The Open Curtain Page 6

  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 again, then watched Lael’s eyes flick back and forth until he had finished as well. He cranked forward a day.

  Young, unable to face the trial, had managed to have proceedings delayed a day, and sought to have them delayed further. Hart, his lawyer, begged for delay “on the grounds that his client was physically unable to stand the strain of the trial.” The Court Coroner, recruited as a physician, examined Young and declared him too ill to leave his cell. Justice Herrick, after another examination by another doctor, ordered Young to attend.

  Young was literally dragged into court, between two Deputy Sheriffs. He appeared to be in a state of great physical weakness, and seemed to have aged at least twenty years since the time of his arrest last September. The deathly pallor of his features was in pronounced contrast to the long, shaggy black beard which he had grown while in prison. Had it not been for his luminous brown eyes the face would have resembled a death mask more than anything else. He wore no collar, and his linen and other clothing were in a state of neglect. When he was taken to the chair at the table of his counsel, he collapsed and fell forward.

  After a further examination by eight physicians, the Justice decided the trial would proceed. At first Young “sat in various attitudes of dejection and at times his head swayed weakly from side to side. But after the proceedings began in earnest, he seemed to brighten up and take interest in what was going on about him…. He scanned each talisman called with manifest care and regarded each juror sworn intensely.”

  By the following day, his appearance seemed further improved. “His hair was combed, his beard had been trimmed, and he wore a collar. But he still shows signs of great weakness,” and “Once in the afternoon session he wept.”

  Yet the reason he looked good was only because he had been dressed by the combined efforts of three prison guards. Indeed, when they first arrived he had not been dressed at all; “they found him crawling about his cell on all fours,” searching for a rabbit’s foot.

  By the following day he had assumed “an attitude of dull dejection … his head resting on the table before him and his face buried in his hands.”

  On February 10, only six days after his trial had begun, it was over.

  YOUNG ADMITS HIS GUILT

  Confesses Murder in the Second Degree and Gets Life Sentence

  Justice Herrick Advised his Counsel to Enter That Plea—Man Medically, But Not Legally, Insane

  William Hooper Young, who has been on trial before Justice Herrick in the Criminal Branch of the Supreme Court for the murder of Mrs. Anna Pulitzer, yesterday pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree. […]

  Young looked like a changed man when he entered court yesterday morning. For the first time he walked by himself up to the table of his counsel, where he pulled his chair into position and sat down. His eye was clear, he bore his head erect, and he looked like a man from whose mind a great burden had been rolled. All in the court room wondered over his altered appearance. […]

  After the whispered conference, Clerk Penny of the court called the defendant to the bar. There was a brief silence when he entered the room and then Justice Herrick ordered the prisoner to stand up.

  “Young,” said Justice Herrick, “I understand that you want to recall your plea of not guilty and enter a plea of guilty of murder in the second degree?”

  Young stood up, clutching the railing in front of him with both hands. He seemed calm and unperturbed. Prompted by Mr. Hart, he said something which the Justice construed into an assent.

  “Do you desire to be sentenced now?” asked the Justice.

  “There is no occasion to comment on the heinousness of the crime you have committed,” said Justice Herrick then.

  “You are aware of the penalty for your crime. The sentence of the Court is that you be taken and confined to State prison at hard labor for the term of your natural life.”

  Young sank back in his chair. There was an expression of relief on his face. He soon was taken away, and as soon as the doors leading to the prison pen had closed on him, Justice Herrick made his explanation to the jury.

  “It is only right,” said Justice Herrick, “to tell you gentlemen that the court advised the defendant’s counsel to tender this plea, and that the court also advised the District Attorney to accept it. The man’s mental condition was the cause for the action taken. You are aware that this man has been under medical observation. The experts reported this man legally sane, but insane from a medical point of view. He therefore is supposed to know the difference between right and wrong and should be held responsible. But as his insanity has been reported to me as being of the progressive order, it is difficult to tell where one line merges into the other.”

  7

  Elling, Hooper Young had named his accomplice. Lael believed Elling existed, so he now claimed, but Rudd still did not: Elling was a figment or an excuse—there was only Hooper Young.

  “If he existed, they would have found him,” said Rudd.

  “They found Young only by luck. Besides, if you have one man in custody, certainly involved, why admit to the press a second man, not in custody, is also involved? It just complicates matters.”

