Mamie Cunningham.

(New York Journal, May 31, 1896.)

On the morning of Memorial Day, May 30, 1896, Mrs. Annie Cunningham had to go to work, while her 13-year-old daughter, Mary (known as Mamie), was home from school for the holiday. Mrs. Cunningham asked Mamie if she planned to go to the parade. Mamie said no, she wasn’t interested, and she planned to do housework and study. At 8:30, she said goodbye to her daughter; it was the last time she saw her alive.

Their four-room, first-floor flat at 315 E. 37^th Street, in New York’s Tenderloin district, was well furnished, “with a good taste somewhat unusual in the tenements of the extreme East Side.” Annie Cunningham, a 37-year-old widow, was the caretaker for the building, which included nine other flats.

13-year-old Mamie was quite attractive and considered as mature as someone three or four years older. She was five feet four inches tall, weighed 112 pounds, had dark hair, dark eyes, and a clear, rosy complexion. Mamie had many admirers but no sweetheart. Domestic in all her tastes, she had a notably religious temperament. She regularly attended St. Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church and was a pupil of its private academy. In her bedroom, Mamie had a shrine to the Virgin Mary.

Mrs. Cunningham returned from work at around 2:00 on the afternoon of May 30. She called out for Mamie but received no response. She went into her bedroom, saw that the bedclothes had been tossed about, and feared that burglars had been in the house. Calling again for Mamie, she ran into her daughter’s bedroom. As she crossed the threshold, she stumbled over a dark object and fell to the floor. Groping in the dim light, she soon saw she had tripped over Mamie’s body. When she could not revive her daughter, she ran into the hallway and shouted in alarm.

A crowd of tenants gathered in the hall. One woman ran to summon a doctor and another to summon a priest. They both arrived too late; Mamie was dead. Her face had been brutally bruised and battered, and a towel was tightly wound around her throat. She had been beaten and strangled to death. The doctor confirmed what everyone could see: Mamie had been murdered.

Francis P. Ferrell, who lived on the fourth floor, ran to the E. 35^th Street Station House ran to inform the police. Detectives Becker and Purfield were sent at once to the house, followed quickly by Captain Martens, Inspector Brooks, and three more detectives. By the time they arrived, a great crowd had gathered around the building.

In Mamie’s bedroom, the furniture and bed sheets were in disarray, her shine to Mary was destroyed. The evidence showed that she had bravely fought her attacker but could not escape the violence. Both eyes were blackened, and her throat was bruised by a man’s hands before the towel was applied. There was hardly a spot on her body that was not bruised.

(New York Journal, May 31, 1896.)

Outside, a tall, unkempt man in the crowd started walking away, when some of the tenants recalled seeing him in the hallway when the crime was discovered. The crowd called for his arrest, and when he heard them, he started running. He ran several blocks before an officer caught up and arrested him.

At the stationhouse, he gave his name as Edward McCormack, a 40-year-old laborer, who lived on W. 30^th Street. His aunt lived on the second floor of the house where Mamie was killed. He said his wife was dying of consumption and he had gone to see his aunt, hoping to borrow some money.

When arrested, McCormack had stains on his shirt that appeared to be blood. Inspector Brooks subjected McCormack to a severe examination, then took him to the murder scene and compelled him to look at the body of the dead child. He did not show any unusual emotion. Although there was no evidence against him, McCormack was held in custody.

The police worked on determining the way the killer had entered the flat. The kitchen door had been locked when Mrs. Cunningham returned that afternoon. They discovered that the west window blind of the kitchen had faint marks, and one of the staples that held it closed had broken and fallen to the flagstones beneath the window. The police believed the killer had entered through the kitchen door and left through the window. From there, he descended to the cellar door, which the police found unlocked. He then went into the cellar and left through the door on 37^th Street.

Mrs. Cunningham told the police that Francis Ferrell had a key that fit both the kitchen and cellar doors. She said she once found him in the cellar and asked where he got the key; he said he had filed down an old key and made it work.

(New York Journal, May 31, 1896.)

The police arrested Francis Ferrell. In addition to being the person who summoned the police, Ferrell was the last person to see Mamie alive. He said he left for the barbershop at 9:45 that morning and met Mamie as she was scrubbing the floor at the foot of the stairs. When he returned, she was gone.  He didn’t see Mamie or hear anything until he heard the screams in the hall when the body was found.

Ferrell had the key in his pocket when arrested. Inspector Brooks asked where he got it, and he said Mrs. Cunningham gave it to him two years ago.

“But she says she didn’t,” said the inspector.

“I can’t help that,” responded Ferrell, and then added, “I suppose she wants to hang somebody, but I tell you, Captain, I know nothing about Mamie’s murder.”

The police held both Ferrell and McCormick on suspicion, though there was little evidence against either.

On June 2, the police brought in a witness who had been telling his neighbors stories about witnessing the crime. 15-year-old Joe Morreno worked in his father’s coal and ice dealership. On May 30, a little girl came into the store and ordered ten pounds of ice to be delivered to 315 E. 35^th Street. When he tried to make the delivery, he found he had the wrong street, so he went to other houses, trying to find the customer. When he went to 315 E. 37^th Street, he heard a noise in the Cunninghams’ flat. The kitchen door was unlocked, so he poked his head in. He saw Mamie on her knees, her clothes torn and disordered, tears streaming down her face. A man was leaning over her, tying and knotting a piece of cloth around her neck.

The man saw him and exclaimed, “What in the hell do you want here!”

The girl, half choked, found her breath and cried, “Murder.”

He ran home and started telling people about it.

The police walked Morreno through the cells to see if he could identify the man. He singled out Edward McCormack as the man he saw strangling the girl. They held Moreeno as a witness. 

