The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars (26 page)

“No.” Mrs. Nack flushed slightly.

“With whom?”

Thorn stared at her from the defense table, his gaze as fixed as hers was averted.

“With William Guldensuppe,” she answered.

“When did you become acquainted with Martin Thorn?”

“I advertised a furnished room, and he came and took it in June 1896—I think until January of this year.”

It had ended badly, of course; Guldensuppe had landed Thorn in the hospital for four days. Then, she said, Thorn began visiting when Guldensuppe was away at work.

“What passed between you and Thorn?”

A hint of a smile began to cross Martin Thorn’s face, but
Mrs. Nack continued looking away from him.

“He always told me to leave Guldensuppe and live with him. I refused.”

“Why?”

“I told him from the first night I was a married woman,” Mrs. Nack replied earnestly. There were titters in the courtroom, and she added, “He said, ‘It is not so. I know your husband lives in Astoria.’ ”

The prosecutor quickly stepped in. “Now in March, what did Mr. Thorn say to you about Guldensuppe?”

“I told Thorn I couldn’t live with him, and I gave him twenty dollars. A couple of days later he wanted more, but I said I could not give it to him. Then …” She paused, and her words echoed out over the horrified crowd. “He said—
I don’t want money. I want Guldensuppe’s head.
”

There was a commotion in the gallery; a
transfixed spectator leaned so far past the railing that she nearly toppled over. The courtroom fell silent again as the prosecutor led Mrs. Nack’s recollections forward.

“Wanted his head?”

“He wanted his head,” Nack nodded. She was becoming animated; the ostrich feather atop her hat bobbed with each motion. “I got scared. Then he says he will kill Guldensuppe and put his body in a trunk and lock it, and I should send it express to where he is going to hire a room. I say—
I won’t do it.
”

“Go on.”

“I said,
Kill me
. He said,
That will give me no satisfaction.
”

Her face darkened as she kept it turned away from Thorn.

“He came one evening in my house, and said
Do you love me?
And
I said,
I told you I can’t love nobody, and he took me on my neck, here,” she pointed at her throat. “He strangled me till I was half dead and the blood come out of my mouth.”

By Nack’s telling, her role was curiously passive:
She
had been the victim, too.

“I want to say that I always did what the man
wanted me to because I was afraid,” she added. “When the house was hired, Thorn told me that I should bring Guldensuppe over and he will kill him. I had to do everything that man told me.”

“What did you say to William Guldensuppe?”

“I told Guldensuppe that he should come with me, I got the house where I am going to open a baby farm.”

As if to protest this very notion, an infant briefly squalled from the women’s gallery.

“A baby farm?”

“Well, he always told me I should do something,” she shrugged.

At about nine on Friday morning, June 25, they took the Thirty-Fourth Street ferry and then a streetcar out to the cottage.

“I had the key, and I went inside and I was so excited I went out into the back yard,” Mrs. Nack told the courtroom. There was
not another sound in the room save for the furious
scritch scritch
of reporters’ pencils. “Guldensuppe went upstairs, and when I was in the yard I heard a shot. After a while Thorn came out and called me. He said
—I shot Guldensuppe. He’s dead.
”

She’d never hurt Guldensuppe, she explained, never even saw his body; she left for the afternoon, and when she returned, Thorn had wrapped him up in parcels.

“Was there anything bought for the purpose of wrapping up parcels?”

“I bought oilcloth.”

“Look at that.” The prosecutor held up a foul swatch of the red-and-gold cloth.

“Yes.” Mrs. Nack nodded. “That is it.”

They’d thrown the plaster-encased head off the ferry on the way back, and she disembarked with another package under her
arm—Guldensuppe’s clothes—and burnt them that night in her apartment’s stove. The next day they hired the undertaker’s carriage to dispose of the larger parcels.

“Now, state what happened on Saturday the twenty-sixth, when you went over there with the wagon.”

“
He had a bottle of ammonia,” she explained, the better to clean the blood spots. “I cleaned the bathtub. There was some white stuff in it, I suppose.”

“Don’t
suppose,
” Howe snapped from the defense table.

“It was the plaster of paris,” Nack added apologetically. After dumping the parcels and meeting again Monday night, she said, they parted until their arraignment.

