For Love of His Landlady.

Benjamin and Mary Merrill lived with their four-year-old son on Illinois Street in Chicago, where they ran a boarding house. During the day, Benjamin worked as a broker, and Mary took care of the house along with their chambermaid, Hattie Berk.

In May 1888, 22-year-old Andrew J. Martin took residence in the Merrills’ boarding house. He worked nights as a stationary engineer for the Union Steamboat Company. During the day, he lounged around the house, trying to ingratiate himself with Mrs. Merrill. 33-year-old Mary Merril, a tall, attractive brunette, was pleasant toward Martin, but was happily married and had no interest in his advances.

By December 1888, Martin was desperately in love and would not leave Mary alone. When other boarders began commenting on Martin’s behavior, Hattie Berk took their concerns to Mary.

Martin learned of this and on December 10, he approached Mary, who was sitting in the parlor, and tried to persuade her to discharge Hattie. He told her that Hattie was a loose character and would bring disgrace upon the house. Mary turned on him and said it was time for him to attend to his own business and leave the affairs of the house alone.  She did not care to have any more of his interference in her business and hoped he would leave the house as soon as he could find another place to live.

“Do you mean that?” Martin asked.

“I certainly do, Mr. Martin,” said Mary, “It will be best all around if you do.”

Martin said no more; he got up and left the house. Mary went upstairs to the room where Hattie was making the bed.

“Hattie, don’t you think I have a right to mind my own business?” said Mary, perhaps feeling guilty about being so harsh with Martin.

“Why certainly,” said Hattie, and they discussed Martin’s disruptive behavior.

Martin came back into the house and quietly climbed the stairs. He stood for a moment outside the room and overheard their conversation. Then he entered the room, and “affecting a devilish suavity,” he drew a pistol from his pocket.

“Who are you gabbing about now?” he said. Then he raised the pistol and fired at Hattie, who was sitting on the bed. The shot missed, and with a terrified shriek, she bounded off the bed and out the door. Martin pointed the pistol at Mary and fired twice, hitting her in the abdomen and in the jaw. Outside the room, Hattie turned and watched as Martin raised the pistol to his right temple and blew out his brains.

Hattie fled downstairs, picked up the Merrills’ son, and ran into the street screaming. She drew the attention of a policeman, who followed her back to the house. The upstairs room was a revolting sight. Martin lay dead, face up on the floor. Mary, lying in a pool of blood, was still alive. Conscious, but unable to speak, she lay that way for three hours before dying.

When Benjamin Merrill heard the news of his wife’s murder, he became hysterical and rushed home from work. Though he knew the killer was dead as well, he screamed, “Let me at him. He should be drawn and quartered.”

Later, he spoke more calmly:

No husband ever loved a wife more than I did mine. She was so sympathetic, and glorified in my success, and sympathized in my failures. She was all that a wife could be, true as steel and pure as a virgin.

Martin was a boy, a country lad. He was a good-hearted fellow, too, and often took our little boy to plays. Of course, he loved my wife. Who could blame him for loving her? But I was not jealous, for she told me everything and only looked on him as I did, as a good-natured country boy.

Benjamin was not well enough to testify at the coroner’s inquest the following day. Hattie Berk, the
eyewitness, told the whole story on the stand. The jury came to the only conclusion possible: that Andrew Martin committed suicide after shooting Mary Merrill twice.

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Sources: 

“Andrew J Martin,” National Police Gazette, December 29, 1888.
“Double Tragedy in Chicago,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 11, 1888.
“Faithful to the Last,” Evening Post, December 11, 1888.
“For Love of His Landlady,” News and Courier, December 11, 1888.
“The Martin Merrill Tragedy,” Chicago Daily News, December 11, 1888.
“Martin's Awful Crime,” Chicago Daily News, December 11, 1888.
“The Merrill Martin Murder,” Daily Inter Ocean, December 12, 1888.
“Sensational Double Tragedy,” Indianapolis Journal., December 11, 1888.
 

The Cronin Trial.

 

W. S. Forest, of counsel for the defense, cross-examining the expert microscopist Tollman.
Defendants (far left) 1. Beggs, 2. Coughlin, 3. O'Sullivan, 4. Burke, 5. Kunze.

Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin was a prominent Chicago physician, and a member of Clan-na-Gael an American political organization formed to promote Irish independence from British rule. After Dr. Cronin uncovered corruption among the leaders, his naked body was found stuffed in a sewer with icepick wounds to his head. In the 1889 murder trial of five members of Clan-na-Gael, the defense tried to paint Dr. Cronin as, alternately, a violent radical and a British spy. 

Read the full story here: Clan-na-Gael and the Murder of Dr. Cronin.

