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Carrie Brown : Murder In The East River Hotel
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#Post#: 2262--------------------------------------------------
The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: October 14, 2023, 8:06 am
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This is an exchange between Ovide Robillard and Governor Odell
in late 1901.
It is specifically about the room key:
Ovide Robillard 25 Pine Street, N.Y.
New York City
December 14, 1901
Hon. B.B. Odell, Jr.
Governor of the State
of New York, Albany, N.Y.
Sir:
I respectfully call to your attention an old clipping of the New
York Sun
which forms part of Frenchy's record, dated, I think, April
25th, 1891 and
describing the key of room 31 as being a brass key with a brass
tag, which
I specifically underlined it with a blue pencil.
As I have before stated, Frenchy will be taken care of as soon
as pardoned
and sent back to Algeria. The French Benevolent Society informs
me that the
steamer of the Fabre's line plying between New York and
Marseilles stops at
Algeria during the winter months, the home of Frenchy.
Yours respectfully,
Ovide Robillard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Ovide Robillard
25 Pine Street New York
December 17, 1901
My dear sir:
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 14th,
calling my attention
to an old clipping of the New York Sun which forms part of the
Frenchy record.
Yours very truly,
(portion of the letter with Governor Odell's signature
unavailable).
***************************************************************************
This is that reference to the key being brass found in the New
York Sun mentioned by Robillard
Not only was it in the April 25th edition but it was also in the
April 26th edition.
New York Sun
April 25th, 1891
**************
HTML https://i.imgur.com/d7flSFJ.jpg
New York Sun
April 26th, 1891
**************
HTML https://i.imgur.com/tEfCEEo.jpg
I hate to sound like a broken record, but depending on
newspapers is, as we've seen time and time again, often
misleading.
The two policemen, Doran and Griffin, were erroneously stated as
having arrested Ali at 10:00p.m. on the 24th within the New York
Sun
article on the 26th.
The facts say otherwise. Officer Adam Lang, accompanied by Mary
Ann Lopez, picked Ali up at 8:10 p.m. A small mistake, no
doubt, but
nevertheless, an example of how reliance on newspapers leads to
a great deal of unnecessary confusion for people just getting
involved
or even for long-time researchers of this case.
The two excerpts, however, are in direct opposition to the
following which the proprietor of the hotel, James Jennings,
swore to
in his June, 1901 affidavit, which was as follows:
James Jennings
District Attorney's Office
City and County of New York
June 1901
James Jennings, being duly sworn, deposes and says :
That he resides at 2106 Madison Avenue, in the Borough of
Manhattan,
in the City of New York; that he was the proprietor of the East
River Hotel, 14 Catherine Slip in said city and Borough at the
time of the killing in said hotel of the woman known as
'Shakespeare'; that he had been the proprietor of said hotel
some four or five years prior to the time of said murder, and
that he gave up the place and moved away from there about four
or five months after the murder.
That a man named Thomas Thompson, since deceased, had charge of
and attended to the letting of rooms and had charge of the keys.
[b]That the brass key shown him, deponent, in the presence of
Mr. Robillard, counsel for the prisoner, so far as he is aware,
was never used in the hotel of which he was then the proprietor;
that Room 31 was on the top floor; that as far as he has any
recollection all the rooms on that particular floor, at the time
of said murder, had iron keys with brass oblong tags attached:
that the keys on the other three floors of the hotel were some
of brass and some of iron: that all the keys had brass tags-
some round and scalloped, some oblong, some may have even been
square, but all the tags varied from about an inch to an inch
and a half long, and from an inch to an inch and a half wide,
and that no tag was as small as the one on the key now produced.
Sworn to by James Jennings June 10, 1901[/b]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Governor Odell contacted District Attorney Eugene Philbin to
make inquiries after Jennings rejected
the key as being one in use while he was in charge back in 1891.
D.A. Philbin assigned Central Office Detective Robert McNaught
to look whether the key was
authentic or not.
