The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (40 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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Almost daily, the
Journal
reported on the efforts of its competitors to undermine its exclusives. Corbett claimed that the
World
approached him with a rumor that he struck his wife, in hopes of eliciting a printable comment. Fitzsimmons lectured reporters from rival dailies that the
Journal
’s arrangement was good for their craft: “The
Journal
and the
Examiner
get all the news and the pictures and the best stuff, and you guys have to hop out and do something for a living to make any kind of showing, whatever. I tell you it is a good thing for the proprietors, and for the first time in years the reporters have got to battle for everything they get. It keeps you digging.”
55
Fitzsimmons was right about that. Notwithstanding Hearst’s deal, the
World
and the
Herald
managed to fill pages with observations, interviews with secondary figures, and brief quotes from the fighters themselves, which were dressed up as exclusives (whether they were overheard or based on actual interviews is hard to say).
Journal
reported on the efforts of its competitors to undermine its exclusives. Corbett claimed that the
World
approached him with a rumor that he struck his wife, in hopes of eliciting a printable comment. Fitzsimmons lectured reporters from rival dailies that the
Journal
’s arrangement was good for their craft: “The
Journal
and the
Examiner
get all the news and the pictures and the best stuff, and you guys have to hop out and do something for a living to make any kind of showing, whatever. I tell you it is a good thing for the proprietors, and for the first time in years the reporters have got to battle for everything they get. It keeps you digging.”
55
Fitzsimmons was right about that. Notwithstanding Hearst’s deal, the
World
and the
Herald
managed to fill pages with observations, interviews with secondary figures, and brief quotes from the fighters themselves, which were dressed up as exclusives (whether they were overheard or based on actual interviews is hard to say).
On the day of the match, the
Journal
erected bulletin boards at Madison Square and in Union Square, Harlem, and Park Row, where fifty thousand people assembled in anticipation of telegraphed news from Carson City. “Bankers touched elbows with Park Row waiters still wearing their aprons,” the paper reported. Two rapid writers manned each of the
Journal
’s boards, sketching scenes and narrating the fight round by round.
56
The
World
and the
Herald
had bulletins of their own.
Journal
erected bulletin boards at Madison Square and in Union Square, Harlem, and Park Row, where fifty thousand people assembled in anticipation of telegraphed news from Carson City. “Bankers touched elbows with Park Row waiters still wearing their aprons,” the paper reported. Two rapid writers manned each of the
Journal
’s boards, sketching scenes and narrating the fight round by round.
56
The
World
and the
Herald
had bulletins of their own.
Occasional correspondent and former Kansas senator John J. Ingalls was ringside for the
Journal.
He clearly favored Corbett, with his dark and drawn countenance “lined deeply with the furrows of care and concern.” Fitzsimmons had “a silly, open-mouthed grin and an uncouth, awkward, shambling gait, like a clown.” The appearance of the men stripped for the ring struck Ingalls as grotesque: “With the exception of a small breech cloth, they were naked to their ankles, where their stockings were rolled loosely down over the tops of their thin, flat-soled shoes.”
57
Journal.
He clearly favored Corbett, with his dark and drawn countenance “lined deeply with the furrows of care and concern.” Fitzsimmons had “a silly, open-mouthed grin and an uncouth, awkward, shambling gait, like a clown.” The appearance of the men stripped for the ring struck Ingalls as grotesque: “With the exception of a small breech cloth, they were naked to their ankles, where their stockings were rolled loosely down over the tops of their thin, flat-soled shoes.”
57
In the fourteenth round, Fitzsimmons landed a savage blow to Corbett’s midsection and knew in an instant that the fight was over. “Fitzsimmons,” wrote Ingalls, “turned with buffoon gesture and bloody grin to the audience. When Corbett, who was still erect, suddenly tottered, a swift spasm shuddered through his limbs, he sank slowly upon his left knee, his head fell forward upon his knotted chest . . . he leaned for an instant upon his right hand in a precise attitude of the dying gladiator in the familiar state described by Byron when his manly brow ‘consents to death, but conquers agony.’” This narrative accompanied a round-by-round summary of the bout, analysis by Nevada governor Reinhold Sadler, and scads of illustrations, including maps of the bodies of both fighters that marked every blow that landed and the round in which it was received.
58
Coverage in competing papers was similarly exhaustive.
58
Coverage in competing papers was similarly exhaustive.
A
Journal
editorial in the wake of its orgy of coverage of the Nevada bout was resigned to the sport ’s popularity. “[The] enormous crowds about the
Journal
’s bulletins—crowds exceeding in numbers those on the night of the Presidential election—afforded sufficient evidence that the interest in a great pugilistic battle is not confined to any class of society, but spreads among all. Perhaps prize fighting is brutal, but, after all, man is the most brutal of brutes. . . . It is necessary to take cognizance of the nature of man when we try to judge his interest in the exploits of the prize ring.”
