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Carrie Brown : Murder In The East River Hotel
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DIR Return to: 1901-1902
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#Post#: 2277--------------------------------------------------
Fuller To Odell
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: October 17, 2023, 7:21 am
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I'll hold back on pointing out the number of errors in the
letter.
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
Executive clemency is invoked on behalf of Amer Ben Ali,
convicted in 1891 of murder in the second degree. The prisoner
who was indicted under the name of George Frank was generally
designated as 'Frenchy'; he is an Algerian with no knowledge of
English, and whose French was imperfect and difficult to
understand.
The murder for which he was indicted was peculiarly atrocious
and revolting; it was the strangling of a drunken, besotted,
dissolute old woman of sixty years, followed by the horrible
mutilation of limbs and trunk; the record disclosed no shadow of
any excuse, no intimation either of drunken fury, of
self-defense, of provocation of any sort. Neither did it
disclose any motive.
The murder was committed in a room on the top floor of a low
lodging house on Catherine Slip near the East River, a
neighborhood given over at night to the orgies of degraded
population, mingled with roving and homeless sailors from every
land. The public prints had for some time previous given
unstinted space to descriptions of numerous murders committed in
London in the Whitechapel district, much frequented by sailors,
the victims of which were women of the same class as the
Catherine Street woman. In the perpetration of these murders, a
knife was always used and they were accompanied by brutal
mutilations which induced the belief that they were all
committed with a sailor's knife and by the same culprit, whose
unusual ferocity earned for him the sobriquet of 'Jack The
Ripper'. The public was intensely excited by these daily tales
of horror and by the total failure of the London police to find
any clue to the assassin; the possibility of such crimes being
committed in New York and going unpunished was fully canvassed,
and the remark publicly attributed to the Chief of the New York
Detective force that if Jack The Ripper tried his hand in New
York he would be located in twenty-four hours.
In this condition of the public mind, the murder in Catherine
Street came to light. Within twenty-four hours the prisoner, who
was at first arrested as a suspicious person having no abode and
unable to account for his actions or usual whereabouts, was
fastened upon as the probable murderer. His trial followed not
long afterward resulted in a verdict of murder in the second
degree. Murder in the first degree is defined by Statute to be
the killing of a human being with premeditated design, or by any
act imminently dangerous to others, and evincing a depraved mind
regardless of human life, The Jury, therefore, by refusing to
find a verdict of murder in the first degree, made it clear that
they did not consider that the prisoner had a premeditated
design to kill, or that the killing had been the result of any
act of his evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life.
A brief examination into the evidence will disclose a few
undisputed facts which may explain the unwillingness of the Jury
to fasten upon the prisoner the depravity or the premeditated
design which would entail a verdict of murder in the first
degree and the consequent penalty of death.
It is shown by the evidence that the deceased and a companion,
described as a sailor, entered the East Side Hotel together, and
were assigned by the night clerk to Room 31, that he showed them
to the room and saw them enter. This companion has never been
heard of, never been traced nor in any way accounted for unless
the story told by Mr. Damon furnished a clue to him. To the
Jury, however, no evidence was offered to indicate what had
become of this man, the last man seen with the victim and then
seen alone with her under lock and key in the room in which her
lifeless body was found on the following morning.
It appeared further, on the trial, that the room which the
victim and her unknown companion entered on the night of the
murder was locked in the morning and the key was missing. It was
not accounted for, no evidence was offered, no suggestion made
which in any way indicated that the prisoner had possession of
it nor any evidence that he had entered the room into which the
last known companion of the woman had locked himself in with
her.
The evidence which brought the prisoner into contact with the
deceased was testimony indicating that he had theretofore
associated with her ( it is admitted she associated with
countless others ) and that he had been seen in her company
during the day.
It is not surprising that in presence of the undisputed fact
that the victim was seen at a late hour on the night of the
murder, being locked into Room 31 in the company with a man who
was admittedly not the prisoner, that this man was not found or
traced, that the room was locked and the key unaccounted for as
completely as the man who had escaped, the Jury should have been
unwilling upon their oaths to charge the prisoner with the
wilful killing of the unfortunate wretch, and evaded the
responsibility of his death on the gallows by returning a
verdict of murder in the second degree. The fact, however, that
they were willing to render any verdict implicating the prisoner
remains to be accounted for. Testimony was heard from
frequenters of the streets and haunts in the neighborhood where
the murder occurred to the effect that the prisoner was a man of
perverted habits in association with the most vile and degraded
women; that on various occasions he had beaten and bitten one of
these creatures. It was shown to the Jury that in the month of
January preceding the murder, the prisoner had been arrested and
confined in the Queens County Jail on a charge of vagrancy; one
of the inmates testified that he had an altercation with the
prisoner who threatened him with a knife; the knife was
described from recollection as similar to a knife found beside
the murdered woman ( though the knife so found had been broken
off or filed down so as to give the same a sharp slanting point,
whereas the knife found on the prisoner was not broken or filed
). One witness testified that the prisoner was seen talking to
the deceased saying that he would sleep that night at the Fourth
Ward Hotel ( The murder was committed at the East Side Hotel).
Another witness declared that at about half past four in the
afternoon, the murdered woman had eaten some cold cabbage, cold
corned beef, and a pickle. On different parts of the prisoner's
clothing blood stains were found in the hallway between the
victim's room and a room occupied by the prisoner about ten
hours after the victim had been locked into her own room, that
some spots of blood were on the wall and on the panels on either
side of the door occupied by the prisoner near the knob; finally
experts testified that the cleaning of the prisoner's
fingernails furnished by the superintendent of police revealed
upon analysis the presence of human blood mingled with traces of
intestinal fluid and of almost digested food such as deceased
was known to have eaten. The prisoner was heard on his own
behalf, through an Algerian interpreter, and was involved in
some contradictions as to his intercourse with one of the women
who testified and also as to his own whereabouts before and
after the murder- this at least is the statement on that point
made in 1894 by the District Attorney who conducted the
trial--the prisoner's movements, however, seem to admit of
little doubt as he was seen on the day of the murder, admitted
he spent the night at the East River Hotel and had left it at
five in the morning, and was arrested that night. This was the
whole case as presented to the Jury; we must find in the
testimony affecting the prisoner's character; the charges of
violence made against him; the public excitement and alarm
aroused by the crime and its similarity to the numerous
Whitechapel murders and the anxiety to quiet public sentiment,
even by the delusion that the perpetrator of the crimes had been
captured, the influences which controlled the jury and prevented
them from liberating the accused, though at the cost of a
verdict totally inexplicable and repugnant to the facts
elicited, for these facts while they failed to connect the
prisoner with the crime charged, did disclose the causeless,
wanton, and atrocious slaughter of a helpless and friendless
creature, under circumstances which filled to overflowing the
lawful measure of murder in the first degree.
This review of the facts; the admission in the action of the
Jury that premeditation, motive, or the depravity and disregard
of human life which the law makes the equivalent of
premeditation were absent from the case; the prejudicial
testimony as to the violence of the accused on other occasions
totally disconnected with the crime under investigation and
positive proof that when the woman was last seen alive it was in
company with a man other than the accused, who locked himself in
a room with her for an illicit purpose, a man who has never been
traced or accounted for, would suffice to call for the exercise
of Executive clemency after the years of imprisonment suffered
by the man whom the Jury under the circumstances found guilty of
a minor offense.
But in addition to the weakness disclosed by this examination of
the record, new evidence is now presented for Executive
consideration. There were but few important elements in the case
presented. The absence of the key of the room in which the woman
was found murdered furnished the sole, though insufficient,
excuse to the Jury for assuming that the prisoned could have
found entrance to the room. This excuse was insufficient for it
was in evidence that the key when last seen was in the hands of
another man than the prisoner, who had locked himself into the
room with the murdered woman two hours before the prisoner
presented himself at the hotel. This man disappeared at the same
time as the key, and there is no evidence of what, if any search
the police made for him, the inference is strong that no search
was made for him as the prisoner was arrested within twelve
hours from the discovery of the murder. Insufficient as it was,
however, it was the only shred upon which they could fasten the
inference that the prisoner had committed the murder, for
without possession of the key he could not have got into the
room of which the door was found locked and unbroken.
Today the key is discovered and accounted for and shown to have
been in the possession of a Swedish sailor of morose and violent
temper who was away from his employer's home on the night of the
murder and who two days after left his employer without warning
or notice and has not been since heard from. The key is produced
and this testimony furnished by a man who for thirty years has
been in business in the same community, and for twenty-three
years a resident of the same suburb. He presents the credentials
of permanence and stands in need of the approval of the vicinage
in which his life is cast; he is content as a homage to the
demands of his conscience to make a confession of retice4nce
which cannot be but humiliating to a degree and for which the
only return he can hope to get is the satisfaction of his
endeavor to do a tardy act of justice, earning the forgiveness
and preserving the esteem of his neighbors. It is not credible
that a man so situated should invent a tale so little to his
credit, and the only redeeming feature of which is the endeavor
to undo the wrong wrought by his too-long silence. He is
moreover corroborated by two respectable citizens whose
antecedents and whereabouts for a score of years are disclosed
and to whom no possible motive can be attributed for making the
sworn statement submitted than a desire to aid in an act of
justice.
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.
Lastly--the time of the woman's death was a matter of
consequence; no testimony bearing on that was produced by the
State, nor was there any precision in the proof offered as to
the hour when she entered the hotel with the companion who took
her to the fatal room. The prisoner, it was admitted did not
reach the hotel until about midnight. The fact was testified to
that the woman had eaten at half past four. Under these
circumstances, the condition and contents of the stomach was a
controlling factor in establishing the time of her death. In any
event and under any circumstances, simple justice required that
the report of the official autopsy should reveal the condition
and contents of the stomach, the presence or absence of the food
which had figured in the testimony, and whether it was digested
or undigested. The food was taken at half past four, and the
prisoner did not reach the hotel until midnight, seven and a
half hours later, the presumption is clear that long before that
hour the food was digested. The affidavits of Mr. Coleman is
distinct and positive as to the statement of the Coroner's
physician that he found undigested food in the stomach and that
his report contained no mention of that fact; that upon the
physician's statement of his willingness to testify to the fact
so suppressed and upon his suggestion, the fact was communicated
to the prisoner's counsel, who apparently did not deem it wise
to bring it out. When Dr. Jenkins is confronted with this
specific statement verified under oath, he admits that he may
have discussed the case with Mr. Coleman but that he is unable
to recall the conversation and adds that the conversation must
have occurred elsewhere than at the State Camp because he was
never there. The only denial here is as to the place where the
conversation occurred, a matter of minor or of no importance. As
to the conversation itself, there is simply no uncertainty of
memory, but as to the substantial fact which the conversation
related to, that is the presence of undigested food in the
victim's stomach and the absence of any such statement in the
official report of the autopsy there is no denial whatever.
In addition therefore to the doubt which arises from a scrutiny
of the case as presented on behalf of the State, in addition to
the doubt evidenced by the verdict of the Jury who were
unwilling, even in the presence of the inexcusably revolting
crime disclosed by the evidence to fasten upon the prisoner the
guilt of murder in the first degree, we have now an explanation
of three important and controlling elements in the case.
It has been shown that the blood spots which alone linked the
prisoner's room to the room in which the murder was committed,
were not to be found when the first examination of the premises
were made.
It has been shown that the murdered woman's stomach contained
undigested food, and this makes it certain that she was dead
before the prisoner reached the hotel where she was murdered.
A clue has been furnished to the woman's last companion and the
key of the murdered woman's room, without which the prisoner
could not have entered it, is produced and its whereabouts
accounted for in such a way as demonstrates that the prisoner
never had it.
These circumstances leave no doubt as to the right of the
prisoner to Executive clemency; indeed clemency is not the
appropriate designation for the act which will liberate the
prisoner; it is an act of justice, insufficient to repair the
result of human error, but the only measure of reparation within
reach of the Executive
Paul Fuller, attorney; Coudert Brothers, N.Y.
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