The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (94 page)

As near as Bowe could recollect, Raymond, Rothstein, McManus and Bernstein were bettors on the high card. He heard McManus lost about $50,000. Rothstein was keeping a score on the winnings and losings. McManus paid off partly in cash and partly by check, while Rothstein was putting cash in his pocket, and would give out IOUs. Bowe said he heard Rothstein lost over $200,000. The redoubtable “Titanic” won between $20,000 and $25,000 from McManus. Pecora asked: “What about Meyer Boston?”

“He wins.”

Under cross-examination by James D. C. Murray, Bowe said he had often known McManus to bet as much as $50,000 on one horse race and never complain if he lost. He said:

“It’s an everyday occurrence with him. He always paid with a smile.”

After the game, he said, Rothstein and McManus were very friendly; they often ate together at Lindy’s. Rothstein won something from McManus in the game, but Bowe didn’t know how much.

It was a rather big day for the defense. In his opening address to the jury, George Brothers, assistant district attorney, didn’t seem to offer much motive for the possible killing of Rothstein by McManus other than the ill feeling that might have been engendered over the game in which they both lost.

That, and the fact that McManus fled after the killing, seemed his strongest points, while Attorney Murray quickly made it clear that part of the defense will be that Rothstein wasn’t shot in room No. 349 at all, and that he certainly wasn’t shot by George McManus.

Murray worked at length on Dr Charles D. Norris, the city Medical Examiner, trying to bring out from the witness that the nature of the wound sustained by Rothstein and the resultant shock would have prevented Rothstein from walking down three flights of stairs, and pushing open two or three heavy doors to reach the spot in the service entrance of the hotel where he was found, especially without leaving some trace of blood.

During the examination of the doctor, the expensive clothes that Arnold Rothstein used to wear so jauntily were displayed, now crumpled and soiled. The white silk shirt was among the ghastly exhibits, but the $45 custom-made shoes that were his hobby, and the sox were missing. Dr Norris didn’t know what had become of them.

The jurors, most of them business men on their own hook, or identified in salaried capacities with business, were a study while Martin Bowe and Sam Boston were testifying, especially Bowe, for he spoke as calmly of winning and losing $50,000 as if he were discussing the price of his morning paper.

You could see the jurors bending forward, some of them cupping their hands to their ears, and eyeing the witness with amazement. That stud and high spade game had been mentioned so often in the papers that it had come to be accepted as a Broadway fable. Probably no member of the jury, for none of them indicated in their examination that they are familiar with sporting life, took any stock in the tales of high rolling of the Broadway gamblers.

But here was a man who was in the game, who had lost $5,700 of his own money, and who knew what he was talking about. It was apparent the jurors were astounded by the blasé manner of Bowe as he spoke of McManus dropping $50,000 as “an everyday occurrence,” and even the voluble Sam Boston’s glib mention of handling hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly in bets on sporting events impresses them.

28 November 1929

Nothing new having developed in the life and battles of Juror No. 9, or the Man with the Little Moustache, the trial of George McManus for the murder of Arnold Rothstein proceeded with reasonable tranquility yesterday.

Just before adjournment over Thanksgiving, to permit the jurors to restore their waning vitality with turkey and stuffin’, the State let it out rather quietly that it hasn’t been able to trace very far the pistol which is supposed to have ended the tumultuous life of “the master mind” a year ago.

On a pleasant day in last June—the 15th, to be exact—it seems that one Mr Joe Novotny was standing behind the counter in his place of business at No. 51 West Fourth Street, in the thriving settlement of St Paul, Minnesota, when in popped a party who was to Mr Joe Novotny quite unknown, shopping for a rod, as the boys term a smoke-pole.

Mr Novotny sold the stranger a .38-calibre Colt, which Mr Novotny himself had but recently acquired from the firm of Janney, Sempler & Hill, of Minneapolis, for $22.85. The factory number of the Colt was 359,946. Mr Novotny did not inquire the shopper’s name, because it seems there is no law requiring such inquisitiveness in Minnesota, and Mr Novotny perhaps didn’t wish to appear nosey.

