The Devil's Dozen (8 page)

Thereafter, the Budds were flooded with anonymous calls and letters—some kind, and some nasty—as were the police at the Twentieth Street Station. One lead sent Edward Budd with detectives to Long Island to view a man meeting the description of Frank Howard, but he was not the person they sought. Circulars containing Grace’s photo were made up and sent to police departments around the city, as well as to transportation offices.

The Budds looked at photos in the police files to see if the abductor of their daughter was a known criminal, but they could not identify the elusive offender. Delia continued to believe that her daughter was being held for ransom, although no communication had arrived to that effect. A kindly woman wrote to offer Edward a job on her farm.

Four days after the kidnapping, Mrs. Budd had dramatically switched gears (as she often would) and concluded that Grace was no longer alive. The New York police sent circulars about the child to Canadian authorities in the hope that the man had crossed the border, and these were followed by packages of circulars mailed out to police departments in large cities around the country. In New York City, fifty detectives were assigned to the case.

One officer placed an ad in local newspapers aimed at telegraph agencies, asking them to look for forms that Howard might have used to send the telegram on June 2. This produced information from the Western Union office at Third Avenue and 103rd Street. They had the original. Howard might have snatched back his telegram while at the Budds, but investigators now had a sample of his handwriting. With this, they could make a comparison in the event that a suspect turned up.

On June 10, a pushcart peddler in East Harlem said he recognized an enameled can that Frank Howard had left at the Budd home as the container for the cheese he had sold to the elderly man. This peddler ran his business from 104th Street and Third Avenue, close to where the telegram was sent the day before the sale, so police fanned out to see if it might be the area where Howard resided. Detectives agreed that the abductor was more likely a city dweller than a well-to-do farmer.

Then a note arrived, postmarked at 132 Fourth Avenue, an East Harlem city postal station, which declared that the child had been spotted alive. The initials
J.F.H.
appeared to refer to Frank Howard. Mrs. Budd turned the letter over to the detectives, and they engaged the assistance of postal authorities.

The brief note stated that Grace now lived with her abductor: “I have Grace. She is safe and sound. She is happy in her new home and is not at all homesick. I will see to it that Grace has proper schooling. She has been given an Angora cat and a pet canary. She calls the canary Bill. I am a keen student of human nature. That was why I was attracted to Grace. She seemed like a girl who would appreciate nice surroundings and a real nice home.” He added that he had driven with Grace past the Budds’ home, but had seen too many people there, so he had declined to stop. Nevertheless, he stated that he would see to it that “some arrangements are made so Grace will be able to visit you for a short time.” Detectives believed the letter was genuine and tried but failed to obtain fingerprints from it.

When police checked the area, someone affirmed that a child matching Grace’s description had been seen, so all parties were buoyed with hope that she might actually be alive. They searched the neighborhood, knocking on doors to ask residents if they had seen either Grace or Howard. They heard from several people that such a child had been in the area. Delia, however, continued to believe that her daughter was dead. She knew Grace would never just go and live happily with a stranger. To her mind, the kidnapper might have written this letter but it was not a factual description.

But then, on June 18, Delia claimed she’d had a premonition that Grace would be returned to her within a few days. Now she was certain the girl was alive and well. She believed that the man who had taken her had been afraid to return her because of all the excitement. “I don’t think any harm has come to her,” she stated.

On July 7, the
Times
reported that detectives now had a picture of Frank Howard in their possession, identified by Grace Budd’s parents. A boarder at the Budd home, John McLaughlin, confirmed the identification, as did young Edward. The picture had been obtained from a Florida prison. By early August, the district attorney’s office had presented evidence to a grand jury and Assistant D.A. Harold Hastings claimed to have solved the case of who had taken the missing child. The
Times
learned he was an ex-convict already known to the police, Dr. Albert E. Corthell. An indictment was filed August 3 and a bench warrant issued for his arrest. However, at this time, they failed to locate him, as he had gone off somewhere in the Midwest. Investigators were on his trail.

In November, a fifty-year-old man and a ten-year-old girl were detained in Elmira, New York. The man had been charged with vagrancy and he fit the description the Budds had given of Grace’s abductor. The girl insisted that the man was her father, and he gave his name as Thomas Davis. He admitted he had lived recently in the Bronx, but denied any involvement in the Budd kidnapping.

William F. King, a detective lieutenant at the Missing Persons Bureau, had taken over the Budd investigation, and like Detective Frank Geyer, he was the type of man who would chase down every clue, no matter how seemingly insignificant, and who would proactively devise ways to flush out more. He had worked as a fireman on locomotives, fought in World War I, and been a police officer for over a decade. While he preferred action, he had learned that patience and persistence were the most valuable traits in investigations as baffling as this one. To his mind, no unresolved case was ever closed. His job, which he took seriously, was to look into every possibility for making an arrest and to track down every lead.

King learned that the child in the company of this new person of interest did not look like Grace Budd, so he dropped any further investigation of it. Despite his unwavering efforts, there were no further leads that year or the next—just more crank letters and empty tips. King stayed busy, but he was mostly just spinning his wheels.

The next paper chase began in late March 1930 when Mrs. Budd said she had spotted her daughter’s handwriting. An envelope used to enclose a copy of the
Christian Science Monitor
was posted from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on March 25. The envelope was addressed to Francis H. Budd, but Mrs. Budd “knew” the instant she saw it that Grace had addressed it. She looked at handwriting in Grace’s old schoolbooks, then asked neighbors if they didn’t agree. They did. Believing this was more than wishful thinking, she took the envelope to the police.

