Recent Posts

Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 ... 10
21
General Discussion / Re: The Legal Teams
« Last post by Howard Brown on March 11, 2026, 08:46:45 pm »
Pete:

Von Gerichten had a minor role in the early days of the Brown Murder case...I'll post something tomorrow.
22
General Discussion / Re: The Legal Teams
« Last post by Kattrup on March 11, 2026, 07:24:51 pm »
Thanks for checking, I was just curious after seeing the three policeman being in the case, if there was a fourth connection.
23
General Discussion / Re: The Jailers From Queens
« Last post by Howard Brown on March 11, 2026, 03:07:34 pm »
Nice finds today, big guy.

The address where Hiland's liquor store was ( probably) located in Queens was Broadway (in Queens). and Union Street.
'Broadway' in Queens is now Northern Boulevard...in the Queens neighborhood of Flushing.

Edit: I neglected to add this before...sorry.

There was also a Broadway and Union Avenue in Brooklyn, in the Williamsburg neighborhood....
Hiland lived ( and died ) in Queens.
24
General Discussion / Re: The Legal Teams
« Last post by Howard Brown on March 11, 2026, 02:33:02 pm »
Incidentally, was Unger related to the Captain ( Edward) Unger, who in 1887 was accused of murder and dismemberment? He was, I believe, acquitted,
but at least three of the cops from the Carrie Brown-case were also involved in the Unger-case: MacLaughlin, Frink and Aloncle


Nina is double-checking on whether Henry Unger was related to Capt. Edward Unger, Pete.....

Captain Unger was found guilty and sentenced to Sing Sing.

Edit:


Nina cannot connect Captain Edward Unger (born 1835, Germany) and Henry W. Unger (Born 1863, in NYC).


Columbus News
Columbus, Montana
August 29, 1912
**************




25
General Discussion / Re: The Legal Teams
« Last post by Kattrup on March 11, 2026, 01:56:07 pm »
These are the six attorneys who worked the Ali Prosecution :

De Lancey Nicoll
Francis Wellman
Charles Simms
with assistance from :
Harry W. Unger
John D. Lindsay

Harry Macdona*

Macdona is the correct spelling of the surname

Incidentally, was Unger related to the Captain Unger, who in 1887 was accused of murder and dismemberment? He was, I believe, acquitted, but at least three of the cops from the Carrie Brown-case were also involved in the Unger-case: MacLaughling, Frink and Aloncle:

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
26
General Discussion / Re: Freemasons involved with the case
« Last post by Kattrup on March 11, 2026, 01:39:34 pm »
These are some of the ones I suspect were masons, or I seem to remember them being mentioned as such:

William E. Frink
James Trainor
George Putney
Richard Walters
MacDona
McLaughlin
Fr. Reinert

These are the persons that I've looked at and have cannot find any indication they were masons:

Joseph Barttels


I'll edit some names in/out in the above categories as I get through them
27
General Discussion / Freemasons involved with the case
« Last post by Kattrup on March 11, 2026, 01:29:54 pm »
This is something I wish I'd done a long time ago. On plenty of the people I've researched, it was mentioned they were masons, but I did not always make a note of it, since I have usually been more interested in birth/death years, addresses, and photos.

But there were a lot of them who were Freemasons. I think it would be interesting to see how many and who.

I'm going to add to this list as I go along. For a lot of them, it involves re-researching their life, to find any mention, so it's probably going to take a while to complete the list.

Police officers
Alexander S. Williams - Polar Star

Court people (lawyers etc)
Hannibal Cutugno - St. Cecile Lodge 568
William N. Penney


Inquest jurors
Alexander F. Slaughter - Republic Lodge 390
Charles Iden, NY Lodge 330


Trial jurors
Benjamin Wasserman - Mount Hebron Lodge 257
28
General Discussion / Re: The Jailers From Queens
« Last post by Kattrup on March 11, 2026, 12:39:07 pm »
I think I found these some time ago but forgot to post them

First is short obituary of Hiland, second is more curious: in 1890, he was a liquer dealer. In his testimony he stated he 'd been a constable 4-5 years. But apparently, he had sidebusiness selling liquer.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

First one is Flushing Daily Times, March 1 1917, second is Lain's business Directory 1890.
29
General Discussion / Re: Fuller, Berbenich, and Blood
« Last post by Howard Brown on March 10, 2026, 08:49:23 am »
Affidavits filed by the 11th-hour, decade late, reporters declared that they had seen no blood.
Up until the time that these affidavits were filed, the position of the organized pardon campaign(s) was to not
refute the verdict or discount the blood evidence ( on the floor and in either room), carefully
avoiding the question of blood being absolutely found on Ali's body and material found under his nails.

However, here in late 1901, Fuller, speaking for the pardon effort, now refutes the blood evidence, giving his reasons,
but at the same time stating that if blood was found, it was left by reporters ( the Berbenich affidavit) ostensibly
placed to create a sensation.

Sounds a lot like a man wanting his cake and eating it, too.

Whether or not blood was found at the places the police said that they found blood, isn't the bottom line.
What was the bottom line, IMHO, is that the Damon story and key gave the pardon campaigners some leverage
in 1901 and that their refutation of the blood evidence was established on shakier ground, otherwise why bring
up Berbenich's explanation in the first place?

Damon's story and key, in a major way, allowed the pardon campaign crew to bring up issues such as Fitzgerald not
testifying to seeing blood: the police still looking for C. Kniclo....which would have been standard operating
procedure in 1891, if only to glean information from him on the night in question, and not necessarily as a suspect
after April 30th: and of course, the blood issue.
30
General Discussion / Fuller, Berbenich, and Blood
« Last post by Howard Brown on March 10, 2026, 07:44:23 am »
While the following resolves nothing in the case, it is interesting that Paul Fuller, an attorney with Coudert Brothers law firm, seems to be
arguing for and, at the same time, against blood being found up on the fifth floor of the hotel.


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


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.


There could have been a woolly mammoth in room 31, and Fitzgerald would probably have not seen it.

There have been many crime scenes in which the victim was murdered with by a knife with a minimal amount of blood
eventually being found on the perpetrator. Locard's Exchange Principle states, "Every contact leaves a trace".
There was blood found on Ali, which we won't go into here.
At first, Fuller scoffs at the blood claimed to have been found....and yet at the end of the paragraph, reminds Governor
Odell that Henry Berbenich's affidavit offers a suggestion as to how the now-existent blood got to those places.
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5 ... 10