Carrie Brown : Murder In The East River Hotel

I was wondering about how and why Frenchy #2 entered the investigators orbit? It appears that it was after the 9am meeting at the Oak Street Station between Byrnes, McLaughlin and O’Connor (with Ali being called in) when, in the prepared statement that resulted, Byrnes told the Press that once they had located Frenchy #2 they would have the killer.

So did Ali mention that his cousin was around? It doesn’t seem likely that he would have thrown his cousin under the bus but then refused to disclose any more information about him? Mary Miniter had already given the Police a description of C. Kniclo which they had no real reason to doubt at the time so how did this description point to Frenchy #2? Had they already spoken to Mary Harrington at that point? If they had then they would have known that Miniter’s description of Kniclo didn’t match Harrington’s description of Frenchy #2.

I’m almost certainly missing something here but it’s difficult to see why Frenchy #2 became Byrnes ‘most wanted?’ After all, they by then had the trail of blood running from number 31 to Ali’s room 33. So where did Frenchy #2 come from and why did Byrnes consider Ali his number one suspect at that point?

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Thanks for starting this thread, Mike.   I believe a good number of people are missing something out of this early days issue, me being one of them.

In case you overlooked it, I put an East River Echo together months ago ( which I've added below) about an Algerian named John Smith who lived in Double Alley, which was local. 

Byrnes was the one who dismissed La Bruckman, originally thought of as being Frenchy # 2. from the investigation.

Ali, to the best of our knowledge, had no family in  New York....we know his friends in Brooklyn weren't blood kin....he had no family in Manhattan....and for that reason, I was interested in what Ali was doing in Queens ( another borough of NYC) because he was arrested there at least once, possibly twice.  I never got a bead on why he would drift from Manhattan and Brooklyn but it wasn'r 'family related'.

Back to John Smith.  The following won't answer your original question*, but it may clear up who Frenchy # 2 was. I'll use an example of another 'search' conducted a decade ago that was worth the effort.

Long while back, I was looking into newspapers for material on Francis Tumblety ( a non-starter as a Ripper suspect imho, but a very interesting character).  I came across a newspaper article in a
Buffalo newspaper ( Buffalo papers have provided some valuable articles in the Hotel Case and in the WM research, as well)....which talked about John Wilkes Booth.   Inside the article was a brief mention of Booth's machinations while in Buffalo and his association with Tumblety.  Tumblety was NOT the subject of the article, Booth was.  To me and a few others, this was far more important than a rank and file article on Tumblety which might mention Booth.  Tumblety and Booth had been linked, matter of factly, and in a non WM-suspect based article.

I feel the same way about the 1893 article that I've added.  The subject matter was crime in the vicinity. Not quite at the end of the article, he casually mentions John Smith, a.k.a. Frenchy # 2, as living in Double Alley, being a rough sort of character, and having been known as Frenchy # 2, as well as being Ali's cousin. 

To me, it may solve the mystery of who Frenchy # 2 was since, as with the Booth in Buffalo article, the theme of the article was not about Frenchy # 2, Carrie Brown, or anything to do with the Hotel Murder...but crime in that particular area....and Smith and his nickname casually coming up during the report.

More later, Mike....and thanks again for cranking this up.

* Some descriptions of the man seen with Ali, Brown, and another local woman around the time of the murder mention him being fair haired....

I certain recall reading the John Smith Echo How and he does seem like a likely candidate to me. It’s just a case of how the unnamed Frenchy #2 came to be mentioned, let alone wanted by Byrnes? I wouldn’t have thought that the list of candidates for the proposer of Frenchy #2 could have been a particularly extensive one. If #2 was known by Harrington and he’d even shared a room at her house with Dublin Mary then surely he’d have been known by some of the other women and yet no one mentioned seeing him. Wouldn’t Mary Miniter have known him too? I guess that would be an assumption.

Do you think it’s possible that, in desperation at his position, Ali just plucked his ‘cousin’ out of thin air as the killer of Brown? On the downside of course they would have had to have thought “well, if he was at the hotel why won’t he gives us his name or any helpful information to help us catch him?” As Byrnes had said that finding Frenchy #2 would have meant ‘case solved’  so it appears that he expected to track him down - I assume because #2 was well known in the area?

