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       Carrie Brown : Murder In The East River Hotel
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       #Post#: 1999--------------------------------------------------
       The Third Affidavit
   DIR By: HowBrown1953
       Date: August 11, 2023, 6:30 pm
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       The affidavit that Damon shouldn't have made: The 3rd Affidavit
       from July 2nd, 1901.
       This is the one in which he either invented a substitute for C.
       Kniclo from his imagination: an accurate description of a man
       who really worked for him or someone that he knew from God knows
       where.
       Reproduced in its entirety and as it was written, misspellings
       and all.
       George Damon
       Affidavit Number 3
       In the matter of the application for
       pardon of Frenchy, "Amer Ben Ali"
       City and County of New York
       George Damon being duly sworn deposes and says :
       That the man ' Frank' referred to in my previous affidavit* did
       not leave my employment in Cranford, New Jersey, for at least
       two days** after the murder of
       "Shakespeare" was discovered.
       That this man 'Frank'  was about five feet ten inches in height,
       had brown hair, clean shaving, wearing no wiskers or mustache.
       That, when not shaven for a few days, would show a very light
       growth and very light color;
       He was a man of about 175 to 180 pounds, with square broad
       shoulders.
       He had a large flat nose, and large eyes, ( I do not remember
       the color ); he had a low forehead.
       Either on his right or left wrist, near the hand, there was a
       wide tattooed bracelet, extending completely around his wrist.
       The figures on the wrist were quite
       fancy.
       This man 'Frank' spoke fairly good English, with a foreign
       accent; I think that he was either a 'Dane' or a 'Swede', and I
       know that he talked German because I heard
       him talk German with German people; I understood enough of the
       language to know he was speaking German.
       He had a little hitch in walking, apparently stepping shorter
       with one foot than the other. He was a man about 35 years of
       age. My belief is that he spoke only German
       and English***
       He was a man who would seldom speak unless spoken to; he had
       done some splicing of ropes for me while in my employ and from
       this fact and the tattooing, I inferred
       he had been a sailor.
       On the first day of July 1901, I visited the police headquarters
       on Mulberry Street, New York City, for the purpose of examining
       the photographs in the Rogues Gallery.
       I was accompanied by Mr. Robert Butler, one of the editors of
       the 'Sun', and Mr. Ovide Robillard, attorney for 'Frenchy'.
       Upon inquiring of the officers in charge, we were informed that
       no picture of 'Frenchy' had been taken at that time or placed in
       the 'Rogues Gallery'.
       That one of the officers in charge whose name I do not know,
       stated that he well remembered 'Frenchy', as he was one of the
       detectives working on the case, at that time; he described
       'Frenchy' as a man about five feet eleven inches, with sharp
       features, with a long and thin nose, dark complexion with quite
       a heavy mustache, and about
       45 or 46 years old in appearance; that Frenchy had been arrested
       about nine o'clock in the morning on April 24, 1891, in the 4th
       precinct, and that at that time he had
       dark wiskers of about two weeks of growth.
       From the fact that this man 'Frank' had no mustache or wiskers
       while working for me, and comparing the pictures of 'Frenchy' in
       the papers, at that time, describing him with a black mustache,
       I am satisfied that the man 'Frank' is not the man 'Frenchy'
       heretofore mentioned.****
       Sworn to and by  George Damon  July 2nd, 1901
       * The May 20th affidavit is what he's referring to, which was
       actually the 1st affidavit. One followed the May 20th.
       **One report has it at 4 days, another at 10 days.
       *** Not only is this a bizarre comment, that the hired hand
       spoke only German and English, it begs the question of why
       Damon believed he was first, a Swede, and then a Dane.  The
       first affidavit mentions 'Swede' twice. This is the first
       affidavit in which
       a reference made by Damon to Danes is made although Robillard
       mentioned it in a May 23rd, 1901 article. That's a span of 40
       days
       before Damon, himself, mentions a Dane in the context of the
       ethnic background of the farmhand, and even then, he isn't sure.
       ****Why Damon even needed to verify anything is ridiculous. His
       hired hand, imaginary or not, was in Cranford for two days after
       the crime according to Damon himself !!!  News of Ali's arrest
       was well-known by the date the real or imaginary farmhand left
       the cozy confines of Cranford.
       It's a shame that none of the original prosecutors had gone over
       this affidavit and were still in office.  Since they weren't,
       which may be a reason why he appeared in the first place, no one
       could challenge it.
       #Post#: 2000--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The Third Affidavit
   DIR By: HowBrown1953
       Date: August 11, 2023, 6:36 pm
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       Reporters from the same newspaper, the Sun, from where this
       sketch was published, may not have seen or been told what Damon
       swore to in the third affidavit.
       Had they been, they could whip out the sketch below and figure
       out how a man with no mustache made it over the Hudson River
       shortly afterward and sprouted one like this one.
       Then again. maybe they did and were just as dishonest as some of
       the other figures in the 1901 sham were.
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