The Fatal Shot.

 

In the wee hours of February 8, 1888, burglars broke into the mansion of Amos J. Snell, one of the wealthiest men in Chicago. They went straight to Snell’s office and opened his safe and a strong box but did not find the fortune they expected. The thieves went upstairs and began gathering silver items.

The noise awaked Snell who came down in his nightshirt, armed with an old muzzle-loading pistol. Hearing the thieves in the parlor, he shouted, “Get out! Get out of here!”  and fired his pistol through the closed parlor door. The thieves responded by firing back through the door. Snell turned to run outside, and the thieves opened the parlor door and fired two more shots, killing Snell. 

The massive manhunt that followed involved the police, the Pinkertons, and many private detectives. The family offered a $50,000 reward for the killer's capture, reported at the time as “the largest amount ever offered for the capture of any human being in the world.”  Despite more than 1,000 arrests and several false confessions, the case remained unsolved until 1910, when a professional thief named James Gillan confessed to the murder on his deathbed. The confession was taken as fact, but there was little evidence that Gillan committed the crime.

Read the full story here: The Snell Murder.

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Pictures from Chicago Daily News, February 9, 1888.

Emma and Samuel.

 

Samuel Smith and his wife Emma appeared to the world as a happy and affectionate young couple. She was pretty and vivacious with a dazzling wardrobe, and he was energetic with a winning personality. But beneath the surface was a hidden turmoil that did not come to light until Emma was found dead in their apartment, her head blown apart by a shotgun blast, and Samuel nowhere to be found.

Read the full story here: A Shrewd Rascal.

Harry and Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Beecher married Henry King Jr. (known as Harry) in October 1886. Harry wanted to keep the marriage a secret from his father, a wealthy Chicago clothing wholesaler, so they lived under assumed names. The marriage was not a happy one, and the couple often fought. They separated for a while but could not stand to be apart. When Henry Sr. learned of the marriage, he offered Elizabeth $1,500 to give up all claims upon his son. Though her attorney advised her to take the money, Elizabeth stayed with Harry in Chicago.

In 1888, Harry moved to Omaha, promising to send Elizabeth money and bring her along when he was settled in business. The money stopped coming, so Elizabeth followed him to Omaha, only to learn he had married another woman. She and Henry spoke briefly in the parlor of the Paxton Hotel, then, as he turned to walk away, Elizabeth shot him four times in the back. Public sympathy was on Elizabeth’s side, and when the case went to trial, the jury deliberated for only thirty-five minutes before finding her not guilty.

Read the full story here: "I Have Shot my Husband."

Mad Infatuation.

After attending the early service at St. Sylvester’s Church in Chicago on June 23, 1895, Mary Linnett went to the home of her friend Frances Sharman. Both women were bright and attractive but quite different in appearance. Mary, age 17, was exceedingly slender with a ruddy complexion; Frances, about 38 years old, was plump and fair. The two were close friends, but Frances began to worry that Mary’s affection for her was becoming obsessive.

Mary went to the back door and asked Frances to come outside and talk. Frances refused, and as she turned to leave, Mary drew a revolver and fired four shots. Three of them missed, but one struck the back of her head, wounding her scalp. Frances hurried upstairs while her sister sent for a physician. A neighbor who heard the shots summoned the police.

Fiend, or Innocent Victim?

 

The prosecution claimed that Adolph Luetgert, "Sausage King of Chicago," dissolved his wife Louisa in a vat of lye, but without a body, how could they prove she was dead?

Read the full story here: The Sausage Vat Murder.

Who Murdered Dr. Cronin?

 

Old Cap. Collier, the fictional dime novel detective, tries his hand at solving the murder of Dr. Cronin.

The real murder of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin was stranger than fiction, with the good doctor found naked and dead in a Chicago sewer after confronting the corrupt leaders of an Irish secret society. As Edmund Pearson said, “It was one of those murders over which men nod their heads and look portentous and intimate that ‘everything hasn’t come out yet.’”

Read the whole story here: Clan-na-Gael and the Murder of Dr. Cronin.

A Night of Debauchery.

In 1880, Mrs. Anna Hayes was the landlady of a house at 396 State Street in Chicago. The newspapers referred to it as a “house of ill-fame,” but it was not a brothel, it was a house of assignation, renting rooms to prostitutes. On Sunday, November 7, 1880, Eva Lloyd rented room 6 on the top floor; one week for $3.00. Eva did not have the money but she had a revolver worth $4.00, and Mrs. Hayes took that as security.

The Snell Murder.