McNaught went to the hotel and was told that as a result of a
fire which occurred some years after
the murder, the doors and locks were all new making it
impossible for McNaught to ascertain whether
the key Damon had handed Robillard was actually one in use at
the East River Hotel in April of
1891.
Philbin, faced with the dilemma of being unable to provide
Governor Odell with a concrete answer,
sent the Governor his final report, correctly referring to the
story and key provided
by Damon as 'alleged evidence' and in essence, left the job up
to the Governor to decide which course
to take next. After all, any executive pardon would come from
Odell, not the District Attorney.
As we know, Odell either released a guilty man or freed someone
who spent a decade in prison for
nothing, regardless of the fact he was a loser.
Could Jennings, after a ten year period of time between being
the proprietor to the June 1901 affidavit
been mistaken?
We can't fault Robillard for believing in the key's authenticity
since he finally found an article from the
Sun nearly 6 months after Jennings rejected the key in his
presence back in June which stated
the key was brass. That he would emphasize the 'brass' twice in
his letter to Odell indicates that this
may have been a matter of concern for him and the future of the
third pardon campaign. I, for one,
think it was.
While all this doesn't suddenly make Damon's entire story
believable, which it isn't, it does raise
a question, if we are to be objective as possible, concerning
the authenticity of the key
I will keep working on this, of that you may be certain.
It should also be kept in mind we have no idea where the New
York Sun got the information that the key
Mary Miniter gave C. Kniclo and Brown was made of brass. Had
they asked someone about it?
It should also be remembered that newspapers made mistakes on a
regular basis, the Sun being one.
The Sun reporter could have simply seen other keys in the hotel
which were made of brass, which there
were, and assumed the one in question to have been brass as
well. Knowing the number on the tag
required no serious thinking or questions submitted to hotel
staff.
#Post#: 2268--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: Michael Banks
Date: October 16, 2023, 2:05 pm
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It’s a difficult one. As you know How, if George Damon had told
me what day it was I’d have gone out and bought a calendar to
double check. But whilst I don’t believe his key/farmhand story
(like you) I don’t think that it’s beyond the realms of
possibility that after 10 years Jennings might have been
mistaken. I’m only saying ‘might’ though. (As the owner how
hands-on would he really have been?) It should have made
Robillard’s ears prick up though.
#Post#: 2270--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: October 16, 2023, 3:03 pm
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It’s a difficult one. As you know How, if George Damon had told
me what day it was I’d have gone out and bought a calendar to
double-check. But whilst I don’t believe his key/farmhand story
(like you) I don’t think that it’s beyond the realms of
possibility that after 10 years Jennings might have been
mistaken. I’m only saying ‘might’ though. (As the owner how
hands-on would he really have been?) It should have made
Robillard’s ears prick up though.
Mike:
Pete's persistence led to one of the three things I had
discarded as bogus to be re-evaluated: That of the ability to
see the board with keys from 'downstairs' in the bar. Pete was
correct as to the bar's location.
The second thing is the issue of the key.
Governor Odell didn't just blindly accept the story of the key.
He sent Det. McNaught to check it out and he determined it was
impossible to say one way or the other if it was
the key or not. Underwood's book says Jennings was a little
hesitant about the authenticity of the key, but he wasn't if you
read his affidavit from June 10, 1901.
Jennings, of course, had no doubt. But, it isn't out of the
realm of possibility that he may have been wrong. For this
reason, DA Philbin sent in his report about what
Damon turned in, the key, story, the whole nine yards, and
referred to it as 'alleged evidence'.
I don't think Jennings was wrong specifically because he didn't
waste any time in dismissing it along with describing the keys
on certain floors. Jennings may not have handled the keys
in the hotel, but he handled the finances, and buying room keys
would most likely be his responsibility.
The third thing is a no-brainer. Damon's farmhand had two
impossible-to-overlook features that C. Knioclo didn't have: No
mustache and that hitch to his step.