59
Journal
editorial in the wake of its orgy of coverage of the Nevada bout was resigned to the sport ’s popularity. “[The] enormous crowds about the
Journal
’s bulletins—crowds exceeding in numbers those on the night of the Presidential election—afforded sufficient evidence that the interest in a great pugilistic battle is not confined to any class of society, but spreads among all. Perhaps prize fighting is brutal, but, after all, man is the most brutal of brutes. . . . It is necessary to take cognizance of the nature of man when we try to judge his interest in the exploits of the prize ring.”
59
ON JUNE 26, 1897, several boys were swimming in the East River at the foot of 11th Street when one of them, on his way back to the pier, noticed a bundle bobbing ahead of him. He pushed it to the pier and lifted it out. The package was wrapped in oilcloth and bound with twine. The boys ripped it open and found inside the mutilated upper torso of a human male, headless but with arms still attached. Throwing on their clothes, the youngsters ran up 11th Street to find a policeman.
The lead headline on the next day’s
Journal
read “Beheaded, cast into the river.” Beneath it was a reproduction of the pattern of the oilcloth: gilt lilies and diamonds on a red background. According to doctors interviewed by the paper, the deceased was about thirty-five years of age, five foot ten and two hundred pounds, healthy, with light blond hair and a light complexion. A portion of skin had been cut away from his chest, perhaps a birthmark or a tattoo that might have aided in his identification.
60
Journal
read “Beheaded, cast into the river.” Beneath it was a reproduction of the pattern of the oilcloth: gilt lilies and diamonds on a red background. According to doctors interviewed by the paper, the deceased was about thirty-five years of age, five foot ten and two hundred pounds, healthy, with light blond hair and a light complexion. A portion of skin had been cut away from his chest, perhaps a birthmark or a tattoo that might have aided in his identification.
60
On the afternoon of June 27, at the other end of Manhattan, a man named Meyer and his two sons, Herbert, age thirteen, and Edgar, age eight, were picking wild cherries under the Washington Bridge. Herbert spied a bright bundle at the bottom of a retaining wall, clear of the underbrush. The boys raced toward it and fought for possession. “It’s mine,” screamed Herbert. “I saw it first.” They summoned their father, who opened the package and found the bottom section of a male torso, from the lower ribs to the upper thighs. Meyer alerted the police, who transported the grisly find to Bellevue Hospital, where it caused great excitement among physicians, administrators, and, according to the
Journal,
loitering patients.
61
Journal,
loitering patients.
61
The upper and lower torsos were perfectly matched, as were the portions of oilcloth in which they were wrapped. Attending surgeons determined that whoever had butchered the body had neatly removed the head with a fine saw. He appeared to have begun to detach the legs in the same careful manner before impatiently snapping them off with brute strength. The
Journal
now had at least thirty reporters chasing down clues that might put a name to the corpse. They located the manufacturer of the red gilt oilcloth as well as its sales agents; they visited all the Manhattan dry goods dealers who carried the pattern. They came up empty.
Journal
now had at least thirty reporters chasing down clues that might put a name to the corpse. They located the manufacturer of the red gilt oilcloth as well as its sales agents; they visited all the Manhattan dry goods dealers who carried the pattern. They came up empty.
The
Journal
’s third day of coverage was thin. No new body parts were found. In recognition of “the outrageousness of the crime” and the “vast public interest” in its solution, the paper offered a reward of $1,000 for help in identifying the victim. It performed experiments with buoyant materials to determine where in the East River the upper torso might have been dumped in order to arrive at 11th Street on an ebb tide. It dredged the river in hopes of discovering the missing head. It investigated all of New York’s active missing persons cases in hopes of finding someone who fit the victim’s profile. It drafted Professor P.S. McAllister, an expert in surgery at New York University, along with physicians from the coroner’s office and Bellevue’s anatomical experts, to make more precise estimates of the height and weight and physical characteristics of the deceased. In addition to medical men, the
Journal
consulted experts in tattoos and palmistry and crime detection, including Robert Pinkerton of the legendary detective agency, who, resorting to a crude form of racial profiling, offered the following: “It is seldom the Italian will do such a thing. . . . The German seems to regard [dismemberment] as the best means of disposing of a body.”
62
Pinkerton, as things transpired, had hit the bull’s eye.
Journal
’s third day of coverage was thin. No new body parts were found. In recognition of “the outrageousness of the crime” and the “vast public interest” in its solution, the paper offered a reward of $1,000 for help in identifying the victim. It performed experiments with buoyant materials to determine where in the East River the upper torso might have been dumped in order to arrive at 11th Street on an ebb tide. It dredged the river in hopes of discovering the missing head. It investigated all of New York’s active missing persons cases in hopes of finding someone who fit the victim’s profile. It drafted Professor P.S. McAllister, an expert in surgery at New York University, along with physicians from the coroner’s office and Bellevue’s anatomical experts, to make more precise estimates of the height and weight and physical characteristics of the deceased. In addition to medical men, the
Journal
consulted experts in tattoos and palmistry and crime detection, including Robert Pinkerton of the legendary detective agency, who, resorting to a crude form of racial profiling, offered the following: “It is seldom the Italian will do such a thing. . . . The German seems to regard [dismemberment] as the best means of disposing of a body.”