Rosa Buckstahlen and Ida Bjornstad, servants in the Chicago mansion of Amos J. Snell, were awakened at 2:00 the morning of February 8, 1888, by the sound of a gunshot from the floor below. They heard someone shout “Get out! Get out of here!” followed by more gunshots, then silence. Thinking that all was well—or more likely, too frightened to do anything else—the girls went back to sleep.

Five hours later, Mr. Snell’s coachman, Henry Winklebook, entered the house to attend the furnace fires and found evidence of a break-in. Snell’s basement office was strewn with scattered papers, his safe was open, and a broken strongbox lay on the floor. Winklebook hurried upstairs to inform his employer and found his lifeless body lying in a pool of blood in the hallway. 

Murders, Murder Trials, Confessions of Murder, Discoveries of Murder, &c., &c.

Little Murders

(From Richmond Enquirer November 6, 1845)

The last Chicago Democrat 22d ult., is little better than a continued chronicle of horribles. First comes a confession said to have been made by Birch, one of the murderers of Col. Davenport, in which he discloses all the particulars of that horrible transaction.

“The Redmans, (or Redings,) kept a house which was used as a general rendezvous for the fraternity of rascals in their visits to that part of the country. It was at the house, (on Devil Creek, Lee county, Iowa,) that the plan was devised and conceived of murdering Col. D., and the father of the family, (there are three of them—the father and two sons) was present and assisted in the arrangement for the bloody deed. He has been indicted by the Grand Jury of Rock Island, as an accessory before the fact. A son of this old man (William) assisted at the robbery of Knox and Drury’s office, in Rock Island, about the time of Davenport’s murder, for which an indictment was also found against him.”

The trial of Birch, and two of his accomplices in the murder, was to have commenced last Monday:

“Fox of Indiana, alias Sutton of Illinois, alias Johnson of Iowa, is still at large In the violent indignation of the people against him, woe to the man or woman who secrets him. We fear that any discovery of the kind would lead to Lynch law; and unless he is found soon, some persons who have heretofore secreted him had better leave the State until the excitement is past. There is a point beyond which such knaves as Fox, Big Davis, Favor, Baker , Aiken, Land, Dean, Driskell, Button, &c., &c., cannot go in Illinois.”

Next comes the solution of a mysterious murder, committed some months since:

“It will be remembered that, soon after the two Hodges were hung, one of the brothers of the Hodges was killed in Nauvoo. Among other developments at Rock Island, it has come out that, out of fear of his confessing, he was shot by Jack Reding, or Redman, whose father and brother are now confined at Rock Island. Jack is still at large.”

For a Wanton’s Smile.

Frank Whittaker came to Chicago in September 1892, accompanied by four or five young women from his New York City brothel. He planned to run a similar business in Chicago and set up an establishment in a somewhat weather-beaten version of the gilded palaces in the city’s red light district near the levee.

Around the first of November, Charles Ryan, a tall, silent man with piercing eyes and a small mustache, began to regularly visit Whittaker’s house. Ryan was a gambler, and from the size of his bankroll was a successful one.

One of the girls who followed Whittaker from New York was a capricious and whimsical, black-haired, blue-eyed, beauty named Susie Hess. Ryan fell madly in love with her and within two weeks of his arrival in Chicago, he was begging Susie to leave her wanton life and come live with him. Susie was fickle, and led him on, promising to go with him one day and rescinding the promise the next.

Ryan was in Whittaker’s brothel in the early hours of Sunday, November 14, 1892, and he asked Susie Hess again to come with him. They began to argue loudly, attracting the attention of Frank Whittaker. Whittaker, who had not previously met Ryan, tried to defuse the situation by suggesting that they all have a drink. Ryan said nothing; he pulled a revolver from his pocket, pressed the muzzle against Susie’s right side and fired. He then turned the gun on Whittaker and fired twice. Ryan looked at his victims for an instant, then walked into an adjoining room and shot himself in the head. By dawn all three were dead.

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Sources:

"Chicago Shooting Affray." Kokomo Daily Gazette Tribune 14 Nov 1892.
"For a Wanton's Smile." Le Mars Semi Weekly Sentinel 15 Nov 1892.
"Gave No Warning." Daily Inter Ocean 14 Nov 1892.
"His Fatal Infatuation." National Police Gazette 3 Dec 1892.

The Briggs House Murder.

Little Murders

On December 7, 1883, Sadie Reigh went into the dining room of the Briggs House, one of Chicago’s finest hotels, and fired four shots from a revolver, in rapid succession, at Head Waiter Patrick Kinsley. Sadie fled the hotel but was apprehended quickly. Two of her shots had hit their mark; Kinsley died the following day and Sadie Reigh was charged with murder. 

A Shrewd Rascal.