Detective King and another detective examined the items and found a mailing slip attached to the newspaper that bore the name Herbert J. Sherry. They found this name inside the envelope as well, along with writing in red crayon. Learning that Sherry was in a naval prison, the team went to Portsmouth, only to discover that this man had been in South Carolina at the time of the kidnapping. Handwriting experts also stated that the handwriting did not match examples they had from Grace. Although this lead fizzled out, King did not despair. A child was gone, probably dead, and the offender must be brought to justice.

In June, King arrested a man named Charles Howard, who resembled the description of Frank Howard, and set up a police lineup. Howard was a con man, arrested in Florida for fraud and theft, but Delia could not identify him and he denied any involvement in the kidnapping. However, another woman heard about the arrest and came to the station to link the crime to her former husband, Charles Edward Pope, age sixty-seven, who sometimes used the alias Frank Howard. Mrs. Jessie Pope told police that at the time of the kidnapping, Charles had asked her to take care of a little girl he called Grace. Jessie had refused, so he’d taken the child away. She said she then fell ill for a long period and did not hear about the Budd kidnapping. When she now was shown a photograph of Grace Budd, she was positive that it was the child she had seen with her husband. Although she described different clothing than Grace had worn, the scenario seemed too good to be true. Investigators arrested Pope and searched his home.

Pope admitted he had been institutionalized in 1924, but would not say where or why. He had lived near the Budds two years earlier, but he insisted he was not guilty. Delia identified him, but since she had identified others over the past year, the detectives were dubious. With no evidence against Pope, and plenty of reason for his estranged wife to implicate him out of spite, they figured they would let him go.

But then, after a full day of methodically going through all the buildings on Pope’s property in Shandaken, New York, searchers found three trunks in a garage. One contained pictures of women and “mushy” letters, but beneath all of this they found three locks of fine brown hair, like that of Grace Budd, tied together with a ribbon. The state troopers said there was no doubt the hair had come from a child. They also found a child’s pair of white stockings, similar to those that Grace had worn when she disappeared, and Delia claimed she recognized the darning on them as her work. Also included among the items in this trunk was a notebook full of newspaper clippings of the unfolding kidnapping and investigation. In addition, although Pope kept pieces of correspondence dating back to the 1890s, letters from the year 1928 were missing. Neighbors said he had recently burned a pile of papers.

Two other factors seemed to seal Pope’s fate. First, Grace had been part of a delegation of children who had visited an area near Pope’s farm, and second, a former neighbor of the Budds testified that Pope had come to her apartment seeking the Budd residence. Not surprisingly, the grand jury bound him over for trial. (Oddly, neither Albert nor Edward Budd was asked to identify Pope as the man they had entertained in their home.)

Three months later, with Detective King on the trail, an earlier suspect, Dr. Corthell, was located in St. Louis at the Statler Hotel. Registered under an alias, he had overdosed on barbiturates and was in a hospital. King found him there, and he admitted that he had been in New York in 1928, but denied involvement in the kidnapping. The Budds were able to say only that he
might
be the man. He was transported to Manhattan.

Three days before Christmas, Pope went to trial, but his attorney had received a letter from Delia to the effect that she now believed he was not the kidnapper. In fact, three of the witnesses had decided he was not the man. Only his spiteful wife continued to stick to her story, but given their rough history, it was difficult to take her seriously. In fact, the locks of hair had come from their son. Pope was acquitted on December 24, while in February, Corthell was released as well.

It would be more than three years before the case finally came to a horrifying resolution. In the meantime, the nation was transfixed by yet another kidnapping. On the evening of March 1, 1932, Charles Lindbergh Jr., twenty months old, was taken from the second floor of the New Jersey home where his parents, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, resided. The nursemaid had discovered him missing from his bed. The Lindberghs, too, received dozens of communications, turning over bundles of money to an organization that supposedly held their child. But the baby’s body was discovered not far away in the woods, killed by an apparent blow to the head. Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested two years later and held for trial. Even as this was going on, the Budd case was revived.

By November 1934, only the persistent Detective King was still on it. He had traveled around the country following leads and was one of the few officers who still believed the case could be solved. He had even done various things to keep it alive. Among them was to plant false information in newspapers in the hope of disturbing the kidnapper so much he would react. The point was to keep the focus on him so the tension would never let up. In fact, each time King did this, the police received a number of leads, but none had yet been helpful. Still, King did not give up, even more than six years into the case. His preferred tool was a popular gossip column in the
Daily Mirror
that Walter Winchell wrote, called “On Broadway.” On November 2, King asked Winchell to write that the Bureau of Missing Persons had a new informant and expected to crack the case within the month. This time, the ruse apparently worked.

On November 11, 1934, Delia Budd received a letter, sent from the Grand Central post office. She did not read, so Edward looked over the contents, which were so disgusting and terrifying he felt certain it was from the man who had taken Grace... and killed her in a gruesome manner. He took the missive straight to Detective King, who read it with a sinking sense of finality.

“My dear Mrs. Budd,” the writer began. He went on to state that in 1894, a friend of his had shipped as a deckhand on the steamer
Tacoma,
going to Hong Kong. They got drunk and missed getting back on the boat, so they were stranded in a country suffering from famine.

“So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak—chops—or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girls behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price.”

So this man reportedly acquired a taste for human flesh, and when he finally returned to New York, he kidnapped two young boys. He bound and tortured them to make their “meat” more tender. Then he killed and ate them both.

“At that time,” said the letter writer, “I was living at 409 E 100 St., near—right side. He told me so often how good Human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3—1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said Yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick—bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.”