“
Here is a photograph.” The prosecutor held up a portrait. “Who does it represent?”

“William Guldensuppe,” her voice trembled.

“Here is another photograph—do you recognize it?”

“Yes,” Nack said quietly. “It is the cottage in Woodside.”

The prosecutor paused thoughtfully, then leaned in. “Mrs. Nack,” he asked softly. “Why do you make this confession?”

Her eyes began to well up.

“I make it to make my peace with the people.” She began to sob and reached for her handkerchief. “And with God.”

Augusta Nack burst into tears, and for a moment everyone in the courthouse was speechless—everyone, that is, but the counsel sitting by Martin Thorn.

“God?”
Howe’s incredulous voice rang out in disbelief.

THE DEFENSE COUNSEL
drew himself up to his full height and towered before the witness box. Across William F. Howe’s chest hung his
favorite diamond pendant, a massive creation known among court reporters as “the Headlight”—and Mrs. Nack began blinking nervously, as if blinded by its rays. But then, Howe’s sartorial splendor was always more than mere vanity: It was a warning, a proof of enemies bested before.

“Mrs. Nack,” he said gravely. “You have told us that on June twenty-fifth, after Guldensuppe was killed, you took his clothes to your home. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“And the clothing was saturated with blood?” Howe asked.

“Y-yes.”

“This was the day you say Guldensuppe was killed?”

“Yes.”

“And you knew it?”

“Yes, I knew.” Her voice grew quieter.

Howe lowered his own voice to a stage whisper. “Did you cry, Mrs. Nack? When you burned Guldensuppe’s clothes?”

“No.” She appeared confused. “I didn’t.”

“You cried today, didn’t you?” Howe asked in mock surprise.

“I have often cried …,” she began.

“
Today!
In the court room!” Howe yelled. “Yes or no?”

“Yes?”

“You bought the oilcloth?” Howe continued briskly.

“Yes.”

“And you bought it for purposes of wrapping his body in it, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Augusta blinked nervously.

“Did you cry then?”

“No.”

“Did you cry when you heard the shot that killed him?”

Mrs. Nack was catching on.

“Yes,” she now replied.

Howe looked at her queerly, his face a mask of puzzlement. “You knew
perfectly well
that Guldensuppe was taken to Woodside to be killed, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she stammered.

The lawyer mused on this, looking at the jury to share his confusion.

“Did you
love
Guldensuppe?” he finally asked.

“No,” she insisted stoutly. “I didn’t love anybody but my husband.”

The silence was broken by a bitter laugh of disbelief—Thorn’s. It was nearly his first utterance of the trial.

“You still loved your husband while you lived with Guldensuppe?”

“I stopped loving my husband then and began to love Guldensuppe,” she stammered.

Howe smiled; he’d caught the witness in her first contradiction.

“You plotted to kill the man you loved?”

“No,” she shot back. “I did not.”

“But you paid the money for the rent?”

“Yes.”

“And bought the oilcloth?”

“Yes,” she snapped.

“And the house was rented for the purpose of killing Guldensuppe?”

“Yes.”
Mrs. Nack’s eyes teared up again. “You must excuse me.”

“No,
I won’t
!” Howe roared, and leaned into the witness box as the crowd laughed nervously. “When did you begin to love
Thorn
?”

“I don’t know.”

“
How long before the killing?”

“I never loved him until he choked me. Then I had to.”

“He choked you into loving him?”
Howe asked incredulously.

“Yes,” she insisted. “I was afraid of him.”

“How long did this frightful love continue?”

“Always.” Nack reached quickly for an explanation. “Thorn told me if I didn’t leave Guldensuppe, he’d buy some stuff and a syringe and squirt it into Guldensuppe’s eyes and into my eyes—and that then we wouldn’t be able to see each other. And that
then
I could have Guldensuppe.”

Acid attacks were not unknown among jilted lovers, yet Howe looked puzzled.

“It was fear of this syringe,” he intoned, “that made you buy oilcloth before this man was dead, and fear of this syringe after he was dead made you burn his clothes?”

“Yes,” she insisted.

“Why, Mrs. Nack, did you go back to the house again?”

“Thorn told me so.”

“Ah—fear of the syringe again?”

“Yes,” she nodded earnestly.

