Kate Scharn.

Kate Scharn.
(New York American, August 20, 1900.)

It had been more than two years since a murder was reported in New York City’s Tenderloin district, but on August 20, 1900, the pattern was all too familiar. A young woman was found murdered in her room after 1:00 a.m. No one heard a sound. Her jewelry was stolen. A variety of men were suspected, but with very little evidence against any of them. Kate Scharn was the latest victim of “Jack the Strangler.”

Jack Scharn returned home at 1:00 a.m. on August 20, 1900, to the second-floor apartment at 674 2nd Avenue, which he shared with his sister Katherine. He tried his key, but it didn’t work because the door had not been locked. This was the first indication that something was wrong; his sister never left the door unlocked.

Inside the apartment, he struck a match and saw some bundles from Bloomingdale’s on the table. On the floor by the side of the table, he saw his sister’s hat and the floor littered with hairpins. He went into Kate’s small bedroom and saw that she was not in bed. At his feet, he saw her lying face down on the floor. She was fully dressed in a white shirtwaist, a blue tailor-made skirt, blue striped stockings, and low shoes. Her hands were crossed behind her back.

Kate was clearly dead. Her skin was cold, and her face was bloody and almost unrecognizable. Fred staggered to the rear window and screamed, “murder!” A woman who heard him said that he simply ejaculated murder as one would get rid of any exclamation of surprise.

The apartment was above the drugstore of Dr. W. H. Tyler, who owned the building. Fred ran down 2nd Avenue to Dr. Tyler's home on 34th Street. It is unclear why he did not stop at the 35th Street Police Station that he passed on the way. He rang the bell of Dr. Tyler’s flat, and the janitress, Mrs. Lawlor, came to the door.

“I must see Dr. Tyler,” said Fred, “My sister has been murdered.”

When Mrs. Lawlor told him the doctor was not in, Fred fainted. Mrs. Lawlor and her friend Mrs. Curlley revived Fred, and he took them back to his apartment. The ladies confirmed that Kate was dead, then all three went to the police station and reported the murder.

The murder took place within a block of the flat where Mamie Cunningham was strangled four years earlier. As with the Cunningham murder, no one in the building heard a sound as the crime was committed. Dr. Tyler was a witness in the Cunningham case.

(New York American, August 20, 1900.)

Roundsman O’Rourke went to the house to investigate. He found that Kate had been hit on the head with a hammer, which was lying by her side, covered with blood. Two rings and a gold watch the victim wore were missing, as was all her money. Near the body was a blue mask, such as was worn by dominoes at masquerade parties. Stiff pasteboard covered the eyes and upper face, and below that was a curtain of cloth to hide the mouth and chin. Some believed this was left by a thief, but the police did not see theft as the motive and told the press that no thief in his senses would ever use such a mask.

Fred Scharn.
(The Evening World, August 24, 1900.)

At daylight, a dozen detectives were assigned to the case. Fred Scharn was taken into custody and forced to tell his story over and over. He had been at the home of his girlfriend, Nettie Kubin, in the Bronx. He left around midnight, got home at 1:00, and found the body. The police verified his story and, at this point, were satisfied that he was not home when his sister was murdered.

Katherine Scharn wore spectacles and appeared to be a timid, shrinking girl. She worked at the Eagle Pencil Factory on 14th Street and was sometimes visited by friends from the factory, but did not make friends with the girls in her neighborhood. 

The detectives, however, learned that Kate Scharn was living something of a double life. To people in the neighborhood, she was a hardworking girl who was in bed early every night and off to work early every morning. But, over in the Abbey, a cheap concert hall on 8th Avenue, “she was well known as a young woman who took life as it came in the Abbey and was quite gay about it.” 

Her favorite among her many suitors was Lincoln Price, whom she did not meet at the Abbey. He was a bank clerk who lived in the Bronx. His real name was Louis Lincoln Isenpries. He changed it to Price for “commercial reasons.” They met when Kate was 19 and still living in the Bronx with her parents. She and Jack moved out because they could not get along with their stepfather. According to Fred Scharn, his sister was engaged to Price. He had given her several rings, which she wore on her left hand. He also had a key to their apartment.

In a dresser drawer, Kate kept letters that men had written to her. They had been disturbed; some were read and not put back in the envelope, as if someone had rummaged through them looking for a particular letter. They included letters from men requesting meetings with Kate, and the detectives went looking for their authors.

