"Diamond Flossie" Murphy.

"Diamond Flossie" Murphy.
(New York Journal, March 18, 1898.)

Flossie Murphy was a flamboyant character, notorious in the demi-monde of New York City’s Tenderloin. She had a fondness for diamond jewelry, which she wore conspicuously, earning her the nickname, “Diamond Flossie.” But when she was found on the floor of her room on April 22, 1897, with a rope tied around her neck and all her jewelry gone, the coroner ignored evidence of theft and murder and ruled her death a suicide.

Diamond Flossie was born Flossie Reilly in Albany, New York, and had come to New York City six years earlier. She lived at 228 W. 24th Street with her common-law husband, Alexander Frederick Murphy, taking his last name. The police knew Diamond Flossie as a woman of the street and a thief. She was arrested in March with her friend Ida Carr for picking the pocket of one William Bishop. They returned the money, $80, and Bishop withdrew the charge.

She was addicted to opium, and, on the night of the murder, Mr. Murphy prepared a pipe for her before going out. The last thing she said before he left was that she was planning to meet the Dutchman at the corner of 27th Street and 7th Avenue.

Murphy left the house at about 9:00 and went to a saloon on 29th Street, where he played pinochle until the saloon closed at 1:00. He walked home and was surprised to see all the lights were out and that the lower lock, instead of the upper one, had been locked. He went inside and struck a match for light, but did not see Flossie until he lit a lamp. She was lying on the floor with a rope tied tightly around her neck, and the other end was fastened to a bedpost. Her features were distorted from the effects of strangulation. The room had been ransacked, and all her jewelry was gone.

As with the strangulation of Hannah Altman, seven months earlier, the husband ran screaming into the street after 1:00 a.m. In this case, however, instead of crying “murder,” Murphy shouted, “Robbers! Robbers!” as he rushed toward a pair of policemen standing nearby.

As he led Officers Lonergan and Menken back to the flat, Murphy explained that his wife was dead and at least $1,500 worth of jewelry was gone. They conducted a hasty investigation and called an ambulance, which took her to St. Vincent’s Hospital. The ambulance physician failed to revive Flossie, but she had not been dead long.

Detective Devine arrived shortly after the policemen and examined the body. From the arrangement of the rope, he concluded that Flossie could not have committed suicide, but whoever tied the rope to the bedpost had intended to leave that impression. The knots around her throat and the bedposts were half hitches, which Devine thought would not naturally be tied by a woman. The half hitch, he said, was more commonly used by circus men and those connected with the maritime industry. 

Alexander Murphy, who worked as a bartender, had previously been a stevedore and would be acquainted with the knot. Murphy showed more concern for the robbery than the murder, arousing further suspicion. Witnesses saw Flossie at the Newmarket Dance Hall that night and said she left with a man. Some said she went home with Murphy. Captain Walsh and Detective Devine questioned Murphy again and decided to hold him on suspicion. He protested his innocence and declared he could produce an alibi.

At around 4:00, on the day the body was found, Coroner Tuthill investigated the apartment and interviewed the detectives. He concluded that Flossie Murphy had committed suicide. She hung herself after learning that her jewelry had been stolen. Tuthill was satisfied that Murphy had accounted for his time before the death. At the time, the police did not share this opinion. Murphy was arraigned and held without bail at the House of Detention.

By April 24, most members of the Police Department concurred with the coroner and were convinced that the death was a suicide. Alexander Murphy was released on bail. Detective Devine reversed his opinion and agreed it was suicide. There was no sign of a struggle, which would have occurred had someone else strangled Flossie. 

“The rope was tightly drawn,” said Devine, “but she could have accomplished the work by first tying the rope to her neck, then to the bedpost and dropping down on the floor, permitting the weight of the body to do the rest.”

Joseph Reilly, Flossie’s brother, who arrived from Albany on April 24, disagreed. Detective Devine took him to Flossie’s flat, and he thoroughly examined the furnishings. He did not believe the suicide theory and explained why:

If that light was out, she did not commit suicide. She never slept in a dark room, nor would she stay in a dark room from her earliest childhood. It would have been impossible to keep her here unless the lamp was lit. She would not have stayed in her rooms under those circumstances any more than I would walk out of the front window. It looks like a case of murder. The man who strangled her passed through the dining room door after unlocking the lower lock, and either turned or blew out the lamp before going downstairs. I cannot agree with the suicide theory if the lamp was not lighted.

