“She is not the kind of girl who would stay away from home without letting us know of her whereabouts,” Henry said. She had just gone out to get “a pair of skates attached to a pair of tanned shoes,” he said. “She wore a long velour coat.” Repeating it acted as a tonic on his unquiet mind. As he read it, he wondered what man out there might help him.
By Friday afternoon, anyone who read the papers—or even looked at the front page on the cold city streets, layered with streetcars and motorcars—knew that Ruth Cruger was the Harlem girl who had disappeared. The New York Times headline on February 16 read PRETTY GIRL SKATER STRANGELY MISSING. People all over the city read the story and shook their heads. The photograph spoke for itself. When Henry finally got home that night from walking the streets, looking and studying every face he could, he heard his wife crying in the other room. He had to find this driver.
The next day, Saturday, a short dark-haired woman walked up to the Fourth Branch detective house. She walked quickly, her body set against the cold as she led a small boy in a heavy coat that covered everything but his wide eyes. The woman carried a bundle of something in her arms. It was noon. She entered the building and proceeded to the main desk. She uncovered her head to reveal medium-length hair. She then announced that her name was Maria Cocchi and that her husband, Alfredo, who owned a motorcycle shop in Harlem, was missing.
3
The Coroner’s Cabinet
March 4, 1905
A policeman and a doctor approached the wooden building that tilted off the corner of the street. They crouched as they moved forward in a half run. There was a general store on the first floor, its door shut. There were jars in the windows. They saw the stairs leading up the side to the second floor. As they got closer, they could see the white paint curling down the sides. The steps rattled as they walked up.
The door was half open, so the men pushed their way in. They stepped into a small apartment consisting of two rooms filled with only a few sticks of furniture. In an old rocking chair beside the living room window, a man sat with his back to them. His legs were crossed and a briar pipe dangled in his right hand. The men walked around to get a better look. His chin rested on his chest. A dark line of blood ran down his forehead and onto his white shirt.
“Sonta,” the cop said.
Everyone knew that name in Kingsland, New Jersey, in 1905. Joseph Sonta was one of the small town’s first settlers and its richest citizen, though no one really knew what he did. Sonta had nine children who rolled over him like water whenever he came home from his long days spent playing cards and drinking wine in a back room somewhere. At the same time, he seemed to protect a single coal of anger burning in him at all times. He was a padron with a belly laugh that everyone recognized. Kingsland had been his domain for ten years. Now, he was dead in a rocking chair after someone had shot him twice in the head.
The policeman looked around as the doctor’s hands floated over Sonta’s body. This was not Sonta’s home; it belonged to an immigrant named Giovanni Tolla. Like many Kingsland residents, Tolla had come to America by writing to Sonta from Italy and enclosing some money. A year later, Tolla; his wife, Antoinette; and their two small daughters, Catherine and Mary, arrived in New Jersey on the promise of work. The young couple, both only twenty-four, were very poor but were well liked in the little town. Antoinette, a good mother and wife, was very religious. She had brown eyes and dark brown hair and was very beautiful.
After leaving the apartment, the men approached the small crowd gathered outside and asked them questions. The crowd smelled like cigarettes. Everyone had the same story: They had seen a woman running down the middle of the street from Tolla’s house with a gun in her hand, shouting, “Gli ho sparato!”
When the cop asked about those words, someone told him it meant, “I shot him.”
“I shot him,” Antoinette Tolla had said, as she had run down the street.
She didn’t get far. They found her with friends, collapsed and hysterical. Sheriff James Mercer, of Bergen County, took her into custody and locked her in the Hackensack jail, since Kingsland didn’t have one. It was March 4, 1905, the day of Teddy Roosevelt’s second inauguration. A few days later, as Antoinette sat in her cell, the spring term of the grand jury heard the facts of her case.
“The first case of homicide of which I will speak,” said Justice Garretson, “is that of the woman alleged to have shot a man while sitting in her home. The evidence shows that she came into the room behind him, secured a pistol and shot him in the head. If these facts be proven, you must indict for murder.”
Within three hours, the grand jury indicted Antoinette Tolla for first-degree murder. Two weeks later, she faced trial before the exact same judge. The prosecution’s job was fairly easy. Sonta’s son Rocco, age six, claimed to have been there and was brought forward as a witness. He said that his father and Mr. Tolla had been talking quietly when Mrs. Tolla crept up behind him and killed his poppa. Several of Antoinette’s neighbors testified on her behalf. Some reached the stand only to start sobbing. Others just shrugged their shoulders. None of them spoke English. A local student served as their interpreter, but many feared that the young man didn’t seem to know what he was doing. After a witness would become animated and flash their hands for several minutes, the interpreter would deliver a few sentences in dull, uninspired tones. He fumbled over words and tenses, facts and beliefs.
When it came time for Antoinette’s defense, she took the stand and faced the court. She said that she was sad that she had shot Sonta. She told the interpreter that she had only shot him because he had threatened her honor. Sonta had been hounding her for months, Antoinette said, even in front of her husband. But since Sonta had brought them here to America, her husband was afraid to defend her. Antoinette looked down at her lap. She said that she had appealed to Mrs. Sonta for help, and she told Antoinette to buy a gun.
“To frighten him,” Antoinette said.
At about 1:30 on the afternoon of March 4, Sonta had arrived at the Tolla household unannounced—as usual. Antoinette’s husband was half asleep on a trunk in the living room. At the sight of Sonta barging in, big and drunk, Mr. Tolla jumped up and left in a fit of anger. Antoinette watched her husband leave.
“Why does Giovanni always leave when I come in?” Sonta bellowed, jokingly upset as he collapsed into his favorite rocking chair.
“It’s on account of your coming,” Antoinette said, facing him. She told the interpreter that Sonta then seized her and pulled her into his arms. He held her against him and kissed her. But she bit his hand and managed to escape to the other side of the room.
“I’m going to have you even if I have to kill your husband,” said Sonta. His eyes were devoured by drink. “I’ve got a gun here in my pocket,” he said, “and I mean to have you this afternoon.”