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Messages - Howard Brown

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General Discussion / Re: Research 2019-2023

« on: January 01, 2023, 09:29:19 am »

Here's to a productive 2023...and hoping all of us can continue to enlighten the world and all the mere mortals within it with more case related material.

But first, let's eat ! A word from our sponsor :

1232

General Discussion / Re: The Nine Affiants

« on: January 01, 2023, 07:41:48 am »

It’s an obvious point but would Byrnes really have claimed as evidence blood that wasn’t there in the first place knowing that the place had been swarming with reporters? Could he have really been confident that no one would have mentioned the absence?

Just to make it clear for anyone just tuning in, it wasn't Byrnes who extracted blood from the door or floor ( that was Frink ).....but your point is obviously on the mark, Mike.
The information the NYPD released at the press conferences, although delivered by Byrnes, was based on the combined efforts of other policemen including Byrnes himself.

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General Discussion / Re: Yungstreet Andersen

« on: December 31, 2022, 11:13:19 pm »

You said that happened with Yungstreet. It sounds like your saying that they proved his alibi that he was at the murder hotel with a different woman. But I think you still mean they brought in Miniter for an ID. If either one was true, I would agree with you.
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No...I'm saying whatever the alibi was, it was substantiated. I take whatever newspapers say with a grain of salt. As I mentioned, he MAY have been there ( don't recall whether Andersen said he was with a woman or solo). I'm not saying that they definitely brought Miniter in, but it is possible. Whether I 'think' they did is speculation on my part.

On the other hand, there are different standards for a proof of guilt, or even of suspect-worthiness. You could ask for DNA proof. I could accept a Rule of Three. I accept that because I'm only holding working candidates or final candidates to my own standards for my own satisfaction. I feel no onus to prove anything to anyone else because their standards might be unreachable. But there shouldn't be different standards for proof of debunk. The standards are simple and easy.

Putting a working theory together based on the comment allegedly said by Andersen is fine if you are inclined to swing that way. I tend to believe that it is best to remove someone from any possible culpability rather than establish a theory around their guilt based on newspaper reportage which, unless people have not noticed, in this case is loaded with next-day corrections ; incorrect dates of events in detained people's backgrounds; incredibly off-base statements by reporters who were there on the 5th floor ( Russell, 1912 and 1931), and so on.

You've said that you believe that the police did have the killer ( Andersen) but let him go and said so on more than one occasion. Yet, there is nothing to substantiate this claim.
In short, for this theory to work, it would require eliminating the key found at Damon's as a tangible piece of evidence and the gunk found under Ali's nails. So far, that hasn't been done and not just by you or me but by anyone.

1234

Sketches & Photographs / Re: Photographs

« on: December 31, 2022, 10:44:44 pm »

Jacob Riis' office was located at 301 Mulberry Street....directly across the street from 300 Mulberry, Inspector Byrnes' HQ.

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General Discussion / Jacob Riis On Inspector Byrnes

« on: December 31, 2022, 10:29:23 pm »

The following comes from the 1901 auto-biographical work written by Jacob Riis. The Making of An American ( Macmillan)

One of the early and sensational results of reform in Mulberry Street was the
retirement of Superintendent Byrnes. There was not one of us all who had known
him long who did not regret it, though I, for one, had to own the necessity of it; for
Byrnes stood for the old days that were bad. But, chained as he was in the meanness
and smallness of it all, he was yet cast in a different mould. Compared with his
successor, he was a giant every way. Byrnes was a “big policeman.” We shall not
soon have another like him, and that may be both good and bad. He was
unscrupulous, he was for Byrnes —he was a policeman, in short, with all the failings
of the trade. But he made the detective service great. He chased the thieves to
Europe, or gave them license to live in New York on condition that they did not rob
there. He was a Czar, with all an autocrat’s irresponsible powers, and he exercised
them as he saw fit. If they were not his, he took them anyhow; police service looks
to results first. There was that in Byrnes which made me stand up for him in spite of
it all. Twice I held Dr. Parkhurst from his throat, but in the end I had to admit that
the Doctor was right. I believed that, untrammelled, Byrnes might have been a
mighty engine for good, and it was with sorrow I saw him go. He left no one behind
him fit to wear his shoes.

