The charges against Grace for operating a dance hall without a license were dismissed in the First District Court. The court said that she was not running the hall for profit so there was no charge to pursue. Grace told the court that she would apply for a license right away even though she was still convinced she didn’t need one. She told a reporter from the New York Times that Ruth’s body had been found in Captain Gargan’s precinct. Most people knew what she meant, though some actually said it. “Apparently the police never forget or forgive,” wrote Richard Spillane in Commerce and Finance. “No Camorra or Mafia is more vindictive. They will ‘get’ Mrs. Humiston yet,” Spillane wrote. “That is, unless there is enough decency at Police Headquarters to stop it.”
Grace was also working on opening a similar club on Long Island called the Castle, but the local Beechhurst community voted against it. She had a series of properties financed by her sister Jessie and hoped to rekindle the Be Kind Club as the Grace Club, but securing a permanent location—always a problem in New York—remained an issue. Grace went to suppers and book clubs and still gave talks. And she was still practicing law when people came to see her. She wrote essays for newspapers. But she was, in the public eye, much diminished. But Grace never stopped. Located at 7 Manhattan Street, the original Be Kind Club, before Gargan shut it down, was just around the corner from the old motorcycle shop where Ruth Cruger had died. By trying to help the girls in that same neighborhood, Grace was perhaps still working that sad old case, long after Ruth had gone.
22
The Witnesses’ Revenge
Three years to the day that Ruth Cruger disappeared, the Honorable Joseph F. Mulqueen in the Court of General Sessions in New York heard the last testimony in the case against Alfredo Cocchi for the crime of murder in the first degree. It had been three long years. And no matter how much anyone involved barked to the press or the government, they all knew that Cocchi wasn’t coming back to New York. They were surprised they thought he ever would. The only good news was that the trial was finally going to resume in Bologna. Or so they were told. For three years, Cocchi had been sitting in jail—but free of sentence or threat of extradition. And with this new trial, he had the possibility of actually going free.
So much had changed in New York, as it always did. Woods was long gone; he was now a full colonel in the army. Edward Swann was hanging on as the district attorney, but the Tammany bosses were trying to push him out. Swann had tried, numerous times, to get either his assistant, Talley, or Maria Cocchi to go to Italy as his proxy. Swann thought that if he had an ironclad witness, this nonsense would finally end. But although officials in Italy assured Maria of her safety, the U.S. government could not. No matter what officials promised, Maria Cocchi was terrified that, after her husband’s story, she would be detained in Bologna for murder. Swann knew that part of his job was to explore Maria Cocchi’s role in the events of that murderous day so long ago.
Swann looked at the request from Italy for the depositions of witnesses named by Cocchi.
Swann didn’t know what Cocchi’s plan was—and he wanted no part of it—but he also knew that providing the depositions might be the only way to assist the case. He began trying to find all of the named witnesses and schedule them into the Court of General Sessions to give their testimony. He tried to locate and organize all the documents of the case, but they had been spread across many different departments. With all the overturn in personnel, some of it was missing altogether. Swann found what he could and sent it all off to Italy. It would never return to America. And then, when he was done, Swann set about answering the new questions from Italy. He was going to do his job, even if no one else cared. Even the papers would become jaded, wondering if “perhaps our grandfathers will be able to tell us something about that ancient crime.”
Swann hung his hat on humanity. The new forensic sciences of his profession were certainly persuasive, but Swann believed in good old-fashioned testimony. “The very essential of justice,” Swann said, “is the veracity of the witnesses. Without it the true facts cannot be ascertained, and there can be no such thing as an even handed administration of justice.” Swann knew that it was now up to the very people involved in the case to put Cocchi away for good—or tell the truth at last.
Swann first interviewed Edward Fish, who had been the subject of much scrutiny three years ago. He was now a salesman for the Goodyear Tire Company. At the time Cocchi owned his cycle shop, Fish stored his motorcycle there. Fish said Cocchi and his wife fought frequently, but only in Italian, which he didn’t understand. Fish’s fiancée of ten years, Elizabeth Mitchell, repeated the same thing, and told stories of them all riding together on motorcycles in the free air of the country. Elizabeth was friendly with Maria but admitted that Maria never confided in her about any domestic troubles. She stopped and thought for a moment.
“The only subject of our conversation I recall was about her baby,” Elizabeth said. “She seemed to me to be very much interested in her children.” Helen Beck, another new witness on the list, said the same thing. She and her husband, John, had lived in the same house as the Cocchis on 75 Manhattan Street.
“Did you help secure an abortion for Maria?” Swann asked, referring to Cocchi’s claim that she had.
“It is untrue,” Helen said. “I never secured a physician on any occasion for Mrs. Cocchi.” Helen said that the first time she had spoken to Mr. Cocchi was when Mrs. Cocchi returned from the hospital after giving birth to Georgette. Helen visited her and the baby at home to help and got to know them and the boy, Athos. Mrs. Cocchi never made any complaint.
“So far as I was able to observe,” Helen said, “Mrs. Cocchi was a faithful and devoted wife and a good mother. She was an exceptionally good housekeeper and always kept her home in a clean condition, and was always interested in the care of her children.”
Since the first trial, Swann’s investigators had found a record that Cocchi and his wife had consulted with someone at the court of domestic relations on September 24, 1915. The probation officer they saw was named Rose McQuade. Though her memory was fuzzy, McQuade’s notes revealed that the couple had been fighting. On McQuade’s advice, the Cocchis agreed to return home and live together. In her notes, McQuade wrote that “no formal complaint was made by the wife against the husband.”
“I am unable to say whether or not she is the same woman,” McQuade said, “because of the lapse of time, and the fact that I have interviewed many thousands of women in similar cases since that time.”
Swann was confident that he had enough testimony to refute Cocchi’s claims about neighbors and secret abortions. But there were a few people left to talk to. When Cocchi’s trial had been suspended three years ago, one of the reasons was the enigmatic letter from J. J. Lynch, whose letter to the Italian court during Cocchi’s original trial ground the proceedings to a halt. Swann found him easily.