or German in appearance,” with a “heavy gold watch chain and a gold cigar cutter hanging to his vest.”

  On Sunday, September 21, Young’s “arrest is expected hourly”—the police believed he had not yet been apprehended because he was being protected by Mormons, for according to the New York police captain:

  There was once in this city a secret society of Mormons. I believe it still exists. It was broken up once by the United States Secret Service Bureau, but it is going along on the quiet, I believe. Although the members of his former church say he is a recreant member and a villain, they will stick to him. He was once sanctified, so he must be protected.

  The steamer trunk that Young had had shipped to Chicago arrived and was seized by the Chicago police, who sent a dispatch indicating that it “contained woman’s dress, underclothes, hat, shoes, men’s clothing, dirk knife, all smeared with blood …” and “nearly 100 letters addressed to William Hooper Young.” The articles of feminine apparel were marked with the name or initial of Mrs. Anna Pulitzer.

  In addition, the “trunk contained memorandum book containing name William Hooper Young….” On the first page of another memorandum book found in Young’s father’s apartment itself were written the words “Blood Atonement,” followed by half a dozen scriptural references that, when examined, seemed related to the Mormon doctrine of blood atonement.

  The local Mormon authority denied the existence of blood atonement, declaring there to be “no such thing in the religion.” He “denied absolutely that there was any doctrine of the Mormon Church which demanded the shedding of blood as an atonement of sin. He said that there was not one of the doctrines of the Church which would give even a man partially deranged the idea that in killing a woman his own sins would be forgiven.”

  “My father,” said Rudd, “our father, I mean, wrote that it did exist.”

  “What did?”

  “Aren’t you here?” said Rudd, pointing to the subtitle, Blood Atonement Denied.

  “Why would I be there?”

  “That Hooper Young might have discussed the idea of blood atonement is possible. He had erroneous ideas on many subjects. This idea did not prompt his terrible crime,” Rudd read.

  Lael shrugged.

  “No comment?” asked Rudd.

  “What else could a Mormon, speaking on behalf of the Church, possibly say? Yes, we do kill people?”

  Both the police and reporters had begun to speak with confidence that Young was the murderer. Despite the belief of both parties several days before that there had been two men involved in the disposal of the body and perhaps in the murder itself, Young was declared the sole and singular murderer.

  The Captain of Police received a letter as well from “H. Young” stating that he intended to commit suicide:

  Search in vain; have killed myself. H. Young.

  The letter was written on a scrap of cheap white paper and “inclosed [sic] in a small envelope such as are used for visiting cards.” The Captain believed it was a letter from “some crank” though he decided to have experts compare the handwriting to that of Hooper Young.

  One of the most startling developments of yesterday was the discovery by Capt. Titus that a murder bearing much similarity to this one was committed in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1893.

  “A Frenchman was murdered there in that year,” he said. “And this Young was living in Salt Lake City at the time. No one could find the Frenchman’s body, nor could they trace the murderer. A long time afterward the body was found in a trunk that had been shipped to Chicago.”

  “I do not say that Young committed this murder out West, but it seems highly probable, that his mind was affected by it. Of course, the two cases differ, but still they
are similar. A trunk was sent to Chicago in each case, and in both the trunks was evidence that the murderer was attempting to conceal.”

  “Why Chicago?” asked Rudd.

  Lael read the paragraphs Rudd pointed to, shrugged. “Copycat,” he said. “Unless he killed the Frenchman too.”

  “Do you think he did?”

  “It’s more interesting if he didn’t,” said Lael. “That he had in his head from the first killing the idea that all murdered bodies should be shipped to Chicago.”

  “You think he was crazy?”

  “Crazy’s not the right word,” said Lael. “Possessed, maybe.”

  “You think that happens? Someone goes to see a movie about murderers and then they go out and kill people?”

  Lael shrugged. “Sure,” he said, “but the person has to want it to happen first. Some people are just aching for an excuse.”

  The “Chief Detective said that he had found letters in Young’s flat that proved the man to be a moral pervert.” In addition, “he had a very peculiar walk, as though something was the matter with his legs, and I think anybody who ever saw him could identify him by his gait among a million men.” Other tenants in his father’s building described him as “a dope and a vagabond. He had gone to the roof often and acted queerly. When anybody saw him there he would dodge behind chimneys.” “He was a cigarette fiend.” “He was a brilliant talker.” “… haggard.” “He was the most attractive fellow you ever saw. He was well educated, perfectly honest and seemingly well-balanced.” “He was quiet and did not seem freakish in any way.”