Miniter and Kelly would have noticed the hitch and would have
mentioned it before they would describe minor things, such as
the condition of the man's hat...which, in the latter case, they
did.
Damon and his farm hand-as-killer aren't even a consideration to
me anymore, Mike, Haven't been since July.
#Post#: 2272--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: Michael Banks
Date: October 16, 2023, 4:38 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I’m a little rusty but I should have remembered the moustache
and the limp. I agree of course, it’s no longer a case of ‘if’
Damon lied. The only question is why? Why the effort on Ali’s
behalf. Your point about Jennings make total sense of course. In
a dump like that Jennings would have been aware of every cent. I
can’t imagine him just sitting back and trusting his staff not
to rip him off. That he could have been mistaken about the key
is very unlikely.
Basically How, the key story is bullshit. But even bullshit has
a reason. I’d love to know what it was.
#Post#: 2273--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: October 16, 2023, 5:03 pm
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I'll put stuff up later but for right now let me just mention
the following:
It, to me, is a little ironic that an utterly self-serving
letter from a convict in Dannemora to Governor Odell led to
Damon coming forward with the description of his hired hand.
James Dougherty was a 44 or 45-year-old inmate ( He would still
be in Dannemora, according to Nina's research, in 1910) who
wrote to Governor Odell on June 22nd, 1901, claiming that the
story recently brought out by Damon ( the key and the hired
hand) was bogus. How he learned of Damon's story in the first
place is unclear and is a matter for another day. Dougherty
said that he hoped Damon would be punished severely for coming
forward ten years later, not for it having kept Ali in prison,
but because of how it made Byrnes and the NYPD appear.
Just as with the issue of the key a little earlier in June.
Odell once again contacted DA Philbin ( June 27th ) and this
time asked him to get in touch with Damon to find out whether
Ali and the farmhand might have been the same person
Philbin had no photo of Ali to show Damon.
Damon, Robillard and Robert Butler went to Mulberry Street on
July 1st to see if Byrnes' Rogues Gallery had his photo.
At Mulberry Street, an officer who knew what Ali looked like
gave Damon Ali's description.
Damon responded that the two men were different. Damon knew
this anyway, but that's for another discussion down the road.
Damon filed his 3rd affidavit on July 2nd giving the farmhand's
description ( hitch in step, flat nose, no mustache, etc.)
This third affidavit of Damon's is sent along with DA Philbin's
second report to the Governor.
Governor Odell, in receipt of the second report, decides to send
a photo to Philbin to show Damon to be absolutely certain.
Philbin gets back in contact with Damon. Damon looks at the
photo, and once more states the two men were not the same.
Philbin gets back in touch with Odell and tells him the latest
news.
Had the convict never written to Odell claiming Frenchy and
Frank were the same man, no official would have ever approached
Damon to give a description of his farmhand.
It had slipped under the radar. Without the convict writing the
letter, only the key would have been scrutinized.
And had the convict not written the self-serving letter, we'd
not know how different Damon's farmhand and C. Kniclo were in
their appearance.
Here's that letter:
*****************************************************************************************************************
Dougherty 'Ripper series No.3'
Robert B. Lamb, M.D.
Sup't. Dannemora State Hospital
Dannemora, N.Y
--------------
His Excellency
Benjamin B. Odell
Executive Mansion
Albany, New York
Dannemora, N.Y. June 22nd, 1901
Your Excellency:
Herein, you will please find certain valuable information about
him ( Jack The Ripper ). I have long and seriously thought over
the pros and the cons of this remarkable man's case, and having
been a decade in close intimacy with him, have learned more
about him than you and all the advisers of his
various petitions put together and what's more, I want you to
understand that him and myself are and always have been in the
best of terms. In sending this communication, I do so only for
his own and the commonweal-Remember this, and then give me due
consideration- That man Damon's hired man's name was Frank. He
was 5 ft. 10 in. or so in height, 35 years of age, wiry, thin
face, foreigner, speaking broken English, the foreigner's ( ?
)description tallies exactly with this man here ten years ago.