Louis Lincoln Price.
(New York American, August 24, 1900.)

Among Kate’s letters, the police found several from Price. One that interested them had the lines, "Are you mad? I think you love another." The police arrested Price on suspicion, and he told them of their plan to meet on Saturday:

I met the girl first about four years ago, and have known her ever since. We used to meet quite often, sometimes at her flat and sometimes at the 'L' station at 166th street and 3rd avenue. I wrote her a letter on Friday asking her to meet me at the 166th Street Station at 7 o'clock on Saturday night. I was there at the appointed time, but she did not appear. I waited about fifteen or twenty minutes and then went away. I wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity of her house on Saturday night, nor did I see her any place.

The police now suspected another of Price’s girlfriends. She was an employee of the pencil factory who, maddened by jealousy, allegedly declared that someday she would kill Kate. The woman was on vacation, and the Police would not release her name until they could question her.

The detectives traced Price’s movements on Saturday night. He left his job at the bank at 4:05, took the Elevated Train to 161st Street, and went into Joseph Corbett’s Saloon. He left there at 7:25, telling the barkeeper he had an appointment with his girl. On his way to the 166th Street Station, he purchased three roses for Kate. At the station, Price waited 20 minutes for her, then returned to the saloon. He gave the roses to the bartender, saying, “Kate has stood me up.”

Nettie Kubin verified Jack Scharn’s alibi. They had planned to meet up with Price and Kate, and the four would go out together. When Kate did not show up, Jack stayed at Nettie’s house. The police were still holding Jack Scharn and Lincoln Price on suspicion, but they had no promising leads. Captain Shire told The New York Times:

It is a puzzler, sure enough. No one in that house heard a sound, and so far it has been hard work to get a line on it. The detectives are hard at work, and we hope for good results. What theory are we working on? We are working on all theories just now. All that we know is that a crime has been committed, and it is now our duty to find out the guilty person and secure his conviction.

Kate drew her pay at the pencil factory that morning but told her employer she was too sick to work. She spent her morning cleaning the flat. Neighbors heard her sweeping, dusting, and hanging out portieres on the fire escape before noon. From the unopened parcels on the table, the police knew that Kate had gone shopping sometime that afternoon. The parcels contained pillow slips, towels, bolster covers, stockings, and some lace. At Bloomingdale’s, detectives succeeded in finding the saleswoman and two salesmen who had waited on her. They were taken to the police station, where they recognized the goods and, from a photograph, confirmed Kate Scharn as the purchaser. The articles were sold around 4:00 on Saturday.

The salesclerks said that Kate was accompanied by a well-dressed man about 25 years old, who paid for some of the articles. The police showed them photographs of Lincoln Price and Jack Scharn and said they did not in any way resemble the man who was with Kate. He wore a blue suit, they said, and they provided additional identifying details. The newspapers referred to him as the “Man in Blue.”

The police hoped to link the “Man in Blue” to another clue they found. On Saturday, Kate received a special delivery letter with an appointment to meet later that day. The police believed she kept that appointment instead of her appointment with Price. They also thought the sender was the man who accompanied her shopping.

(The Evening World, August 24, 1900.)

The “Man in Blue” story proved to be complete fiction when Kate’s friend and workmate, Fannie Burke, told police that she was shopping with Kate on Saturday and no man was with them. Both drew their pay that morning and decided to spend the afternoon shopping. They purchased some items at Bloomingdale’s, and when they left the store, Kate said she was going home.

Searching Fred Scharn’s room, the police found a pawn ticket for a watch, possibly Kate’s stolen watch. They recovered the watch, brought the pawnbroker to the station, and he identified Fred as the man who had pawned it. However, it was not Kate’s watch. On the inner case was inscribed “Annie.” The watch belonged to Annie Kehoe, who lived on the same floor as the Scharns. Someone sneaked into her room on August 1 and stole it from her bedroom. She was sure Fred Scharn took it, and so were the police.

The police also found a valuable package of ivory that had been stolen from the piano factory where Fred used to work. He was discharged for dishonesty. Inspector Harley said, "If young Frederick Scharn did not murder his sister, I am satisfied he knows who did kill her. He is a liar as well as a thief. From the first, he has done all he could to obstruct our investigation. I am sure he knows much more than he has told."

