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Carrie Brown : Murder In The East River Hotel
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#Post#: 6630--------------------------------------------------
Fuller, Berbenich, and Blood
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: March 10, 2026, 6:44 am
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While the following resolves nothing in the case, it is
interesting that Paul Fuller, an attorney with Coudert Brothers
law firm, seems to be
arguing for and, at the same time, against blood being found up
on the fifth floor of the hotel.
Pardon for clemency presented to Governor Odell in early
December 1901.
Submitted by attorney Paul Fuller, of Coudert Brothers Law Firm,
Manhattan
New York, December 2, 1901
Before His Excellency Benjamin B. Odell, Jr., Governor of the
State of New York.
Application For The Pardon Of George Frank, Otherwise Known As
Amer Ben Ali
Another element in the case which added to the absence of the
key weighed in the balance against the prisoner was the presence
of blood spots between the room where the woman was murdered and
the room occupied by the prisoner. These according to the report
made by the District Attorney who conducted the trial, consisted
of three drops of blood in the hallway, and spots or daubs of
blood on the paper of the hallway and on the panel of the
prisoner's door. It may be noted here that three drops of blood
and daubs or spots easily made with as many more drops is an
unlikely record to be left behind him by an assassin groping in
the dark after mutilating his victim with what the District
Attorney described as 'myriad' knife wounds covering every part
of the body and limbs., perforating the intestines, and
according to the inference meant it to be drawn from the
analysis of the nail cleanings, plunging his hands into the
intestines of his dead victim in such a manner that the filth
under his nails retained twenty-four hours later traces of
intestinal fluid and of partly digested food. Apart from the
intrinsic improbability of such a result, there is the further
significant fact that the night clerk Fitzgerald who discovered
the murdered woman does not testify to the presence of these
blood marks. Their presence, it is stated, was a revelation of
the police scrutiny that followed. We now have the testimony of
two men of experience in the investigation of the crime,
reporters of the Evening Sun at the time of the murder and
specially detailed to attend to police work, who were the first
or among the first to visit the scene of the murder and who
examined the ground in search of clues, and these men attest
under oath that in their careful examination and search for a
clue they saw no blood spots where these were afterward reported
by the police. No motive, surely no reasonable or adequate
motive can be suggested for this solemn attestation by men whose
standing depends on the good opinion of the community, other
than the desire to see justice done to a helpless prisoner. And
there is one significant circumstance which corroborates their
positive recollection. No blood spots are reported on the knobs
or panels of the door of the murdered woman's room, and yet it
is inferred against the prisoner that in the brief transit
across the hall to his own room, blood dripped on the floor, he
daubed the walls in his groping and soiled the panels of his
door on both sides, in opening it and again in closing it, while
in unlocking and locking the door of the room in which the
butchery has just been perpetrated no sign of blood was left
behind.
Another inference which must be drawn from this story in order
to fasten the crime upon the prisoner is that after committing
the fiendish crime he quietly crept back to his own room and
remained there until morning when he could have walked out into
the street beyond reach, as did the last known companion of the
murdered woman who was seen with her at ten o'clock that night
and has never been heard of since.
The affidavit of Berbenich suggests how the blood spots came to
be there.
There could have been a woolly mammoth in room 31, and
Fitzgerald would probably have not seen it.
There have been many crime scenes in which the victim was
murdered with by a knife with a minimal amount of blood
eventually being found on the perpetrator. Locard's Exchange
Principle states, "Every contact leaves a trace".
There was blood found on Ali, which we won't go into here.
At first, Fuller scoffs at the blood claimed to have been
found....and yet at the end of the paragraph, reminds Governor
Odell that Henry Berbenich's affidavit offers a suggestion as to
how the now-existent blood got to those places.
#Post#: 6631--------------------------------------------------
Re: Fuller, Berbenich, and Blood
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: March 10, 2026, 7:49 am
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Affidavits filed by the 11th-hour, decade late, reporters
declared that they had seen no blood.
Up until the time that these affidavits were filed, the position
of the organized pardon campaign(s) was to not
refute the verdict or discount the blood evidence ( on the floor
and in either room), carefully
avoiding the question of blood being absolutely found on Ali's
body and material found under his nails.
However, here in late 1901, Fuller, speaking for the pardon
effort, now refutes the blood evidence, giving his reasons,
but at the same time stating that if blood was found, it was
left by reporters ( the Berbenich affidavit) ostensibly
placed to create a sensation.
Sounds a lot like a man wanting his cake and eating it, too.
Whether or not blood was found at the places the police said
that they found blood, isn't the bottom line.
What was the bottom line, IMHO, is that the Damon story and key
gave the pardon campaigners some leverage
in 1901 and that their refutation of the blood evidence was
established on shakier ground, otherwise why bring
up Berbenich's explanation in the first place?
Damon's story and key, in a major way, allowed the pardon
campaign crew to bring up issues such as Fitzgerald not
testifying to seeing blood: the police still looking for C.
Kniclo....which would have been standard operating
procedure in 1891, if only to glean information from him on the
night in question, and not necessarily as a suspect
after April 30th: and of course, the blood issue.
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