The whole Frenchy #2 thing is strange imo How.

Good questions Mike.


The morning after the murder Frenchy #2 is asking for Ali and this is before the murder has become common knowledge Frenchy #2 appears to know that Ali was with Brown at the hotel the previous night. How would he have known this and why would he have felt it necessary to tell this to Dublin Mary? Was #2 trying to find out what Ali had told the police?
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For one thing, when this man Harrington named as Frenchy #2 came to her house...she stated it was at 11....news of the murder, via the Lower East Side tom-toms, had spread like wildfire since the body was discovered at approximately 10 A.M.  Many people would have known about him by that time.  Oak Street, as you know, was within spitting distance of the ERH.
For the life of me....I cannot understand why no newspaper sent a sketch artist to Harrington or any of the people who mentioned Frenchy # 2 and sketched a likeness.  Mindboggling.
The 'cousin' reference may have been invented to represent the friendly relationship between Ali and the man labeled his cousin...or a designation based on them sharing a common homeland or Arabic background.  In short, there may have been more than one man Ali called 'his cousin' in the neighborhood.



Do you think it’s possible that, in desperation at his position, Ali just plucked his ‘cousin’ out of thin air as the killer of Brown? On the downside of course they would have had to have thought “well, if he was at the hotel why won’t he gives us his name or any helpful information to help us catch him?” As Byrnes had said that finding Frenchy #2 would have meant ‘case solved’  so it appears that he expected to track him down - I assume because #2 was well known in the area?

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I'm not convinced that what Byrnes is attributed to having said about finding Frenchy 2 in order to wrap the case up was 100 percent true.  Byrnes, if he said it and there are indicators that suggest he did, could have said that as a stunt on the part of the police in their holding back from what they had on Ali and being genuinely interested in finding C. Kniclo simply to clear up the matter of what his movements were that night..  The latter part we know is true by their efforts, the former a hunch on my part, obviously.

What this hunt for Frenchy # 2  ( we know LaBruckman's alibi was sufficient as was every man of the 50 something men they dragged in...probably a low figure) did in a sense is put the lie to the belief/agenda that the police framed Ali by planting blood to implicate him.  It needs to be shown that if this theory were true, then why did the police continue to search for him into May, after Ali had been named as the perpetrator on the 29th but announced on April 30th ?

The argument that the police 'settled' for Ali is also flimsy.  Planting blood in Room 31 and then actually finding C. Kniclo and discovering in one way or the other that he was her killer would propel the press and those in City Hall to crash down on top of Byrnes like a ton of bricks.  Also factor in the time expended and manpower wasted by a theorized gimmick to make it seem the police were sincerely searching for C. Kniclo when all along they had Ali down as their man.  Not very practical or feasible, IMHO

While WE know that C. Kniclo wouldn't be found.....the NYPD couldn't know that in April or May of 1891. The possibility of him being found was always a consideration to contend with to the police.

More to follow, boss.

Isn’t it a little strange that La Bruckman admitted being related to Ali though? Is that why he was brought to the police’s attention in the first place? Because someone knew that he was related to Ali?

Mike...when you get a chance, please point me in the direction of a source which states La Bruckman claimed to be Ali's relative. 
Thanks !

I've added a PDF...East River Echo Number 140....Frenchy #2 ? - Banana Boat....give 'er a look.

Mike:

  Thanks for providing the sources.....all out of town ( Manhattan) papers.
You'll remember that La Bruckman also was reported to have said he had been picked up in London and interrogated as a suspect in the Whitechapel Murders.  Total nonsense.

  No idea where the out of town papers...... two of the ones you provided at a different time also claimed James Jennings, hotel proprietor, was a respectable uptown man but no paper in NYC
expressed that view of the brothel/hotel owner, came up with that claim of kinship between the two.  Like the claim attributed to La Bruckman as being a suspect in London, it's not true.

  Considering he was brought into a Manhattan police station, queried by Manhattan police, and cleared by Manhattan police, the Manhattan papers ought to contain a mention of La Bruckman's alleged kinship to Ali....but they don't.

 

The complete NY World article for January 21, 1895....PDF below.