No doubt Mr Novotny figures the stranger was a new settler in St Paul and desired the Colt to protect himself against the wild Indians and wolves that are said to roam the streets of the city. Anyway, that’s the last Mr Novotny saw of pistol No. 359,946, and all he knows about it, according to a stipulation presented by the State of New York to Judge Nott late yesterday afternoon, and agreed to by James D. C. Murray, attorney for George McManus, as Mr Novotny’s testimony.

It may be that some miscreant subsequently stole the gun from the settler’s cabin in St Paul or that he lent it to a pal who was going to New York, and wished to be well dressed, for the next we hear of No. 359,946 is its appearance in the vicinity of Fifty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, Manhattan Island, where it was picked up by one Bender, a taxi jockey, after the shooting of Arnold Rothstein. A stipulation with reference to said Bender also was submitted to Judge Nott.

The State of New York would have the jury in the trial of George McManus believe it was with this gun that Rothstein was shot in the stomach in room 349 in the Park Central Hotel, and that the gun was hurled through a window into the street after the shooting. It remains to be seen what the jury thinks about this proposition.

It is not thought it will take any stock in any theory that the gun walked from St. Paul to the corner of Fifty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue.

If the settler who bought the gun from Mr Novotny would step forward at this moment, he would be as welcome as the flowers in May. But those Northwestern settlers always are reticent.

It was around three o’clock in the afternoon when Mr James McDonald, one of the assistant district attorneys, finished reading the 300 pages of testimony taken in the case to date to Mr Edmund C. Shotwell, juror No. 2, who replaced Eugene Riker when Mr Riker’s nerves bogged down on him.

It was the consensus that Mr Shotwell was in better physical condition than Mr McDonald at the conclusion of the reading, although at the start it looked as if Mr McDonald would wear his man down with ease before page No. 204.

Juror No. 9, who is Norris Smith, the man with the little moustache, whose adventures have kept this trial from sinking far down into the inside of the public prints long ere this, sat in a chair in the row behind the staunch juror No. 2, which row is slightly elevated above the first row. Juror No. 9, who is slightly built and dapperly dressed, tweaked at his little moustache with his fingers and eyed the press section with baleful orbs.

What juror No. 9 thinks of the inmates of the press section would probably be suppressed by the censors. And yet, without juror No. 9, where would this case be? It would be back next to pure reading matter—that’s where.

Juror No. 9 was alleged to have been discovered by newspaper men bouncing around a Greenwich Village shushery and talking about the McManus trial, though he convinced Judge Nott that he hadn’t done or said anything that might impair his status as a juror in the case. Finally it was learned juror No. 9 was shot up a bit in his apartment at No. 420 West Twentieth Street on 29 February 1928, by a young man who was first defended by James D. C. Murray, now McManus’s counsel.

30 November 1929

Draw near, friend reader, for a touch of ooh-my-goodness has finally crept into the Roaring Forties’ most famous murder trial. Sc-an-dal, no less. Sh-h-h!

And where do you think we had to go to get it?

To Walnut Street, in the pleasant mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina. Folks, thar’s sin in them hills!

Here we’d been going along quietly for days and days on end with the matter of George McManus, charged with plugging Arnold Rothstein with a .38, and the testimony had been pure and clean and nothing calculated to give Broadway a bad name, when in come a woman from the ol’ Tarheel State speaking of the strangest didoes.

A Mrs Marian A. Putnam, she was, who runs the Putnam grill in Asheville, a lady of maybe forty-odd, a headliner for the State, who testified she had heard loud voices of men, and a crash coming from the vicinity of room 349 in the Park Central Hotel the night “the master mind,” was “settled”. And that later she had seen a man wandering along the hallway on the third floor, with his hands pressed to his abdomen and “a terrible look on his face”.

Well, there seemed nothing in this narration to mar the peaceful trend of events, or to bring the blush of embarrassment for this city to the cheek of the most loyal Broadwayer. Then James D. C. Murray took charge of the witness and began addressing the lady on the most tender subjects, and developing the weirdest things. Really, you’d be surprised.

