Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

After Grace came down into the basement to see the girl she had never met, she went back outside, her head in her hands. People took her picture. Henry Cruger had just arrived with Reverend Pattison and came up alongside Grace. He looked in her eyes. One of the diggers walked out of the store and held out his hand to Grace. Inside was a small wristwatch. Grace gave it to Henry. He glanced at it once, turned it over, and read the inscription on the back. He then gave it back to Grace. He whispered something to Pattison, who nodded. Then Henry turned away silently. His shoulders were drooping. As he disappeared against the grain of the crowd, he seemed barely able to walk. He had eyes, but it seemed he could no longer see.

When the late evening editions hit the street, the newspapers reported on the tragic end of the mystery. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle on June 17 ran the story that was being repeated across the country.

RUTH CRUGER’S BODY FOUND IN COCCHI CELLAR

The body of Ruth Cruger was found yesterday afternoon buried under a wooden flooring at the extreme rear end of the cellar, where Cocchi’s work bench stood. A score of police detectives had raked the cellar over a dozen times without finding it. The discovery was made by J.J. Kron, a private detective employed by Grace Humiston.

A big wooden chest containing tools was found to be fastened to what appeared to be the dirt flooring. The dirt, however, covered a wooden flooring; to this the chest had been fastened. When the boards were pried up, Kron and Detective Frank McGee of the Fourth Branch detective bureau, who was left on the case after the other detective had been sent to other work, saw a pit three feet wide and about six feet deep. Kron jumped in before taking a good look, and then discovered that he had landed upon a body, very much decomposed.

The body was that of a girl. It was bent nearly double and the arms and legs were folded over the torso and tightly bound with rope. The skull had been crushed, as if by a hammer blow, and a towel was twisted around the neck.

The coroner removed the body, pressed several dozen witnesses into duty, and held an inquest at the nearest police station that lasted into the night. Further identification of the body was confirmed when her hat was found in the grave and pointed out by her mother at their Harlem apartment. They found a policeman’s uniform as well, though it seemed old. They found Ruth’s ice skates, stained dark with blood. An indictment charging Alfred Cocchi with murder was returned by the hastily summoned grand jury. Testifying were Lagarenne, McGee, Helen Cruger, Peter McAntee, and Dr. L. L. Danforth, the Cruger family physician.

Maria Cocchi was detained as a material witness. Before being taken into custody, she was allowed to go back to her home on Manhattan Street to get clothes and see her two children, who were left in the care of neighbors.

“I am amazed to learn of the discovery of the body of the missing girl in the cellar of my husband’s shop,” Mrs. Cocchi said. “If he killed her, he was not alone in the crime. He is too much of a coward to do anything like that by himself. I hope they bring him back here and if he is guilty I want to see him punished.” The police then took Mrs. Cocchi’s young daughter, who was ill, and placed her in a city facility. When Maria finally broke down, it was because of that fact: “My children’s father is a murderer,” she said. That night, a cable was sent from Police Commissioner Woods to Italy.

It contained two words:

HOLD COCCHI.





12

A Second Guess

“They should have found that body,” Mayor Mitchel said, almost to himself. He turned to face the crowd in front of him. “It is regrettable that the police did not find the body at the time they made their first search,” he said, more loudly. “When a police officer searches premises and there is something that is to be found there and ought to be found and they fail to find it, there is no excuse. They should have found it,” the mayor repeated. The newspapers were reporting that this was just the tip of the iceberg.

“Mrs. Humiston, they say, had some tip,” a reporter said. “Why wasn’t it possible for the police to get that same tip?” “I don’t know,” replied the mayor. “It may have been possible. Perhaps the officers assigned to the case did not do their work well enough.” Someone else brought up Grace’s latest claim in the papers that she knew of at least twenty-two other girls who were missing in the city. It had come out in the paper that Captain Dan Costigan had also searched the shop with his men—but nothing.

“I do not know what girls have disappeared,” the mayor admitted. “If their cases have been reported to the Police Department they will be on record there.”

“Do you think it calls for a shakeup in the detective department?”

“I don’t express an opinion as to whether it calls for that or not,” Mitchel said. “That is one of the things which diligent inquiry on the part of the Police Commissioner, which is now under way, will develop.”

From his own perch at Command, Arthur Woods knew that he had to choose his next actions carefully. Like Mayor Mitchel, Woods could only look on as the press denounced the men under his command. People were calling for Woods to be fired. Grace had been right this whole time, thought Woods. Cocchi had taken the girl. Woods shook his head.

Woods called in Inspector Joseph Faurot. He was the detective who had sent the handsome Hans Schmidt, a priest, to the chair in 1906 for killing his pregnant housekeeper and cutting her up into slippery pieces. Woods ordered Faurot, who had been mastering the new science of fingerprinting, to do an in-depth, very public investigation of any police wrongdoing in the Cruger case.

“Spare no one,” Woods growled.

The sad body of Ruth Cruger had been found, but there was still a chance to make some kind of amends. Woods knew that justice for Ruth Cruger would not happen without a great deal of work and luck. For one, they needed physical evidence that Cocchi had killed her, though no one was doubting that anymore. No one knew if Cocchi had even been arrested yet. Woods feared that he might have already fled Bologna. The possibility existed that Cocchi had even gone off to war, in which case they would probably never see him again. Cocchi could be lying in a pile of flowers somewhere in France, with dirt in his ears and mouth. Woods also got in touch with the district attorney, Edward Swann, to see if the case had any connection to the traffic in white slaves. They had the body, but there was much they didn’t know.

Swann kicked the grand jury into action, which he selectively populated with several Italian delegates to avoid community backlash. Swann had been appointed by special election the previous year. He was a Tammany man, tied to the political machine named after the three-story brick building on East Fourteenth Street where Democrats had smoked victory cigars on election night since 1830. But Swann was new to the politics of the city and was also eager to prove himself. He had helped Henry Cruger earlier in his investigation, and now he was eager to do more.

*

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