At a hearing before City Magistrate Crane on June 3, Francis Farrell was discharged. There was no evidence against him, and the court believed his alibi. Morreno told his story in court, and McCormack was held without bail. The police had faith in Morreno’s story but some of the newspapers were skeptical. They thought his story was a little too perfect and his knowledge of the Cunningham flat was too detailed. They thought he might be after some dime-novel notoriety, or perhaps was the assailant himself.

On June 9, another young boy, 16-year-old Rocco Celiano added further complications to the case. Celiano, a bootblack at Police Headquarters, told reporters that the police had hired him to spy on Joe Morreno. He became an inmate at the Gerry Society detention rooms where Morreno was being held. They spoke to each other in Italian, and Celiano got Morreno talking about the crime. He first said he saw McCormack kill the girl, but later he confessed that he did it. Celiano pressed him for more information.

“Well, I killed the girl,” he said, “but I won’t tell you why I did it or how I did it.”

Celiano said he made the story public because the police refused to pay him for his services. The police denied ever hiring Celiano to spy on Morreno, but the damage had been done. Now no one believed either of Morreno’s stories, and he was later indicted for perjury. Also, chemists determined that the stains on McCormack’s shirt were rust, not blood. The flimsy case against Edward McCormack had completely unraveled. After seventeen days in jail, McCormack was released.

Soon after, the police had a new suspect. John Meier, a young barber, was caught attempting to assault 5-year-old Lillie Lambert in a building on First Avenue, about a block from the Cunninghams. His employer said he worked all day but was away between noon and 1:00. Meier was held on $500 for assaulting the child.

The police did not arrest Meier for Mamie Cunningham’s murder, but after receiving some new evidence, they rearrested Francis Farrell. Several tenants of the house said they saw Farrell talking with Mamie on the rear porch as late as 11:30. Another saw them together in the hall at 11:45. Farrell had said he was at the barber shop at that time. Additionally, Mrs. McCormack, who believed Farrell was guilty, told Inspector Brooks that, sometime before the murder, Farrell had been caught taking liberties with Mamie. The police said they had more evidence against Farrell that they would not disclose. From the hints they gave, the New York Sun inferred that Farrell may have paid Morreno, to testify against McCormack.

The trial of Francis P. Farrell began on June 20, 1898, more than two years after the crime. In addition to the circumstantial evidence against Farrell, the prosecution called two penmanship experts who testified that a number of anonymous letters sent to police and other officials were written by Farrell. The letters offered to give information about the murder in exchange for money.

The most moving testimony came from Farrell as he described how the police abused him while trying to elicit a confession. They took him to Mamie’s room and made him kneel before the shrine of the Virgin.

“You are a Catholic,” said Detective McCafferty,  “Get down on your knees and confess.”

McCafferty kept shouting, “Are you going to confess?” and Farrell said he had nothing to confess.

“By God,” said McCafferty, you’ll be tried in a chair, and a current of electricity will be put through your body, and your finish will be a pine box in the pauper’s cemetery.”

They showed him Mamie’s bloody clothes, tied the bloody towel around his neck, and said they were going to choke him. They finally shoved the towel into his mouth. Mrs. Cunningham came in carrying a carving knife. They said they would let her kill him for revenge. Instead, she threw a dish of water over him and slapped his face.

The jury took the case on June 24, 1898, deliberated for several hours, then, around midnight, they sent word that they were unable to agree on a verdict. It later came out that the jury stood 8 to 4 for acquittal, but the holdouts refused to give in. The District Attorney concluded that there was not enough evidence against Farrell to warrant a second trial. The court refused to dismiss the indictment but allowed Farrell to be released on $1,000 bail.

No one else was ever tried for the murder of Mamie Cunningham. As the New York Herald wrote, “Some murders won’t out.”

While the police were investigating Mamie Cunningham’s death, three other women were murdered in the Tenderloin, and the cases all remained unsolved. At this point, neither the police nor the press considered the possibility that all four were killed by the same person. In June 1896, The New York Harald compared the strangulation of Mamie Cunningham with that of Minnie Weldt in the same neighborhood two years earlier. “Is there a Jack the Strangler?” they asked. By the end of the century, there were eight unsolved strangulation cases in the Tenderloin, and the newspapers were ready to answer the question with a resounding “Yes.”

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Sources: 

“Another Suspect Now,” The World, June 11, 1896.
“Child Victim of a Strangler,” Journal, May 31, 1896.
“Cunningham Murder Trial,” The New York Times, June 21, 1898.
“Cunningham Murder Trial,” The New York Times, June 23, 1898.
“Did He Murder Mamie?” Sun, January 17, 1897.
“The Farrell Jury Disagree,” New-York Tribune, June 24, 1898.
“Farrell out of the Tomb,” New York Herald, June 28, 1898.
“Farrell Pleads Not Guilty,” New York Herald, January 19, 1897.
“Ferrone Still a Prisoner,” New-York Tribune, September 11, 1896.
“Joseph Feroni a Burglar,” New York Herald, June 14, 1898.
“Later Developments,” Windham County Reformer, June 5, 1896.
“Marreno to Plead Monday,” The World, June 19, 1896.
“Money for the McCormacks,” The World, June 26, 1896.
“Mrs. Cunningham Excited,” The New York Times, March 23, 1897.
“Police Views on Recent Crimes,” New-York Tribune, September 5, 1896.
“Put on the Bloody Towel,” New York Herald, June 23, 1898.
“Said He Killed Mamie,” The World, June 10, 1896.
“Some Murders Won't Out,” New York Herald, September 21, 1898.
“Star Sang to Prisoners,” The New York Times, February 8, 1897.
“Too Wicked for God to Spare,” journal., June 1, 1896.