Carrie Brown : Murder In The East River Hotel

8. The Coroner's Inquest was originally planned for May 1st, but postponed upon the
request of the District Attorney's Office. None of the original jurors appeared on May
13-14.
The men who appeared at the Inquest included some very wealthy men. Included among
them was Thomas Brennan, Foreman, Jacob Ruppert, Sr., Charles Iden, James Trainor,
and August Strassburg. Ruppert was related to one of the men. Ali was indicted on May
18th.

CORRECT:  It was Ruppert, Sr.


9. Among the few effects found in Room 31 on April 24th were Carrie's muslin bag and two
pairs old-fashioned spectacles. Her checked gingham skirt lay in the corner of the room. There
were no coins or paper money in the muslin bag. A shoe was used to prop up one of the windows
up, the window on the Water Street side of the building.

Her skirt was red flannel.

10. Several women were taken to the police station, along with William Bekle, during the first
two days of the investigation. Ali was arrested on April 24th. Inspector Byrnes was compelled
to move from headquarters on Oak Street to Mulberry Street to head the inquiry, due to the
volume of people being brought in. Ali would be taken to the Tombs on May 2nd, the day after
the aborted Coroner's Inquest.

CORRECT:  Byrnes moved from Mulberry Street to Oak Street, not from Oak Street to Mulberry.




11.  Governor Benjamin Odell contacted NYC DA Eugene Philbin in early Summer 1901
and asked him to verify whether the key turned in by George Damon matched those
in use at the East River Hotel. Philbin sent one of the detectives who were active back
in 1891, William McLaughlin, to get in touch with the former proprietor of the hotel,
James Jennings, and to ask Jennings to see if Damon's key was the type in use a decade
earlier.

CORRECT: It wasn't McLaughlin...who was an Inspector in 1891.   It was Detective McNaught.

12.  Judge Fred Smyth announced at 10:30 am to all present in the court room on June 29th, that he
decided to permit the jurists to see the room where the murder took place. Five members of the
Court Squad ( Michael O'Bierne, John Miller, Thomas Booth, Martin McAnnerny, and Charles
Reilly) guarded against any persons communicating with the jurors. Attorney Manny Friend literally
begged Judge Smyth to allow Sgt. Crowley to accompany the jurors ( and himself, along with House and Levy)
upstairs to prevent any problems with men and women milling around idly in the hotel.

Friend didn't beg Smyth. He protested against Crowley being present on the fifth floor while the jurors
were up there. Crowley told Friend he had no intention of going upstairs. Crowley merely opened the "family entrance"
 door on Water Street for the jurors to enter.

13.  After Coroner Schultze concluded his business in Room 31, within two hours, police officers would
begin removing all of Carrie Brown's possessions and clothes and take them to the Mulberry Street
police station. This included her muslin bag with the pairs of spectacles, and of course, the clothes she
wore on her back.

Her possessions were still in the room for at least two days after her body had been removed. Her shoe
still propping up the window on the Water Street side of the building...

Oh dear
8. The Coroner's Inquest was originally planned for May 1st, but postponed upon the
request of the District Attorney's Office. None of the original jurors appeared on May
13-14.
The men who appeared at the Inquest included some very wealthy men. Included among
them was Thomas Brennan, Foreman, Jacob Ruppert, Sr., Charles Iden, James Trainor,
and August Strassburg. Ruppert was related to one of the men. Ali was indicted on May
18th.
It was Ruppert Jr. not Sr.!

9. Among the few effects found in Room 31 on April 24th were Carrie's muslin bag and two
pairs of old-fashioned spectacles. Her checked gingham skirt lay in the corner of the room. There
were no coins or paper money in the muslin bag. A shoe was used to prop up one of the windows
up, the window on the Water Street side of the building.
A shoe propped the window open? I don’t remember that at all.
Still, gonna go with the skirt…was it checkered? I think striped.
10. Several women were taken to the police station, along with William Bekle, during the first
two days of the investigation. Ali was arrested on April 24th. Inspector Byrnes was compelled
to move from headquarters on Oak Street to Mulberry Street to head the inquiry, due to the
volume of people being brought in. Ali would be taken to the Tombs on May 2nd, the day after
the aborted Coroner's Inquest.
Oh boy….Byrnes moving, if he did wasn’t it vice versa? Oak street was the local station, Mulberry where Byrnes was?