I could not let Byrnes go without a word, for he filled a large space in my life. It is
the reporter, I suppose, who sticks out there. The boys called him a great faker, but
they were hardly just to him in that.* I should rather call him a great actor, and
without being that no man can be a great detective. He made life in a mean street
picturesque while he was there, and for that something is due him. He was the very
opposite of Roosevelt—quite without moral purpose or the comprehension of it,
yet with a streak of kindness in him that sometimes put preaching to shame.
Mulberry Street swears by him to-day, even as it does, under its breath, by
Roosevelt. Decide from that for yourself whether his presence there was for the
good or the bad.

Jacob Riis
The Making of An American Chapter 13.

* 'The boys' is a reference to fellow reporters.

1236

Sketches & Photographs / 1891 Calendar

« on: December 31, 2022, 10:13:10 pm »

1237

General Discussion / Re: The Nine Affiants

« on: December 31, 2022, 09:12:07 pm »

Can you have a man going into a room fully clothed, committing such a murder, and then leaving right away without leaving behind such a trail of evidence? They "found" what they had to find based on their theory. Doesn't it make you wonder why they even bothered to find C Kniclo? It couldn't have been because they suspected him. It amazes me that the police detectives would even say there was a trail of blood like that, knowing that the reporters were there even before they were, and they reported nothing, when obviously they would have.

****************************************************************************

If you believe Lizzie Borden had anything to do with murdering her dad and stepmother, that's a case with no blood other than one solitary pinhead-sized drop of blood on the underside of her skirt that was found. It baffles researchers even today.
Since C. Kniclo had been the original client and the last seen man with her, he was technically a suspect and therefore someone able to shed light on what he did and how he left Brown prior to him leaving Room 31.

Not all the reporters claimed that they didn't see blood where the police stated it was found.

There wasn't a voluminous amount of blood on Ali and neither was there leading out to the hallway and down the stairs. This indicates ( at least to me ) that neither Ali, if the killer, nor C. Kniclo, if the killer, were messy and left significant amounts of blood on their way out. Both had ample time to clean up to a certain degree ( Ali would be in the hotel for over 4 hours after the murder)
but not completely.

1238

General Discussion / Re: Yungstreet Andersen

« on: December 31, 2022, 08:48:12 pm »

In reverse, some people have the desire to see someone as "rank and file" when they're just "rank". When they're discovered to be guilty (usually caught in the act), then they have to backtrack and say he's an aberration or he has an abnormality.

Not in my case. There's nothing to suggest that Andersen was connected to the murder. No need to back track at all. The onus of proving Andersen was a viable suspect rests with those who think he was a viable suspect, not those who see him as a garden variety drunk. One newspaper, not the NYPD, reported that Andersen stated he had stayed at the hotel. It'd be nice to see corroborative evidence for that....but as we know, the register at the Hotel was filled with fictitious names and if he had stayed there and thus the only tangible reference to him being there doesn't exist.

Just for the sake of putting my opinion out there, I very much believe that the police did a fine job of scouring the neighborhood at the time and bringing in suspects. In my belief, the dragnet was productive and they actually did arrest the killer of Carrie Brown. But it was a job wasted.

Your opinion is respected. I disagree with Andersen's suspect-worthiness equally to that of Russmissell's, Commanis's, or any of the others picked up locally. I agree that the police not only did a fine job in picking up people in New York, Brooklyn, and elsewhere, they made sure each and every one of the alibis could be corroborated. Andersen's was and rather quickly.

The killer was brought in and taken to Captain Byrnes and he, like Henry Young the next day, could have spent up to an hour alone with Byrnes in his office, and he was then released. And I don't think there was any Third Degree Byrnes happening here, not even first.

Byrnes didn't have to apply the third degree to release the men picked up in the dragnet. Their alibis were checked out. Byrnes typically applied the third degree to individuals who had cohorts in crime.

If you think the Olof Palma is different, you only have to look at the Yorkshire Ripper. He was questioned by police 19 times.

There's an obvious difference in this Palma case and Andersen's press-reported claim of having stayed at the hotel......Palma's assassin did so voluntarily. Andersen did not approach the police and offer assistance. Again, it's apples and oranges.
On the other hand, Andersen may indeed have stayed at the hotel but was only being forthright in this admission....not to offer assistance or insert himself into the investigation like a Loeb & Leopold.

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