As a result of his conversation with King, Whitman appointed George H. Bond to conduct a special investigation into the original murders. King eventually confessed (again) that he and O’Connell were the murderers. Newton, too, was found to have promised Stielow a special role in law enforcement if he signed his confession. The most persuasive piece of evidence though was a report that concluded that although Charlie had a working command of about 150 words, his signed confession used 369. Grace had known this all along. When she first met Charlie, she listened to his words carefully and realized how few of them there were. Stielow and Green received full pardons from Governor Whitman on May 8, 1918.
The Stielow case was so popular in the press that Hollywood filmmaker Lois Weber tackled the story in her 1916 movie The Celebrated Stielow Case, which she rushed to finish in order to sway public opinion on the case. In the film, an uneducated farmhand faces execution for a murder many believed he did not commit. After finishing the film, Weber submitted it to the National Board of Censorship. They asked that all references to Stielow be eliminated in favor of the more generic “John Doe.” Weber agreed, and the film appeared in theaters less than a week after Stielow’s death sentence was commuted. The film was considered the most influential work on the death penalty of its time in terms of its ability to start conversation and generate opinion and argument.
Grace had gone back to New York City after Charlie’s sentence was first commuted to life. She agreed to consult on the governor’s report, but she was not worried about the outcome. She had more pressing concerns in the city.
A girl had gone missing.
9
The Manhunter of Harlem
June 1917
Grace Humiston stood in the street on an early summer morning and looked up at the Metropolitan Motorcycles shop. Grace didn’t know if Ruth Cruger was alive or dead, but she had a feeling that this place held the key to answering that question. She just didn’t know how. Grace was still wearing black, even in the summer. Certain lines had come to her face these days, but that’s not what she was thinking about. Her eyes were dancing around a new kind of mystery. She remembered the words she had said upon taking the case. That long-delayed rest and vacation would have to be postponed yet again.
Grace craned her neck and took in the tall glass windows that ran almost ten feet high across the front of the store. They were framed in dark wood. The white lettering read MOTOR CYCLES STORING on the left and AUTO SUPPLIES on the right. There were tin signs for Mobil Oil that hung still in the early heat. A single globe lamp hung off a pole in front of the entrance. A huge billboard for graham crackers—as big and long as the shop itself—rose off the roof and into the bluish sky. On the sign, a boy was crunching happily away, frozen in time.
Cocchi’s shop was only a story tall. The building to the right was double that. People there had already begun peeking out of windows to see what new commotion the Italian’s shop had brought to Harlem. A man in white pajamas with his hair combed over and a mustache watched from under his own heavy window, hunkered down on his elbows. His wife joined him, a mug of something in her hand. They half watched and half chattered. The inside of Cocchi’s shop was dim behind the smoked glass.
Since Grace had joined the Cruger case, it had stalled to a slow, frustrating stasis. The police were confident that Ruth had simply eloped. Most agreed that, given the scrutiny that Ruth’s character was receiving in the press, she was probably just too embarrassed to come home and announce her happiness to the world. Cocchi, though probably a dodgy character, was no killer. He had only left town because he feared an Italian witch hunt with his name at the end of it. The papers, having reported on every single cockamamy clue, had now focused their attention elsewhere. The massive headlines about the war in Europe had edged out everything else onto the next page.
So there Grace was at the store, walking by without trying to look too obvious. Since the store had been broken into several weeks ago, Mrs. Cocchi had refused all interior searches, as was her right. Grace’s eyes darted under her black hat to note the details of the world around her. The store was open but looked empty. There were two signs in the window that said MECHANIC’S HELPER WANTED and SELLING OUT. Cocchi’s absence had clearly caused business to plummet. On the outside, to the left of the front door of Cocchi’s shop, was a narrow stairwell that sank into the ground and served as a separate entrance to the basement. Grace walked near these stairs as unobtrusively as possible to get a better look. The area in front of the basement had a dirt floor and was older, a different color even, than the ledge under the windows. Here was an elevation of about four feet, behind which was the coal vault under the sidewalk.
Grace knew, like it or not, that all of the evidence they had—all of it—was circumstantial. The police had searched the cellar at least twice with multiple people and found nothing but absence. The rest was gossip and headlines. Why was Cocchi missing? Because he had taken the girl? Because he had been spirited away by the same fiends who had taken poor Ruth? Or because he was afraid of becoming a scapegoat? Was there any kind of clue in the paperwork here that would tell them where Ruth had gone? Or who had taken her to a cab? These questions couldn’t be answered yet. But they needed to be asked.
Grace paused, considering the possibilities. Perhaps Ruth and Cocchi were the happy couple in this after all? That was a possibility, whether Henry Cruger cared to admit it or not. Grace did not, at least not yet. That version of the truth seemed remote given the facts of the case. When she was hired in March, the first thing Grace did was to lock herself in her office for a straight week to study every scrap of paper related to the case. The second thing she did was hire Julius J. Kron.
Kron, her comrade in arms from the old peonage days, was now also in the city, working as a private detective with the Martin Donnelly Detective Agency. When Grace contacted him, Kron was wrapping up a case in Detroit. He immediately boarded an eighteen-hour midnight train straight to New York City. The next night, Grace and Kron had dinner at the luxurious Hotel Manhattan on Madison and Forty-second. Kron wore his customary checked dark wool; Grace, her usual black. They picked up menus that claimed “Food will decide the war,” just as they tried to decide between city staples of clam cocktail Manhattan, clear mock turtle soup, or rice pudding. There was also deep-dish apple pie with cream, served on flat plates.
There, among the white tablecloths, high-backed chairs, and palms, the two partners, now older, talked business, just like the old days. She called him Kronnie. He called her Mrs. Humiston, without any hesitation. Grace told Kron everything she had so far. He was the only one she did that with. “I want you to meet Mr. Cruger, the girl’s father,” Grace said, between sips of tea. “He is a mental and physical wreck. If this isn’t solved soon, he’ll be in a sanitarium.”