I should probably know such things, considering how much time I’ve spent reading press articles.

8. The Coroner's Inquest was originally planned for May 1st, but postponed upon the
request of the District Attorney's Office. None of the original jurors appeared on May
13-14.
The men who appeared at the Inquest included some very wealthy men. Included among
them was Thomas Brennan, Foreman, Jacob Ruppert, Sr., Charles Iden, James Trainor,
and August Strassburg. Ruppert was related to one of the men. Ali was indicted on May
18th.


9. Among the few effects found in Room 31 on April 24th were Carrie's muslin bag and two
pairs of old-fashioned spectacles. Her checked gingham skirt lay in the corner of the room. There
were no coins or paper money in the muslin bag. A shoe was used to prop up one of the windows
up, the window on the Water Street side of the building.

10. Several women were taken to the police station, along with William Bekle, during the first
two days of the investigation. Ali was arrested on April 24th. Inspector Byrnes was compelled
to move from headquarters on Oak Street to Mulberry Street to head the inquiry, due to the
volume of people being brought in. Ali would be taken to the Tombs on May 2nd, the day after
the aborted Coroner's Inquest.

There's something decidedly un-kosher about these four paragraphs.....what's wrong with them?


Here's four to start off with.....

All are welcome to try and stump the other fella....
-------------------------------------------------------------
Testing my memory? I like to double-check things because otherwise I forget! But let’s try…

1- On a late Spring day in 1901, George Damon, accompanied by attorney Ovide Robillard, and newspaper
editor, Robert Gordon Butler, went to the Mulberry Street police station to inquire whether or not they
had a photograph of Amer Ben Ali to compare to the description of Damon's farmhand.
The detective in charge informed the trio that they had no photos on file.
Shortly afterwards, a photograph was obtained from the Warden of Sing Sing prison for comparison purposes
and at this point it was determined that the two men did not resemble each other.

They were not determined
2- Doctors Formad and Flint conducted tests on the material extracted from Ali's nails, a feat undertaken four
days after Ali's arrest by Detective Frink. In the material, there were traces of Carrie Brown having eaten
corned beef and cabbage. This supported the story told by Alice Sullivan, who ate with Carrie Brown on the
23rd at around 4:00-4:30 pm at Speckman's Saloon.

3- Although not capital crimes, Amer Ben Ali did have a number of assaults and negative interactions with women
from the vicinity of the East River Hotel. One of them, a Mrs. Finnegan, who lived on James Street, told reporters
that she took a baseball bat and threatened Ali. Another woman, Mary Harrington, also had an encounter with
Ali in which she threatened him with a baseball bat. One woman, Dublin Mary Briscoe, was smacked around in
Harrington's home in the summer of 1890. One other woman, Mary Ann Lopez, pressed charges against Ali
for an attack that occurred in February 1891,  one month before Ali was arrested for vagrancy in Queens. This
resume did not speak well for Ali.

4-Beside Mary Miniter, there may have only been one witness in the area that saw Carrie Brown and C. Kniclo
on April 23rd. Try as they might, the police came up short with the exception of a man named Henry Decenwether,
a tailor who had a shop near the intersection of Oak and Oliver Streets. He told the police that he was with
Dublin Mary Briscoe in Speckman's Saloon when he saw a man closely resembling the man described by Miniter.
Brought into the police station shortly after the crime, Decenwether was told by the police to be quiet about their conversation.

Ouch, I did really badly!
See, this is why I check and doublecheck

Pete:

   This is from Sullivan's trial testimony.

   A. Only that day, I said I took a walk with her down to Oak Street and then to Water.
Q. That was the first time that you ever went out with her, but as a fact you knew Old
Shakespeare, and you knew that she was an old woman?
A. Certainly.
Q. And you know that she occasionally did meet men, didn’t you know that?
A.  No, sir; I never did; I thought that she left her place for something; she said she worked in
Brooklyn.

    She also said she first met Carrie Brown on Easter Monday.....which was impossible, since
Carrie didn't return from Blackwell's Island until April 16th.  Easter Monday 1891 was March 30th.
Sullivan didn't get home from Bellevue until March 22nd.
No big deal....probably a glitch in her memory.


This link....last post on the thread....concerns her burial.  I didn't know that there was some resistance
from the police to send her back to Salem....unless it's a misunderstanding.

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