A Honeymoon Tragedy.

Around 3:00, on the afternoon of June 15, 1886, a bellboy heard gunshots while responding to a prolonged ring from room 25 on the second floor of the Sturtevant House in New York City. No one answered his knocks, and the door was locked. He heard groans coming from inside and, together with the hotel carpenter, they burst into the room.

The occupants, a man and a woman, both lay on the floor, their heads upon pillows. They had both been shot but were still alive. The man was holding a revolver. George Hutty, the carpenter, was the first to approach the pair. He raised the man’s head and said, “Why have you done this?”

“Please go for a doctor, quick,”  was the response.

“Tell me why you did this,” Hutty said again.

“Get a doctor, I tell you,” said the man. He refused to say another word.

They sent for an ambulance, but the woman, who had been shot through the back of the head, died before it arrived. The doctors turned their attention to the man. He had wounds to the head and breast. They took him by ambulance to the New York Hospital, but thought he was unlikely to survive.

The couple was Winfield B. Thompson and his wife, Genevieve, both in their early twenties. They were newlyweds on their honeymoon, and after touring New England, they stopped in New York. They were to leave for Philadelphia the following day, before traveling to Mr. Thompson’s home in Kansas City.

For the past two years, Winfield had been studying medicine in New York. That summer, he had the position of surgeon on board a steamer that traveled between New York and Boston. He met Genivieve Kahler at the Stern Brothers department store, where she was in charge of the hat department. They were married on June 2.

The marriage had been somewhat clandestine. No one in Kansas City knew that Thompson was married, and even a friend in New York, whom he saw frequently, was surprised to learn about it. Genivieve’s family learned about it after the wedding. Winfield’s father, Dr. C.L. Thompson, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Kansas City, who was preparing to vacation in Europe, learned of the marriage when he learned of his son’s death.

Those who knew Winfield in Kansas City believed he was still engaged to a woman named Jennie, first reported as the adopted daughter of Phillip Armour, owner of the Armour meat-packing company. Phillip Armour clarified that she was not his adopted daughter, but a young lady who lived, for a time, with his brother’s family in Kansas City. The brother was to accompany Dr. Thompson on his trip to Europe.

Winfield stopped writing to Jennie after he met Genivieve. When he moved out of his boarding house on June 2, he left behind a package to be mailed to Kansas City. On the outside, he wrote:

Dear Jennie—I send you back all your letters. I have kept nothing. Now all is over between us. Yours, WIN.

Genivieve Kahler left her parents’ home after a quarrel four years earlier. She boarded with Mrs. D.B. Pratt, who also worked at Stern Brothers. Mrs. Pratt met the couple at the hotel at 10:00 on the morning of the murder. The three went shopping together, and at one point, Winfield went off alone, saying he would meet them at 1:30. According to Mrs. Pratt, this was when he purchased the revolver. They lunched at the hotel, and Mrs. Pratt left around 2:40. She said the couple appeared to be in a loving mood. Less than half an hour later, the Thompsons were dead.

The motive for the murder/suicide remained a mystery. One theory said that Winfield was so afraid of telling his father about the marriage that he decided to kill them both. Another said that he was in dire financial straits and did not want to tell his wife he could not deliver the luxuries he promised. G.S. Yard, a close friend of Winfield's, doubted that he would act out of fear. He believed that Winfield had accidentally shot his wife, then shot himself out of grief.

There were reasons to doubt this theory as well. The autopsy revealed that Genivieve had been shot in the head twice. Coroner Levy interviewed Winfield at the hospital before he died, but he refused to give a reason.

“What was the cause of the shooting?” Mr. Levy inquired.

“I would rather not tell,”  he replied.

“Was it intentional?”

“So far as the shooting of myself was concerned, yes.”

“Did you shoot your wife by accident?”

“I don’t know why I did it.”

He died soon after. The cause of the tragedy remains a mystery.

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Sources: 

“About the Bride's Coffin,” New York Herald, June 17, 1886.
“A Clandestine Marriage,” TOLEDO BLADE, June 16, 1886.
“A Domestic Tragedy,” Rockford Daily Register, June 16, 1886.
“A Honeymoon Tragedy,” New York Herald, June 16, 1886.
“Thompson Refuses To Talk,” New-York Tribune, June 17, 1886.
“Thompson's Murder Suicide,” National Police Gazette, December 4, 1886.
“Winfield B. Thompson,” Evening Post, June 16, 1886.
“A Young Husband's Crime,” New York Tribune, June 16, 1886.