Samuel Smith and his wife Emma appeared to the world as a happy and affectionate young couple. She was pretty and vivacious with a dazzling wardrobe, and he was energetic with a winning personality. But beneath the surface was a hidden turmoil that did not come to light until Emma was found dead in their apartment, her head blown apart by a shotgun blast, with Samuel nowhere to be found.

Determined on Murder.

Little Murders

(From The National Police Gazette, October 16,1886)

Determined on Murder. 

Bent on Murder.
James M’Cambrick, After trying several ways of killing Mrs. Cline,
finally succeeds by throwing her out of the window.

About two o’clock the morning of Sept. 26, James McCambrick came to his house on Morgan street, Chicago, and engaged in a quarrel with the woman living with him as his wife. After threatening to shoot her he poured oil on her linen and said he would burn her alive. He then reached for his revolver, and, failing to find it, seized the woman and threw her from an open window to the ground, eighteen feet below. The woman’s back was broken by the fall. She will die. Mrs. Cline was married to her husband two years ago, and until last year lived with him on Cottage Grove avenue. He then became so cruel that she was driven to McCambrick, who offered her shelter. McCambrick is a rather good-looking fellow, but is a brute when under the influence of liquor. Mrs. Cline is a pretty woman, twenty-three years of age.

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The National Police Gazette, October 16,1886.

The Wrong Victim.

Little Murders

 

Matt Rollinger.

Matt Rollinger and his wife Abbie separated in the fall of 1895 and Matt moved out of their home on Mohawk Street in Chicago. Though Abbie allowed Matt to visit their three children, in her mind the separation was final and by Christmas had rented out a room in the house to Fred Mueller, a bicycle maker from Germany. Mueller had been in the house less than one day when he gave his landlady a new tablecloth as a Christmas present. During the winter months Mueller took Mrs. Rollinger to masquerade balls and other entertainments.

August Hetzke.

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

August Hetzke.

"This individual was convicted in Chicago, Ills., of murder in the first degree, he having beaten his little step-son to death. He was always most cruel to the child and on every opportunity treated him in an inhuman manner. The child’s suffering only seemed more to anger this brute, until at last he beat him to death. The case caused a great deal of excitement at the time in Chicago."

 

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Defenders and offenders. New York: D. Buchner & Co., 1888.

August Detlaf.

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

August Detlaf.

"John Phillips and Skip Larking of Chicago, Ills., were shot and instantly killed on the evening of July 29, 1888, by August Detlaf, who is a Pole. The two men were on their way home from a ball game. The murder was a most unprovoked one and occurred in a general row among a number of Poles, precipitated by some jesting remarks made by Phillips and Larkin. During the affray, Detlaf appeared on the scene suddenly, with a 44 caliber revolver and deliberately shot the two men alluded to."

 

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Defenders and offenders. New York: D. Buchner & Co., 1888.

Mysteries Cleared Up

Little Murders

This headline from the Davenport Daily Leader, December 9, 1894 references two sensational murder cases. The second case, the murder of Catherine Ging in Minneapolis, has already been covered in detail in this post: The Minneapolis Svengali.

 

Here is the "Packing Box Victim at Chicago:"

 

(From The Davenport Daily Leader, Davenport, Iowa, December 9, 1894.)

Mysteries Cleared Up

Two Sensational Murder Cases Made Plain.

Packing Box Victim at Chicago.

 

He was Killed by His Assistant, Jordan, According to a Confession Made by a Man Who Agreed to Help Dispose of the Body—Confession of Adry Hayward Clears Up the Murder of Miss Catherine Ging at Minneapolis.

Chicago, Dec. 8 – The mystery surrounding the murder of A. D. Barnes, the janitor of the Hiawatha building, whose remains were found in a packing box near Sixty-third street, has been solved. Two men and a woman were arrested. One, named Jordan, was Barnes’s assistant. The other was known as Jersey and sometimes did odd jobs about the place. The woman in the case is the wife of another janitor and from appearance was intimate with Barnes. She says that Jordan and Barnes often quarreled about her. The mystery was solved, however, by a confession, and Jersey was the man who confessed. To police officials he told the following story:

Vamp of New Orleans

James Walkup, successful businessman and politician from Emporia, Kansas met Minnie Wallace on a trip to New Orleans in December 1884 and instantly fell madly in love. He was 48 years old, she was 15. A year and a half later they were married and a month after that James Walkup was dead from arsenic poisoning. During her murder trial Minnie would have help from other prominent, successful men. The same was true in 1897 when her second husband, also much older, died mysteriously.  And again in 1914 when a male companion died from cyanide after including Minnie in his will. What power did this New Orleans vamp have over middle-aged men?