Carrie Brown : Murder In The East River Hotel

Finding the right Red Carroll may be impossible.


I found a William Carroll ( no mention of his hair color) who went to State Prison ( Sing Sing
in February 1873. The Judge was Mr. Sutherland.
Tommy Thompson went to Sing Sing in January 1873. The Judge was Mr. Sutherland.


Still digging.....

Two excerpts from articles six years apart and another article from the time of the trial.

These first two are similar in some ways...which may be a sign that the author of the Courier
article was a New York World man.

New York World
 April 1, 1900
************
Excerpt:

'Tommy' Thompson was an ex-convict and one of the toughest men in
the Fourth Ward. If he had lived, he would now have been thirty-nine
years old (1). He was known as a knife-fighter and had killed his man
in the very East River Hotel where 'Shakespeare' had been murdered.
He thrust a sword-cane completely through his victim's body. His 'pals'
swore him out of his trouble, declaring that his act was in self-defense.
Thompson's body was covered with the scars of many battles, and the
upper half of his left ear was missing. The fingers on his left hand were
crippled, the result of a premature blast while he was in the quarry gang
at Sing Sing Prison. He was a heavy drinker and a terror when drunk.

Thompson was a bartender in the East River Hotel at the time 'Old
Shakespeare' was murdered. On the night of the murder, he and 'Red'
Carroll were drinking in the place. Thompson was so intoxicated that
Sam Shine, another bartender, took his place behind the bar that night.
Thompson was in an ugly mood and those who knew him kept out of
his way.

'Old Shakespeare' entered the hotel late in the evening accompanied
by a stranger, who displayed a considerable sum of money. The stranger
was not 'Frenchy' and bore no resemblance to him. He left 'Old Shakespeare'
in the room on the top floor, where her mangled remains were afterward
found. Thompson knew 'Old Shakespeare' well enough to believe that she
had possessed herself of a fair share of the stranger's money. The story
current in the Fourth Ward and brought to light by recent research is that
Thompson demanded from Shakespeare the money she had obtained and
when she refused it attacked her in a drunken fury.
"While Thompson was alive," said a former companion, " no one would
have breathed a word to an outsider. Tommy of one of his gang would have
croaked a squealer. Now he's dead it can do no hard, and may help to get
'Frenchy' his freedom. At the time of the trial no one wanted to pull the
feathers out of Byrnes's cap, but I guess he wouldn't mind it now."

----------------------------------------------
Evansville Courier
September 16, 1906
****************
About the time the application for a pardon was made to Governor Roosevelt in March 1900, I was told that a man then employed in one of the large department stores, who had formerly been a frequenter of the East River Hotel, knew the true story of Shakespeare's murder. It was with some difficulty that I gained this man's confidence and induced him to make a statement, and then only on condition that his name should never be revealed. At the time the crime was committed, he told me there were six persons who knew all about it, but dared not open their mouths for fear of vengeance. All of them were connected in one capacity or another with the East River Hotel, and some of them were forced to appear as witnesses against Ben Ali. The man alleged to have done the murder was Tommy Thompson ,the night manager of the Hotel, an ex-convict and one of the toughest men in the old Fourth Ward. He was known as a "knife-fighter" and had killed his man in the very East River Hotel where Shakespeare was murdered, afterward setting the body up on a beer keg in front of the hotel, where it was discovered by a policeman. His 'pals' swore him out of his trouble, claiming his act was in self-defense, He was a heavy drinker and a terror when drunk.

"Tommy and Red Carroll were drinking in the bar room the night of the murder," said my informant, "and Tommy was so crazy drunk that Sam Shine had been placed in charge for the night. Shakespeare entered the hotel late in the evening, accompanied by a stranger who displayed a considerable sum of money and who left her in the room on the top floor where her mangled remains were later found. Tommy Thompson knew old Shakespeare well enough to believe that she had gotten most of the stranger's money before he left, and he went up to get it. The old woman was not an easy giver-up, and Tommy in a drunken fury strangled her and did the cutting."