 The newspapers also preferred the murder theory. The New York Journal believed that the murders of Annie Bock, Hannah Altman, and Flossie Murphy, as well as attacks on Pauline Barnett and others, were perpetrated by the same man. This theory got a boost on May 12, when Mrs. Barnett identified her attacker.

(New York Journal, March 16, 1897.)

On May 11, Pauline Barnett was seated on a Central Park bench with her husband and mother when she saw the man who had robbed and nearly murdered her. He saw her at the same moment and started running across the park. After a spirited chase, Policeman Donnelly ran him down and took him to the stationhouse. He gave his name as Joseph Talt. The police later learned that he was Jacob Tolker, a peddler from Philadelphia and a Russian by birth. He had a swarthy complexion and an athletic build.

The Journal reported that Mrs. Barnett’s discovery of her attacker was not just a fortunate accident; she had been working with the police since her attack, trying to find the man responsible. Accompanied by plain-clothed detectives, she went to concert saloons, steamboats, parks, and theatres looking for the face she remembered so clearly.

“Hoping against hope,” said the Journal, “they went out upon their quest, day after day. At last, in Central Park, Mrs. Barnett saw the dark face with its terrible, haunting blue eyes—eyes which in themselves told of cruelty. She knew the broad shoulders, the deep, square chest. The whole burly figure was familiar, and, pointing her finger at him she screamed, ‘That is the man!’”

Jacob Tolker, the Supposed Strangler.
(New York Journal, May 14, 1897.)

The police photographed Tolker and handed copies to detectives who showed them to associates of previous victims. One witness, Jennie Friedman (aka “Crazy Jennie”), swore Tolker was with Pauline Barnett on the night of the assault. After intense questioning, Tolker confessed that he was with Mrs. Barnett but had not intended to rob her. There was a dispute, he said, and she attacked him. He caught her by the throat and held her until she released him. He took his hat and went out, leaving her on the bed. He denied taking any of her jewelry.

On May 13, another woman was attacked in her room. Two men threw a rope around the neck of Fannie Vogel, and she fought for her life until something spooked the men. They ran from the building only to be captured by two private citizens, one of whom sustained a knife wound in the process.

The attempted murderers, James Fitzsimmons and Henry Weiss, were interrogated separately in the Essex Market Prison. Fitzsimmons, 19, an Irishman with a thick brogue, had been in the country for two years. He met Weiss in Boston when both were advertising agents for a patent medicine company. Before coming to New York, they served three months in prison for robbery.

Fitzsimmons said he had never been to the Tenderloin and did not know any of the murder victims. The police did not believe him and immediately suspected Fitzsimmons and Weiss of Diamond Flossie’s murder.

According to Fitzsimmons, Weiss suggested that they get a woman alone and chloroform her. They did not intend any robbery, implying that they meant to rape her. After obtaining the chloroform they walked around the city until they ran across Mrs. Vogel. 

“We did not try to strangle her,” said Fitzsimmons, “we did not have any rope, and we did not use any knife.”

Henry Weiss, “low-browed, hollow-jawed, eyes too near together to be pleasant,” said it was Fitzsimmons who suggested using chloroform. Neither could account for the stabbing if they had no knife, and neither could account for the knotted rope on the floor of Mrs. Vogel’s room.

The police were now trying to link all the murders to the work of a gang of stranglers. A witness swore that Tolker was with Annie Bock two hours before her murder. The description given by Bock’s servant of the man who came in with her that night exactly tallies with that of Tolker. Tolker knew Hannah Altman, Annie Bock, and Minnie Weld, and so did Weiss, said the New York World.

Though they did not report it at the time of the murders, the New York World claimed that the scent of chloroform lingered at the murder scenes. The odor of chloroform clung to the handkerchief tied around Minnie Weldt's neck. The smell of a drug was also perceptible in Hannah Altman’s room. Frank Murphy declared that when he bent over Flossie’s body, he noticed a faint, sweet odor, not that of opium. 