Handing the lady a registration card from the Park Central Hotel and assuming a gruff tone of voice several octaves over the perfunctory purr that has been the keynote of the trial to date, Murray asked, “Who are the Mr and Mrs Putnam indicated by that card as registered at the Park Central on 28 October 1928?”

“ I am Mrs Putnam.”

“Who is Mr Putnam?”

Mrs Putnam hesitated briefly, and then replied, “A friend of mine to whom I am engaged.”

There were subdued snorts back in the court room as the spectators suddenly came up out of their dozes and turned off their snores to contemplate the lady on the witness stand.

Mrs Putnam wore a rather smart-looking velvet dress, with a gray caracul coat with a dark squirrel collar, and a few diamonds here and there about her, indicating business is okay at the Putnam grill.

But she didn’t have the appearance of one who might insert a hotsy-totsy strain into the staid proceedings. She looked more like somebody’s mother, or aunt. She described herself as a widow, and here she was admitting something that savored of social error, especially as the lady subsequently remarked that “Mr Putnam” had occupied the same boudoir with her.

The spectators sat up to listen and mumbled we were finally getting down to business in this trial.

Murray now produced a death certificate attesting to the demise of one Putnam, who died in 1913, the attorney asking, “The Mr Putnam who occupied the room with you wasn’t the Mr Putnam who died in 1913, was he?”

At this point Mrs Putnam seemed deeply affected, possibly by the memory of the late Mr P. She gulped and applied her handkerchief to her eyes, and the spectators eyed her intently, because they felt it would be a thrill if it transpired that the deceased Putnam had indeed returned to life the very night that “the master mind” was shot.

But it seems it wasn’t that Mr Putnam, and Mr Murray awoke some very antique echoes in the old court room as he shouted, “Who was it?”

Well, Mrs Putnam doubtless restrained by a feeling of delicacy, didn’t want to tell, and Judge Nott helpfully remarked that as long as she didn’t deny she was registered at the hotel, the name didn’t seem important. Murray argued Mrs Putnam’s fiancé might be a material witness for the defense, so Judge Nott let him try to show it.

Finally Mrs Putnam said the man’s name was Perry. He is said to be a citizen of Asheville, and what will be said of Mr Perry in Asheville when the news reaches the sewing circles down yonder will probably be plenty. Not content with touching on Mr Perry to Mrs Putnam, the attorney for the defense asked her about a Mr Elias, and then about a Mr Bruce, becoming right personal about Mr Bruce.

He wanted to know if Mr Bruce had remained with Mrs Putnam one night in her room at another New York Hotel, but she said no. Then Murray brought in the name of a Mr Otis B. Carr, of Hendersonville, N C, and when Mrs Putnam said she didn’t recall the gentleman, the attorney asked, “Did you steal anything out of a store in Hendersonville?”

Mrs Putnam said no. Moreover, in reply to questions, she said she didn’t steal two dresses from a department store in Asheville and that she hadn’t been arrested for disorderly conduct and fined five dollars. Before Murray got through with her some of the listeners half expected to hear him ask the lady if she had ever personally killed A. Rothstein.

Mrs Putnam couldn’t have made the State very happy, because she admitted under Murray’s cross-examination that she had once denied in Asheville, in the presence of Mr Mara, one of the district attorney’s assistants, and County Judge McCrae, of Asheville, that she ever left her room in the Park Central the night of the murder.

She said her current story is the truth. Mr Murray asked her if she hadn’t said thus and so to newspapermen in Asheville. She replied, “I did”.

A young man described as Douglas Eller, a reporter of an Asheville paper, was summoned from among the spectators in the court room and brought up to the railing, where Mrs Putnam could see him. The lady was asked if she knew him, and she eyed him at length before admitting she may have seen him before. Mr Eller retired, blushing slightly, as if not to be known by Mrs Putnam argues one unknown in Asheville.

Murray became very curious about the Putnam grill in Asheville. Didn’t she have curtained-off booths? She did, but her waitresses could walk in and out of them at any time, a reply that Mrs Putnam tossed at Murray as if scorning utterly the base insinuation of his question.