"While Tommy was alive no one would have dared to breathe a word to an outsider. Tommy or one of his gang would have **** a squealer. He died of delirium tremens afterward."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


This third article refers to a neighborhood in Harlem known as Snake Hill.
Snake Hill is now Marcus Garvey Park. It is two miles from where Tommy Thompson
lived at the time of the murders. Just for reference sake and not a suggestion that
this Red Carroll....if indeed it is the Red Carroll in the previous articles, still lived there
in 1891.


New York Sun
June 30, 1891
***********

That's cool, Pete.

 Somewhere within my case repository files, I have these two items.

  * The reference to one of the female witnesses...I believe it may have been Sullivan....who
went down an alleyway with Ali and got busy.

  * The reference to hair on Sullivan's chin by one of the newspapers.

A couple of press descriptions of Alice.

I can't find the reference to her chin, yet.

New York Evening World
June 30, 1891
***********


New York Evening World
July 2, 1891
***********

Like Yogi Berra once said...."It ain't over until it's over..."

I'll keep plugging at it, buddy.

Nice stuff, Pete....John Leonard was, allegedly, 300 pounds.

He was also, the article mentions, German.

How many children named Alice were born in White Plains NY in 1851-1855?

That's one avenue to pursue, but then again, was she even born in the U.S?
We'd likely have to go to Westchester to examine their county archives. Without
her true surname, we might wind up with a couple or more Alices born during the years
between 1851 and 1855.

Population of Westchester County in 1850 was 58,000 and change. There were approximately 2,000 people in White Plains, at that time.


When she said she had  'frequented the dives since her husband's death', that was a lie.
She was in prison before he died, and you know that that larceny rap wasn't her first rodeo.

She certainly wasn't younger than Miniter.  Lopez was 36 or 37. Corcoran was younger than her ( around 25).
Healy and English didn't testify at the Inquest.....which leaves Harrington, who did.
Sullivan was also made fun of for a few prominent hairs on her chin.

Now, there is one more thing that science shows, and which cannot be contradicted—it is demonstrated as surely as a mathematical proposition—and that is, that the blood on this man’s shirt not only was not menstrual blood—that they can tell, and they say it was not menstrual blood—but it was the blood of a dead person. The blood in his nails was the blood of a dead person, the blood on his door is the blood of a dead person. She was strangled, Dr. Jenkins says. She got her death from asphyxiation. The marks of the assassin’s hand are in her throat. Her tongue was protruding, and there is blood in the lungs. She was strangled to death. The moment that life goes from the body, the arteries, as you well know, and as everybody knows, will not spurt. During life, the arteries will spurt. There is life in the blood. The moment you take the oxygen from the body and asphyxiate the blood, you lose the life of the blood. The blood under the microscope shows it to be in that shape. The moment you kill a person, the blood loses its elasticity, and the globules go into that shape. And so, science can tell beyond contradiction the blood that flowed from a living or dead subject. In all the blood on this man’s shirt, and all the blood on this man’s clothes, and on the bod, and on the floor, is blood without the elasticity of blood flowing from a living person, and blood in a state showing that it was a dead person’s blood, and it was her blood mixed with her intestinal fluid at the same stage of digestion, from the same human subject with the same proportion of red and white corpuscles; and these gentlemen tell us that it is demonstrated to them, not as an opinion, but as an absolute, decided scientific fact, and that the man from whom the shirt was taken, stained with that blood, was the assassin of that woman. And, as I have said, is it not the hand of God, writing the name of the assassin on the wall?




[1] Wellman’s opening statement comes from Crime in New York, 1850, 1950: People of the State of New York versus George Frank, Trial # 16, Reels ## 4-5. Lloyd Sealy Library, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, 1891, pages 5-39.

[2] This remark by Lawyer Friend is not in the transcript. It is taken from “Invoking the Microscope,” New York Sun, June 30, 1891

The laborious task of creating a clear copy of this text was undertaken by Bob Dekle, author of East River Ripper, The Mysterious 1891 Murder of Old Shakespeare ( 2021, Kent State Press).