Talley let the boy off the stand. He had heard enough. He thought of him playing in that basement, alone and unaware.
As the grand jury hearings proceeded, Grace was in court for some other matter. She had just filed an injunction against the Universal Film Manufacturing Company for their newsreel “Woman Lawyer Solves Ruth Cruger Mystery,” which included views of Grace on the day Ruth’s body was found. The newsreel was part of the Universal Animated Weekly series that ran before most feature films. When Grace saw it, she was furious. The particular portion of the film that Grace objected to was a still photograph, used alongside ordered story cards, that told the news of Ruth’s body being found.
Judge Ordway ruled that Universal Animated Weekly was not entitled to the protection afforded a newspaper, which could use any outdoor photo without permission. Instead, the court ruled that the exhibition of moving pictures was a business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit. The judge ordered the newsreel pulled pending the trial of the action, in which Grace asked for $100,000 in damages for the unauthorized use of her picture.
Ordway concluded that Grace had the right to object to the unauthorized use of her picture because she was not “the commander of an army, a visiting Ambassador, or even a public official, but a private citizen entitled to be protected in her right of privacy.” Grace appreciated the irony. Grace could sue because she was a private citizen, although her newfound celebrity was pushing those limits. Her image and name were now in the paper almost every day. A wire story noted that “the newspapers are full of her: lawyers, philanthropists and policemen are making reputations out of her.” Grace was eventually awarded $2,500 in damages.
Just as Grace’s star was rising, so too was the name of her right-hand man. Frederic J. Haskin, a reporter who wrote a syndicated information column, asked Kron—“the one man who has probably put more time and thought on the missing girl problem than any other person”—for an exclusive. According to Haskin, Kron had been “barely mentioned” in the accounts of the case, even though his “originality of method and variety of adventures make him a fair candidate for Sunday newspaper publicity.” Kron defied easy categorization: he wasn’t an Arbuckle or even a Watson. He was more than just a sidekick.
The story that ran on Kron had none of the lavish illustration that Grace’s did, but its portrayal of the detective as a “five feet four, Hungarian, and modest” man who led an “intensely practical life” helped fill in the missing pieces of the mysterious investigator. “When Mr. Kron sets out to solve a crime,” the story said, “he not only goes back to the very beginning of the incident but to the very birth of the criminal.” He traced Ruth Cruger’s history from the day she was born. Mr. Kron wasted no time on theories concerning a false sweetheart. He knew that he “was on the track of a criminal mind of the worst order.”
Kron said that the case began to crack for him when he found two men who told him that on two successive midnights in February they had seen Cocchi lope out of his cellar, his clothes black with dirt. Kron knew right then where he had to look. He had seen this type of monster before. A few years ago, the chief of police in Budapest called Kron back home to help solve a horrific murder. Kron sailed over the Atlantic to a small kitchen of a farmhouse, where a woman had been found with her throat slashed. Her thirteen-year-old daughter was missing. By the time Kron arrived, the girl’s father had gone mad. Kron’s search of the house revealed something shiny lodged in the crevice of the stoop of the door. It was a single American dime. Kron also found a handkerchief in the kitchen stove. It was covered with blood. The make of the bandana was American.
Kron found an American working as a barkeeper in a village not thirty miles away. When Kron stepped into the bar that night and saw the man, nervous and looking over his shoulder, he knew instantly that he would have his confession. Gaining his confidence, Kron heard the American confess that he had been a former employee on the farm and had been infatuated with the daughter. He had known her since she was a baby.
When the American tried to carry the girl away, the mother screamed. So he killed her. When the girl resisted, he killed the girl. The American buried her small body in the big Hungarian woods. Kron stepped away and phoned his friend, the chief. Together, they excavated the girl’s body that night. Kron didn’t tell the reporter what happened—or what they did—to the American.
When Kron returned home from Budapest, he was contacted to help with a similar case in New Jersey. The police had captured a German American, whom they believed murdered a little girl in a lonely stretch of trees, but, try as they might, they could not construct a strong case. Kron assumed the personality of a man of the underworld who was very rich but something of a fool. Kron befriended the suspect and began throwing his money around. They lived, ate, and dined in the same places. Kron soon knew the whole life of this man, all except the murder, which he scrupulously avoided as a topic of conversation. Kron had a longer game in mind. He hired an Italian to stand by a certain tree in the stretch of woods where the girl’s body had been found. Kron told the German that the Italian man had been saying things about him. The German seemed nervous, so Kron offered to take care of it for him. They crept up on the Italian. Kron took out his revolver and shot the Italian dead. They fled the woods.
The next day, Kron showed the German copies of the newspaper that said an Italian had been murdered in the woods. The German, moved by Kron’s help, finally confessed to the murder of the girl. He didn’t know that there was a Dictaphone in the next room. When the police stepped in, the German realized his betrayal.
Kron had used blank cartridges, a dummy newspaper, and patience to send this killer to the New Jersey electric chair.
“There are born criminals and those who are made so,” Kron told the reporter. “The born criminal is the man who carefully plans his crime; the made criminal is one who commits it in a moment of passion.” Kron never had sympathy for the former, but he could sometimes feel it for the latter.
After the Cruger case was solved, Donnelly made Kron manager of the detective agency. He was proud of his man, but he also recognized an opportunity when he saw it. Their ads in the New York City directory were updated to reflect the change: