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Carrie Brown : Murder In The East River Hotel
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#Post#: 2641--------------------------------------------------
Accepted But Not Authenticated: The Alleged 1901 Evidence
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: June 11, 2024, 11:46 am
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Discussion of the two items, one tangible, that George Damon
presented to New York authorities in 1901.
The Key:
Damon presents a brass key which has a tag with the number 31
affixed. He claims that he and Charles Brennan, an employee at
Damon & Peets Printers for several years, went to the East River
Hotel shortly after the murder and went into the bar room.
There, Damon compared a key left by a roomer on the bar.
According to Damon and Brennan the key matched the one
supposedly left in Cranford. They file affidavits regarding
their visit to the hotel.
James Jennings, the former proprietor of the hotel, is shown the
key. Jennings also files an affidavit stating that the 'Damon
key' does not match the type of key used on the fifth floor when
he was its proprietor.
The reason is that on the fifth floor, only keys made of iron
were used. Damon brought forward a key made of brass.
The Man's Description:
Damon states in his July 2nd, 1901 affidavit that his hired
hand, referred to as the 'Danish Farmhand' in the media, had a
flat nose, a hitch to his step ( a deformity or condition
brought upon by injury with one leg being shorter than the
other) and no facial hair. At no time did Damon recall the man
having a mustache.
Mary Miniter described the man she saw enter the hotel with
Carrie Brown having a long, sharp nose. He also had a heavy
mustache. At no time did she mention an obvious physical
characteristic such as a hitch in the man's step and she did she
him walking on the night of the 23rd.
There is a possibility that a man who entered the Glenmore Hotel
early ( 2 am) on the 24th was the man who Miniter described. His
physical features were noticed by night clerk Thomas or Michael
Kelly. Kelly did not notice a hitch in the man's step and he
escorted the man out of the Glenmore. Kelly's description of the
man matched Miniter's description of the man in several ways.
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Robert McNaught, the central office (DA) detective assigned by
DA Eugene Philbin to authenticate the key, could not do so.
There had been some renovations to the hotel following a fire
sometime AFTER the Brown murder and not during 1891. Jennings
was not the proprietor when these renovations were done. His
affidavit referred specifically to keys in use when Damon
claimed he matched the keys before renovations were made at the
hotel after 1891.
Mary Miniter described the man with Brown on April 24th. She
repeated it on May 13th at the Coroner's Inquest. She repeated
it on the witness stand at the trial on June 30th. There is no
mention of a hitch in the man's step or the absence of facial
hair(mustache) at any time, nor had his nose changed from long
and sharp to flat(Damon's description).
#Post#: 2642--------------------------------------------------
Re: Accepted But Not Authenticated: The Alleged 1901 Evidence
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: June 11, 2024, 12:22 pm
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List of reasons why the evidence was accepted and yet not
authenticated:
1. A lingering doubt that Amer Ben Ali had been wrongfully
convicted. Either by 'faulty' science or possibly a frame-up.
Members of the press, the French consul, and possibly a police
inspector who approached Governor Odell in 1901 ( 'Clubber'
Williams ) believed Ali was innocent. This position was known to
the Governors ( Flower, Morton, Black, Roosevelt, and Odell).
2. Damon came forward with two people who corroborated his
affidavits, John A. Lee and Charles Brennan.
3. Damon had a letter vouching for him from the Governor of New
Jersey.
4. He brought something tangible: a key. Gov. Roosevelt had
stated in 1900 that unless something tangible surfaced, he
wouldn't be signing a pardon. He probably spoke for future
Governors.
5. He had a story ( the Danish Farmhand saga ) that gave the
State a new, theoretical suspect/murderer.
6. The State of New York may have decided to accept the story
and key due to the number of previous requests from the French.
Diplomacy and all that.
The commutation was not a pardon. It's been suggested that like
the compromise verdict at trial, the release but without pardon
was also a compromise solution.
His release may have been a combination of all or some of the
items mentioned above.
#Post#: 2643--------------------------------------------------
Re: Accepted But Not Authenticated: The Alleged 1901 Evidence
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: June 11, 2024, 5:30 pm
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A couple of other points:
When Damon went to the Mulberry Street station on July 1st, he
was accompanied by Robert G. Butler, editor of the New York Sun.
Butler sent Governor Odell a letter ( not counting his affidavit
) and a clipping of the May 1, 1891, New York Sun.
The clipping contained a sketch shown below:
HTML https://i.imgur.com/WFcD5at.jpg
Damon, accompanied by Butler and Ovide Robillard, the head of
the latest pardon campaign on behalf of the French, went
specifically to find out what Ali looked like. If you've read
East Side Story, I go into detail about this important juncture
of the events in 1901.
If Damon, upon finding out what Ali looked like, told Butler and
Robillard that his hired hand didn't have a mustache and had a
flat nose, it would be difficult to understand how Butler would
not pick up on this discrepancy immediately. After all, he sent
in the clipping shown above to the Governor on the very same day
Damon filed his third affidavit, July 2, 1901.
The other thing worth mulling over is how this discrepancy got
past Governor Odell. Odell didn't just blindly accept what Damon
had told him. We know this because he had DA Philbin in New York
send Detective Robert McNaught to find out whether the key could
be authenticated.
Odell was the person who sent a photo of Ali ( the one Pete
Damgaard found ) to Philbin to pass on to Damon.
Yet, the discrepancy between Damon's farmhand in Damon's sworn
affidavit and the actual features of the man who accompanied
Carrie Brown somehow escaped him.
#Post#: 2761--------------------------------------------------
Re: Accepted But Not Authenticated: The Alleged 1901 Evidence
DIR By: HowBrown1953
Date: July 11, 2024, 12:48 pm
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Looking at the matter of Damon and his alleged evidence further
in a different way:
He brought a key allegedly left by his hired hand and from the
hotel to the attention of the authorities.
The key wasn't authenticated.
It wasn't his fault if the hotel renovated and changed locks
between the date of the murder and his affidavits.
Anyone still believing in his story could point this out.
He claimed the hired hand left a bloody shirt at his house.
He may not have been the one who decided to ditch the shirt.
Someone else in Cranford could have done that considering how
little
Damon thought of the items back in 1891. Maybe one of the
servants, whose names he had trouble recalling in 1901.
The problem with his story boils down to the description of the
farmhand.
Elements in his description of the farmhand were similar to the
description Miniter gave.
His approximate age and that he was German or Scandinavian do
match. Nothing special, though, since many men resembled each
other based on these two criteria.
What blows Damon's story out of the water is the absence of a
mustache and flat nose....not to forget the hitch in his
farmhand's step which was not noticed by Miniter.
I'd love to do two things.
One would be to go back to July 1901 and see the filing of
affidavits by Brennan, Lee, and Damon.
The other would be to be involved or just watch the Ali trial.
If the Ali trial took place in 2014, I wonder whether charges
could or would be brought against Damon for withholding evidence
in 2024.
I also also wonder a trial with Ali as the accused would be like
today in 2024.
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