The World was also ready to accuse this gang of stranglers, Fitzsimmons, Weiss, and Tolker, of strangulation murders not just in New York, but throughout the country:

In the cases of Bertha Paradis, Mary McDermott, and Mrs. Wilson, in San Francisco; Lena Tappen and Marie Coustasort, in Denver; Mary Ekhart, in Cincinnati, and Josie Bennet in Buffalo, there was the towel or the handkerchief or rope with the odor of drugs and the slip-knot under the left ear. In every case, there was a suspect answering the general description of Talt.

Stranglers and Stranglers' Victims.
(New York World, May 14, 1897)

But with the alleged gang of stranglers in custody, the attacks did not stop. In October 1897, Sadie Miller was escorted home by a young man she had met in the Tenderloin. Next morning, she awoke with a splitting headache and found she was missing a pair of diamond earrings, two diamond rings, a gold watch, a brooch, and $85 cash. 

Paul Bauer.
(New York Journal, March 21, 1898.)

While dining out on November 12, Sadie Miller saw the man who robbed her and reported him to the police. They searched him at the stationhouse and found in his pockets three small empty bottles that smelled of chloroform, a fourth which contained three ounces of chloroform, a small sponge, and a book filled with addresses of young women. He said he was George W. Duval, a 24-year-old salesman, but made no other statement.

His real name was Paul Bauer, and he was from Newark, New Jersey. The New York Journal said he looked like a student. “He is a long-haired, bespectacled youth of the type that infests Broadway with tin horns on the night of an intercollegiate football match or boat race. Yet he has been twice convicted of burglary and confesses to having chloroformed and robbed at least one woman of loose character.”

Bauer was of German extraction and spoke with a German accent. Recalling Diamond Flossie’s last words, that she was going to meet the Dutchman, and considering Bauer’s modus operandi, the police considered him a person of interest in her murder.

Jacob Tolker was convicted of second-degree assault for his attack on Pauline Barnett and sentenced to a maximum of five years. Henry Weiss and James Fitzsimmons pleaded guilty to strangling and robbing Fannie Vogel and were sent to the Elmira Reformatory. Paul Bauer was sentenced to seven years and seven months for robbing Sadie Miller, with an additional ten years for having “knockout drops.” Not one of them was convicted of any strangulation murders.

The prosecutors had no interest in pursuing the Diamond Flossie case. In July 1897, Coroner Tuthill heard testimony from Detectives Perkins and Devine as well as Flossie’s husband, Alexander Murphy, and decided that it would not be necessary to hold an inquest. He concluded that his initial assessment was correct; Diamond Flossie Murphy had committed suicide. The case was officially closed, but the police still brought up Diamond Flossie whenever a new suspect was brought in, and the newspapers always included her with the victims of  Jack the Strangler.

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Sources: 

“"Diamond Flossie" a Suicide,” New York Herald, July 14, 1897.
“Annie Bock's Slayer Caught?” New York Journal and Advertiser, May 13, 1897.
“Chloroformer and Jewel Robber Confesses One Crime,” New York Journal and Advertiser, November 14, 1897.
“Darkness Sheds Light on Death,” New York Journal and Advertiser., April 24, 1897.
“Disorderly Flat Raided,” New York Herald, November 22, 1897.
“Dubal's Victims in Court,” New York Evening Journal., March 21, 1898.
“Found Murdered in Her Room,” Watertown Daily Times., April 22, 1897.
“Gang of Stranglers,” The World, May 14, 1897.
“George Bauer Indicted,” New York Journal and Advertiser, November 20, 1897.
“Her Slayer is Still at Large,” New York Journal and Advertiser., April 23, 1897.
“Jewels and Chloroform,” sun., November 13, 1897.
“May Know of the Bock Murder,” New-York Tribune, May 14, 1897.
“May Know of the Bock Murderer,” New-York Tribune, May 14, 1897.
“Murder in New York,” Evening Bulletin, April 22, 1897.
“Robbing Women on the Street,” Evening Post, May 13, 1897.
“The Strangler's Victims - All Women,” New York Journal and Advertiser, May 14, 1897.
“Supposed Murder a Suicide,” New-York Tribune, April 24, 1897.
“A Tenderloin Beauty,” Reading Eagle.. April 22, 1897.
“Twenty Years On Three Sentences,” New-York Tribune, April 1, 1898.
“Two Popes Wore the Lost Stole,” New York Herald, May 16, 1897.
“Victims of Mysterious Strangler,” New York Journal, March 18, 1898.