  “Hooper Young was avoiding responsibility for—”

  “—he was trying to share responsibility with the other person involved. People never act alone. They always drag others along with them.”

  “You have no evidence—”

  “—neither do you.”

  “I’ve got the district attorney.”

  “I’ve got Hooper Young.”

  “He’s biased.”

  “So’s the attorney. And both of them are not only biased: they’re dead.”

  They had hardly argued before, Rudd always giving in, but now for some reason he found himself unwilling to back down. Thinking it over later, he couldn’t understand why it mattered to him to insist that Young had acted alone. Even when, ten days after reading the articles, Lael claimed to have found among the microfiche of genealogical records at the church library one Charles Elling, of Connecticut, born 1840, excommunicated 1898,
no death date recorded, he continued to argue.

  “That would make Elling sixty-three at the time of the murder,” Rudd said.

  “It’s still possible.”

  But Rudd would not admit it. He could not imagine Hooper Young being accosted in the park by a sixty-three-year-old deviant, then somehow, despite the difference in age and (at least putatively) in sexual orientation, making friends with the man. He could not see a rheumy-eyed sixty-three-year-old, his hand gnarled and liver-spotted, bashing Anna Pulitzer’s skull hard enough to kill her.

  “Sixty-three isn’t so old,” said Lael. “And the paper said the blows were weak.”

  “It’s old.”

  “Depends on the man,” said Lael. “At least admit it’s possible.”

  But Rudd would not admit, and the more he refused to admit, the more interested Lael seemed to be in forcing an admission from him. Lael got closer and closer to Rudd, looking into his eyes steadily until Rudd broke the gaze.

  “You’ll admit,” said Lael. “Sooner or later. You always do.”

  He started writing his research paper, despite Lael’s warnings not to do so. According to Lael it was a mistake: Mrs. Madison would read Rudd into it.

  “What do I have to fear?” asked Rudd. “She can read me into it all she wants: I’m not there.”

  She would treat him differently, Lael said, would ask him how things were at home, would look at him strangely. Eventually, he himself would become different as a result.

  “You don’t even know her,” said Rudd.

  Lael shook his head. He knew enough, he said. He knew how people were.

  Rudd shook him off, wrote his pre-paper summary. He wanted to prove to Mrs. Madison that his glass was half-full. It was simple, a research paper, all he had to do was develop a topic, formulate a few questions, let words accrue. He did not have to present conclusions, just summarize and, to a limited degree, interpret. It was just to prove he could do research.

  It took him a few hours to pull the summary together. As he did so, he felt he was somehow missing everything that had seemed so clear in his head when he had been reading the articles.

  “The Murderous Existence of William Hooper Young” by Rudd Theurer

  For my decade I chose the 1900s and the year 1903 but some of this happened in 1902 too. The most important part in fact (the murder). My heritage is Mormon (LDS) SO I decided to research something LDS (Mormon). For a place I chose New York because that is a city with a lot of mystique to it. I did not choose a hero because I do not have a hero. I leave that kind of thing to others. I do not want you to think William Hooper Young is my hero because he is not.

  In 1902 William Hooper Young was involved in killing a woman named Anna Pulitzer and dumping her body into a drainage canal. The body was “nude and lying in slime.” I said “involved in killing” on purpose: certain people think that he might have had some help from someone named Charles Elling. I do not believe Charles Elling existed. Neither did the New York Police (the murder happened in New York even though the body was found in New Jersey). The whole story is described in the New York Times in 1902 and 1903. That is my source. (Mrs. Madison: If you would like dates and page numbers for this summary let me know. Otherwise I will save them for the paper.)

  With the body was a hitching weight, something used on wagons with horses. It had a “curious” mark on it. The body had a bashed-in skull and a gash near the waist. The strap for the hitching weight was wrapped around the waist. The police started asking around at the rent-a-horse places to see if somebody had brought a horse back without a “peculiar” hitching weight. That was how they figured out who did it. The person who did it was William Hooper Young. He liked to go by Hooper Young. They searched his apartment and found bloody sheets and pools of blood in a closet. Young sent Anna Pulitzer’s clothing to Chicago along with a bloody knife and some other stuff, some bloody, some not.

  Hooper Young knew the police were looking for him so he hid up in Connecticut as a tramp. He got drunk and filled his pockets with red pepper, which he was planning to throw into the police’s eyes if they ever came after him. He never did get a chance to throw that pepper. When the police caught him he pretended he was not Hooper Young. Even after people who knew him said he was, he still said he wasn’t but then finally admitted he was.