The police recovered two rings from a pawn shop and showed them to Fred to see if they were Kate’s. But Fred had retained an attorney who forbade him from saying anything to the police. The attorney filed a writ of habeas corpus to release Fred from the murder charge, but the Grand Jury indicted Fred for larceny, allowing the police to continue holding him. His attorney said, "He was arrested for murder in the first degree, indicted for larceny in the third degree, and I suppose they're trying him for dog-catching in the third degree.” 

Lincoln Price’s past was coming to light. He had been married before and had been arrested for choking his wife. Twelve years earlier, he married Nellie Mann. After the birth of their baby, she began to drink, and they quarreled frequently. She stayed out all night and neglected the child. Nellie had him arrested after their most heated quarrel, but he denied strangling her. One night, she moved out, and he was glad to be rid of her. They separated but never divorced. 

When contacted, Nellie Price said, "As to whether my husband ever attempted to strangle me, all I have to say is that we disagreed and separated. You can let Mr. Price do all the talking. My friends know me and what I am. I have no hostile feelings against Mr. Price, whatever.”

Lincoln Price's former girlfriend, Julia Lang, the factory girl who allegedly threatened Kate’s life, returned from vacation. After interrogating her for several hours, Detective Sergeant Weld said that Miss Lang was engaged to a respectable young man and had been eliminated as a suspect in Kate’s murder.

The New York Journal offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the person or persons guilty of the murder of Katie Schran. The newspapers continued to dredge up mystery suspects, but the police were satisfied that the killer was her brother Fred.  

The New York Times said:

The ado over Scharn murder case indicates pretty clearly that the sensational newspapers in this city are hard put to it for "sensations" of that particular kind...Sad as it is, this brutal killing of a poor girl whose manner of living seems, to say the least, to have been careless, is but an ordinary crime in low life, and its mystery is likely soon to be solved.

While they were right about the sensations, the mystery was not soon solved. The police were ready to go to the Grand Jury for a murder indictment, but Assistant District Attorney McIntyre said if he presented the evidence found so far, he would be laughed out of court. The inquest was postponed several times. When it was finally held in October, the jury found that Kate Scharn had come to her death by asphyxiation and strangulation at the hands of some person or persons unknown. Fred Scharn and Lincoln Price were both released.

Kate Scharn’s murder was the last unsolved case to be attributed to New York’s “Jack the Strangler.” The New York Journal, which had always been the strongest advocate of the single strangler theory, pointed out that since 1894, seven strangulation murders and one attempted murder occurred on the East Side, within a few doors of 2nd Avenue. 

“It is not difficult,” said the Journal, “to construct a hypothetical 'Jack the Strangler' who prowls up and down Second Avenue and from time to time surrenders himself to his cruel, cowardly mania.” But by 1900, no one was buying this story.

---

Sources: 

“All Against Scharn,” The Evening World, August 23, 1900.
“Brother Finds Body of Murdered Sister,” The New York Times, August 20, 1900.
“Dead Girl Was Strangled,” New York Herald, August 21, 1900.
“Eisenprice Freed in Scharn Case,” New York Journal and Advertiser, October 12, 1900.
“Fatal Half-Hour,” The Evening World, August 22, 1900.
“Girl Beaten to Death in a Flat at Night,” New York Journal and Advertiser, August 20, 1900.
“Girl Hammered to Death,” The Sun, August 20, 1900.
“Girl Suspect,” The Evening World, August 20, 1900.
“Hunting New Suspect,” The Evening World, August 27, 1900.
“Jealous shopgirl May be Murder of Kate Scharn,” The evening world, August 20, 1900.
“Lincoln Price,” New York Journal and Advertiser, August 24, 1900.
“Looking for a Man Named 'Al.',” New York Herald, August 31, 1900.
“Murder in New York,” The New York Times, August 21, 1900.
“Mysterious Arrest in Scharn Case,” The Evening World, August 28, 1900.
“Mystery Still Deep,” Evening World, August 21, 1900.
“Saw Man with Dead Girl,” New-York Tribune, August 21, 1900.
“Scharn Free, in His Sweetheart's Arms,” Evening World., October 16, 1900.
“Scharn Sent to Tombs,” New-York Tribune, August 22, 1900.
“Scharn Verdict,” Evening Tribune., October 13, 1900.
“Three Women Who May Help Clear Mystery,” The Evening World, August 24, 1900.
“Woman Offers a Murder Clue,” New York Herald, September 2, 1900.