  By Monday, September 22, a man disguised as a tramp but matching Hooper Young’s description was picked up in Derby, Connecticut, after a scuffle. The man refused to give his name or account for his whereabouts. His face resembled Young’s. Upon being apprehended, his clothing, though trampish in appearance, proved to be new. He was said to have “a look of refinement about him which does not become the clothes he wears.” “The nervous condition of the man is such that it would appear that he is on the verge of collapse, and he is restless in a most exaggerated degree.” It was thought by the arresting officers that Young had a gold tooth, which they looked for, but “instead was a hole in the gum where a tooth had been extracted quite recently.” In the same article, Captain Titus insisted that in the police descriptions of Young “no mention of a gold tooth was made. Young has no gold teeth.” His pockets were full of red pepper. A packet of red pepper, it was discovered, was found in the trunk sent to Chicago as well.

  As more details surfaced about how Young spent his time after the murder, the motivation for the crime began to seem more complex to Captain Titus:

  “All this is certain. After buying the clothes in which he was clad when he hired the rig in Hoboken, he must have spent some more money, including what he paid the liveryman. While he was pawning the jewelry and getting the buggy, the body of his victim was resting in his bedroom closet, covered with blood. By all who saw him during his preparations for the disposal of the body, it is stated that he was very calm and collected. A man who could stroll around without excitement while the woman he had killed lay in his apartment must have been a hardened and deliberate criminal.”

  THE CRIME DELIBERATE

  Capt. Titus said he had come to the conclusion that not only the motive of robbery entered into the crime, but that the murder had been deliberate.

  “I argue,” said the Captain, “that, if robbery had been the only motive, Young might just as well have carried the woman into insensibility. When he carried her to his flat, he knew he would have to kill as well as rob….”

  Joseph Pulitzer insisted, though it had not been mentioned in earlier interviews, that just a few hours prior to her disappearance, his wife had been accosted by a man resembling Young who proposed that she visit his apartment. How Pulitzer knew this or why he wasn’t troubled by it remained unclear.

  More importantly, according to Mrs. Pulitzer’s parents, the murdered woman had known Young for nine years. There were some hints made suggesting that she had followed Young north to Jersey City and then to New York.

  The man disguised as the tramp at first denied he was Hooper Young, claiming instead to be Bert Edwards until the police brought him into contact with an athletic instructor who knew Young, Mac Levy:

  “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…. It was then that the man admitted for the first time that he was William Hooper Young.

  When questioned about his guilt, Young answered cryptically, “Yes and No,” and “hinted at the existence of an accomplice in the murder,” though at this stage he would not identify an accomplice by name, nor would he quite admit to having been involved in the crime. He failed to give any account for his movements since leaving his flat after the murder, nor would he give the police any information as to his whereabouts during the time the body of the woman remained in his room.

  Once Young was caught, the full and complete contents of the trunk sent to Chicago could be revealed.

  When they raised the lid the first thing that came in 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 bag 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 … three pairs of men’s old shoes, Young’s trousers and coat, vest, and undershirt … some red pepper, a hairpin, a bent safety pin … 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.

  Young’s father, in Paris, sent a cable urging Young to cooperate, promising to stand by him if he did so. He engaged a lawyer, William F. S. Hart, who expressed the opinion that if Young were guilty he “was certainly insane. He did not think him guilty, however….”

  A newspaper from Portland, where Young had once lived, suggested, “Young seemed to be a man who was easily influenced, and his friends say it was always possible for him to be led into anything, if inducements were offered. He was very studious and carried a Bible with him all the time. He was very fond of discussing religious topics and, when not at work, was to be found reading Biblical literature.” The Seattle Chief of Police telegraphed New York, saying that Young was wanted on two charges of forgery.

  Rudd’s eyes had begun to hurt. He stood up, stretched his arms, headed for the door. Lael kept reading, paying no attention to where Rudd was going. Rudd left the reading room, walked down the hallway until he found a drinking fountain. He stood pressing the button, the water bubbling out, waiting for it to get cold.

  When he got back, Lael had taken his chair. He had flipped forward to the next day, the ne
xt article. Rudd sat behind him, read over his shoulder, squinting sometimes to make out the words.

  Young Says Another Did Actual Murder

  Protests He Tried to Revive Mrs. Pulitzer After Crime

  … “About three weeks ago I met a man named Charles Elling in Central Park. He accosted me. We talked and got 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.