Now this man Damon is the kind of man who would not acknowledge
that this man here is the one that worked for him if he was
asked about it fair and square, but I think he could be made to
positively identify him if he was shown a picture of Jack as he
was when he first came to prison and told that it was the
picture of the man who committed the recent 'Ripping' on Sunday,
who by the way I'm satisfied was Mrs.___No. 2 working to help
him out- or better yet present it as of the man who died in
prison supposed to have been the genuine Ripper- It could be
told to Damon that he had been arrested as the guilty (?) and
was being held for identification so that you would then be able
to conscientiously pardon the fellow out- Inspector Byrnes
instead of censure deserved great credit for lodging this fellow
on the __ evidence that he then had. His sleuth instinct told
him no doubt that this fellow was the guilty one and that Damon,
if were possible should be severely dealt with for suppressing
this evidence which would have made plain sailing for Byrnes as
he himself says he withheld it while he supposed that an
innocent man was being sent to prison for want of it.- This
fellow here has told me all about how he worked all the insane
doctors to get here, and all to that and has proved to me in
innumerable ways that he has all the qualities necessary for
'Ripper' work, wonderful, cunning and terrible achievements,
deep instinct and a large power of dissembling.
That he was ever in the French army -Franco-Prussian war I
doubt. He is only 45 now, which would only leave him 15 years of
age in '71. Of course, it's an easy matter for him, or anybody,
to cut the picture of a soldier out of a newspaper and say this
is like I used to be. That's no evidence, even if a sensational
yellow journal displays it as a picture of himself. That doesn't
make it so.
In conclusion, I very much wish you would send me that order
enabling me to employ an attorney which I am patiently waiting
for in all sincerity
James M. Dougherty
#Post#: 2275--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: October 16, 2023, 6:00 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Mike:
Sorry...I didn't see this post of yours:
I’m a little rusty but I should have remembered the moustache
and the limp. I agree of course, it’s no longer a case of ‘if’
Damon lied. The only question is why? Why the effort on Ali’s
behalf? Your point about Jennings makes total sense of course.
In a dump like that Jennings would have been aware of every
cent. I can’t imagine him just sitting back and trusting his
staff not to rip him off. That he could have been mistaken about
the key is very unlikely.
Basically How, the key story is bullshit. But even bullshit has
a reason. I’d love to know what it was
Mike:
You're right, IMO, the question of why Damon would come up with
this story dwarfs ( again in my opinion) the question of who
killed Brown. In that question, we know it was probably one of
the two men: Ali or C. Kniclo.
Could he have had a farmhand with those features....hitch in
step, flat nose, no mustache? Sure.
It wasn't C. Kniclo, though.
Could he have gone to the East River Hotel with Brennan? Sure.
He could have also picked up that key left on the counter which
was left by the man upon exiting the hotel in Damon's story.
Brennan was a long-time employee ( 15 years )who depended on a
paycheck from Damon. People have done more for their employers
than simply backed up a phony story. John Lee could have seen a
key, but that would have happened after Damon and Brennan went
to the hotel first. How would Lee know what an East River Hotel
key look like beforehand? Making a tag or a key was easy for
Damon anyway. He admitted familiarity with the process.
On a side note, I think that there's something definitely
non-kosher about a man who tells the census taker that he is a
clerk in a hardware store but in reality, is involved in
contracting....maybe not on the level of the real 'well-known
contractor' John R. Lee...but nevertheless, like Pete found out,
he was a contractor. Something is not right, I just can't
figure out what yet.
Motive for Damon? Prof. Dekle suggested that it may have been
along the lines of financial gain.
I think it's what Prof. Bob theorizes or my theory: that he
came forward with his story to assist the
'Free Frenchy" campaign. I think he was bitten by the bug.
Again, all we have to go by as to when Damon, Lee, and Brennan
had their adventures in 1891 is their affidavits. We might have
more but six people in Cranford at the time didn't hop up like
George Damon did and submit affidavits like Damon did.