The courthouse was stifling; more spectators had crept in past the guards, and they were now spilling out into the aisles and sitting on the steps.

“
You prepared to go to Europe, didn’t you?” he asked after a long pause.

“No,” she said loudly. “I did not.”

“Did you not intend to go to Europe?”

“I did not know what to do,” she said blandly.

Howe smiled broadly, amiably.

“No, of course you did not know what to do. I know that. I understand that very well.” Howe spun around and roared:
“Did you not intend to go to Europe?”

“Well, er—yes.”

“Were you going away or were you not?”

“No,” she now said. She was reversing herself on one question after another, and Manny Friend watched helplessly as the rival lawyer enmeshed his client.

“What do you mean by saying that you
did not know what to do
?” Howe demanded.

“I did not want to remain,” Nack said, struggling to explain her testimony. “I could not pay the rent.”

“Didn’t you have $300 in your corset when you were arrested?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you couldn’t pay your rent?”

“Well …” Mrs. Nack hesitated and decided to try a new story. “Thorn told me I should skip,” she began brightly, and added piously, “I said no. Truth is truth and—”

“Mrs. Nack,” Howe interrupted to guffaws, “we don’t want any homilies on truth from
you.
”

The defense counsel paused to have his team search for an old copy of the
New York Journal
, then turned back to his witness. “Mrs. Nack, when you were before Judge Newberger in New York, did you say to Thorn, ‘Hold your mouth, keep quiet’?”

“No,” she insisted. Now it was the reporters’ turn to look astonished: They had
heard
her. “Nothing of the sort.”

An old copy of the
Journal
was passed forward, bearing the facsimile of her intercepted jailhouse letter to Thorn. Howe read the English translation out loud:
“Dear Martin—I send you a couple of potatoes. If you do not care to eat them, perhaps the others will. Dear child, send me a few lines how you feel …”

He then passed the newspaper to her.

“That your writing?”

“Yes.”

“You call him ‘Dear child’ and ‘Dear Martin.’ What do you mean by that?”

“I never loved him,” she sputtered. “But I did … 
show
him I loved him. Since he choked me.”

“You only
pretended
to love him?” Howe gasped in understanding. “Make believe?”

“Yes.”

“And that letter was only a
make-believe letter
?”

“Yes,” she insisted as laughter bubbled from the courtroom.

“Did your fear continue while you were in jail?” Howe pressed.

“No.”

“Then why did you write the letter?”

Nack kept her eyes averted from Thorn, even as he broke into a quiet grin.

“Because I thought he was hungry?” she ventured.

“Then it was for sweet charity’s sake?” Howe swept his arms grandly.

“Yes,” she eagerly agreed, to a new blast of laughter from the court. Howe beamed at the crowd, the gems glittering from his fingers.

“Now regarding the potatoes …” He turned back to his witness. “
—Is it not true that you shot Guldensuppe!
”

“No!” she cried, starting from her chair.

“Is it not true that you cut the body in pieces?”

“No!”

“Didn’t
somebody,
” Howe thundered, “tell you to deny that you shot Guldensuppe and cut up his body?”

“No,”
Mrs. Nack laughed in disbelief.

“Don’t
laugh
, Mrs. Nack,” Howe shook his finger. “This is an awful matter.”

But Mrs. Nack could not stop laughing; her testimony was falling apart, and she was becoming hysterical.

“Answer me!” he demanded.

“No!” she yelled.

Howe handed her photographs of her lover’s mutilated body.
Not your handiwork, then?
But he wasn’t finished—he’d also had a little talk with her ex-husband about her business as a midwife. Didn’t she also help women … 
avoid
birth?

“How many
children
did you kill?” he crowed.

“None,” she shot back, then wavered. “So far as I know.”

Didn’t she have a chute in her old apartment for disposing of fetuses straight from the stove grate into the sewer? No? And hadn’t she tried hiring Thorn to kill her husband?

“No,” Mrs. Nack replied, her expression hardening. Howe narrowed his eyes back at her and tapped a table impressively.

“This is too important a case to mince matters, and I’m going to ask some direct questions. I want you to think before you answer. Mrs. Nack, don’t you remember a place in New York in which you lived with Thorn for two entire weeks before the killing?”