  In court, he kept breaking down. They said he was insane but not legally insane. Everybody was confused. He agreed to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. Nobody knows what happened to him after he was put in prison.

  Rudd read it over, made a few corrections.

  “What are you writing?” his mother wanted to know.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It wouldn’t interest you.”

  “Come on, darling,” she said. “It wouldn’t hurt you to share your life with me.”

  He stood and in a state of agitation began walking all about the room, the two loose pages pressed against his chest, words facing in. His mother stayed in the doorway, leaning slightly against the frame.

  “It’s a paper,” he said, “for school. Satisfied?”

  “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” she said. “Can I see it?”

  “You mean, may you see it?” he said, and rushed past her and out.

  He meant to recopy it but ran out of time and ended up turning in the rumpled handwritten sheets, smoothing them out by drawing them taut along the desk edge, as if they were the strop for a razor. When he finished they curled slightly. Mrs. Madison smiled when she took them.

  Yet the next day as class was beginning, she asked if he would speak with her afterwards. There was a matter they needed to discuss.

  “But I have wood shop,” he said. “Rotkin. Can’t be late.”

  “It won’t take long,” she suggested.

  He sat through class, hardly listening. She was speaking about the next stage of the research paper, he vaguely gathered. Now that you had a summary you had to think about how to make an argument. What is an argument? she asked. An argument is where you argue for or against something. Circular logic, he thought, but even as he thought it she had begun to rephrase: An argument is where you are for or against something.

  What am I for or against? Rudd asked himself. What do I feel strongly about? Nothing really, or not much. He felt strongly about his mother, but it is one thing to feel strongly about something and another thing to know what you actually feel. To say that feelings are strong says little about what the feelings are. He could not say that he hated his mother or that he loved her, the feelings were far too jumbled for him to be able to sort them out so easily. This must be true, he tried to convince himself, with anything you care about.

  When the bell rang, he gathered his backpack and started to leave, and then remembered and waited fidgety near the door, ill at ease, not quite sure how to stand. He tried putting his backpack over one shoulder, then held it hanging from one hand near his waist. Mrs. Madison was talking to Jenny Kindt but seemed to be trying to break away from her.

  I will give her until the count of ten, he told himself, and then I will leave.

  But when he had finished counting he instead shifted his weight to the other leg, let his loose hand toy with the hem of his shirt. By twenty, Mrs. Madison had stopped talking, was moving things about on her desk, cheeks slightly flushed.

  What would it be like, he wondered, to be Hooper Young and look at a woman and know you intended to kill her?

  He looked immediately away from his teacher, searching for other objects to occupy his attention. A desk, the straps of the backpack biting into his hand, the weave of the puke-colored carpet, What am I for or against?

  Unless Young didn’t know, he thought. Unless he didn’t know he would kill her until she was already dead.

  He shook his head, dizzy. If you didn’t know for certain what you might do in advance, you were capable of anything. There was nothing solid to you. He asked himself what he was for or against again and considered some tentative answers, but they were all
so general and vague that they rang hollow. Hooper Young had not been for or against anything: he had been “easily influenced.” There was nothing to Hooper Young and nothing to me, he thought, and knew that Lael’s belief in an actual Elling was safer, less dizzying. But Rudd couldn’t convince himself that Elling existed, not really, unless Elling was a part of Hooper Young. Which was at least as bad, for who was to say who else was hidden in the folds of your brain, waiting to worm their way out? Better at least to think there was volition, that Young had known beforehand, maybe even that he had killed her to prove something to himself. Better still: believe he had plotted and planned the killing for years.

  But he could not believe it.

  “I’m worried about you, Rudd,” Mrs. Madison claimed. “Concerned.”

  He looked at her with dull eyes, stared at her prim mouth.

  “This summary,” she said. “You’ve not exactly chosen a savory topic.”

  Savory? he thought. “No,” he said. “But I did get three of my four areas.”

  “Don’t you have a hero, Rudd?” she asked, and he flicked his eyes up long enough to see her eyebrows crease with slight pity. It hurt him. “No one? Boys who don’t have heroes end up in trouble.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Everybody needs a hero,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “This,” she said, and he realized she was waving his summary in his hand. “This, this Young fellow. What interests you about him?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I worry that he’s becoming a hero of sorts for you.”