Anyone think Damon would have ever come out if Brennan and Lee
had suddenly died before Georgie Boy decided to turn over his
stuff?
#Post#: 2285--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: Kattrup
Date: October 22, 2023, 6:00 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I’m not personally convinced that Jennings was remembering
correctly.
The fact that the key was referred to as brass in 1891 is
significant. Of course, the reporter may, as you say, have seen
other keys and made an assumption. But there’s no indication of
that; rather, it reads to me more like info provided by the
police.
Also, I don’t believe Damon would fabricate evidence for no
apparent reason and I don’t believe he could’ve convinced Lee
and Brennan to back him up.
The whole story of how the farmhand story broke, and the
aftermath, makes it impossible, in my opinion, to have been in
any way staged or fabricated.
#Post#: 2289--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: October 22, 2023, 6:36 pm
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Pete:
How can anyone explain the dissimilarities between Damon's
farmhand's appearance and C. Kniclo's? I think that it's
impossible unless someone decides to move the goalposts and
posits the idea that Damon had a sudden memory failure when it
came to this farmhand's crucial facial features and to whom
Damon attributed numerous features, overall, based on his
memory.
He had all the time in the world to recall exactly what his
'farmhand' looked like. It doesn't resemble C. Kniclo.
Just imagine if DA Philbin had gone back to the newspapers in
1891 and compared the two descriptions. Walking with a hitch to
his step and no mustache.
Damon, I believe, counted on no one going back to compare the
two. True, that's just an opinion, but up until the convict in
Dannemora wrote a letter to Odell, no one had asked Damon about
what his farmhand looked like. That would come about six weeks
after his first affidavit. In a bizarre way, James Dougherty,
the Dannemora convict, is owed a tip of the hat and a bottle of
Hennessey's for writing to Odell, which set the wheels in motion
and resulted in Damon giving a description of his farmhand which
is clearly not C.Kniclo.
I feel if one element of his story is extremely porous, the rest
of it is suspect as well.
Granted, Jennings might have been mistaken. I don't think he
was.
#Post#: 2291--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: October 22, 2023, 6:50 pm
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Let me add this to the above:
Unless someone can explain how a 'clean-shaven' farmhand the
last time Damon saw him....can go to the Lower East
Side....sprout a heavy mustache as described by Kelly and
Miniter....come back via ferry and train...and be back in
Cranford a few hours later, 'clean-shaven' again...then it's two
different men.
#Post#: 2292--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Issue Of The Key To Room 31 :
DIR By: Kattrup
Date: October 23, 2023, 5:18 am
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Howard, leaving aside the issue of the descriptions of C. Niclo
and the farmhand for the moment. It seems your explanation for
Damon’s key is he lied, he produced the key himself and spun a
phony story of an unverifiable farmhand. He did this in order to
help free Ali. I’m not sure why he would be very interested in
that, given that he consistently badmouths him. Were he on a
mission to help, would he not speak more highly of him?
To me, the idea that Damon faked the key presents insurmountable
obstacles. For instance, if Damon lied, does that not mean that
Lee and Brennan also deliberately and knowingly lied? Since they
claim to have been informed by Damon and to have seen the key in
1891.
For what purpose would they lie? Freeing Ali? Brennan was an
employee, still a bit hard to accept that he’d submit a
bald-faced lie as an affidavit just to prop up Damon’s fake
story.
What of the risk involved to Damon, he could not know that he
would not be castigated or punished for withholding evidence- he
could of course hope for it and use his NJ contacts to mitigate
risk, but there was no way to know in advance.
And Lee - lying for a friend, while knowing that besides Damon
and his wife, at least two servants at large would know he was
lying - how could he know they would not be tracked down or come
forward?
How about how the story broke? A casual conversation, a chance
meeting with a lawyer involved with the case. It wasn’t even
Damon who offered his story.
In short, Howard, I’m wondering how you think the process went
and how Damon managed to get everyone in line, supporting his
lies?
I cannot see it happening, to be honest.
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