62
Pinkerton, as things transpired, had hit the bull’s eye.
New Yorkers were riveted to the case of the headless corpse. Large crowds gathered daily on the banks of the river to watch the boats dredging for the victim’s lost parts. Coverage was exhaustive all along Park Row—“a veritable newspaper holocaust,” complained one trade publication.
63
Even dailies with low tolerance for slayings chased the story: the
Times
judged it “the most brutal and cold-blooded murder of the decade.”
64
New York’s finest were also hard at work on the case. The
Journal
gave investigators high marks for effort, but the police force was small and inexpert. Its members were largely political appointees with minimal training and the barest commitment to professionalism. It is not altogether surprising that a newspaper, the
Journal
, produced all of the significant breaks in the case.
63
Even dailies with low tolerance for slayings chased the story: the
Times
judged it “the most brutal and cold-blooded murder of the decade.”
64
New York’s finest were also hard at work on the case. The
Journal
gave investigators high marks for effort, but the police force was small and inexpert. Its members were largely political appointees with minimal training and the barest commitment to professionalism. It is not altogether surprising that a newspaper, the
Journal
, produced all of the significant breaks in the case.
George Waugh Arnold, a stocky former athlete employed as a Hearst reporter, frequently capped his workday with some exercise and a body rub at the Murray Hill Turkish Baths. Two days after the torso had been discovered, he stopped by the baths and called for his favorite rubber, only to learn that the man was not available. Disappointed, Arnold asked the other attendants what had become of his masseur and was told that the man had not been at work in several days. A light went on in Arnold’s mind. It is not clear whether he had already examined the corpse or whether he now ran to do so. In any event, he noted that the hands of the victim were calloused like those of a rubber.
The
Journal
marched a party of employees from the Murray Hill Turkish Baths to the morgue and positively identified the corpse as belonging to Willie Guldensuppe, a German masseur with a tattoo of a woman on his chest, a souvenir of his years at sea. Guldensuppe’s coworkers volunteered his address, along with stories about his complicated love affair with his German landlady, a midwife named Augusta Nack. She was said to have a possessive ex-husband and another man in her life, possibly named Fred. She lived over a drugstore at 34th and Ninth. Arnold received a $1,000 bonus from Hearst.
Journal
marched a party of employees from the Murray Hill Turkish Baths to the morgue and positively identified the corpse as belonging to Willie Guldensuppe, a German masseur with a tattoo of a woman on his chest, a souvenir of his years at sea. Guldensuppe’s coworkers volunteered his address, along with stories about his complicated love affair with his German landlady, a midwife named Augusta Nack. She was said to have a possessive ex-husband and another man in her life, possibly named Fred. She lived over a drugstore at 34th and Ninth. Arnold received a $1,000 bonus from Hearst.
At 1 a.m. on Tuesday, June 29, several hours after the identification of the body, a
Journal
reporter rang Augusta Nack’s bell and kept ringing it until she answered and invited him inside. Posing as a friend of Guldensuppe, he asked whether she knew his whereabouts. Mrs. Nack replied that she had not seen him since they had quarreled several days earlier. She said little else in response to the reporter’s questions, although she did admit to the failure of her marriage and to living with Guldensuppe. The
Journal
’s reporter described Mrs. Nack as strong, ruddy, broad-shouldered, and erect. She had smooth, clear skin and dark, burning eyes, deep set and close together. Her black hair was shiny and well brushed.
65
Journal
reporter rang Augusta Nack’s bell and kept ringing it until she answered and invited him inside. Posing as a friend of Guldensuppe, he asked whether she knew his whereabouts. Mrs. Nack replied that she had not seen him since they had quarreled several days earlier. She said little else in response to the reporter’s questions, although she did admit to the failure of her marriage and to living with Guldensuppe. The
Journal
’s reporter described Mrs. Nack as strong, ruddy, broad-shouldered, and erect. She had smooth, clear skin and dark, burning eyes, deep set and close together. Her black hair was shiny and well brushed.
65
All of this information was splashed in the
Journal
’s fourth day of coverage, along with a sketch of the interiors of Mrs. Nack’s rooms and a floor plan of her apartment. The paper’s suspicions were clearly focused on the ex-husband, Herman Nack, the former owner of a Tenth Avenue bologna shop. He had lost his business and his wife, but his jealous temper was still very much with him. A further break in the case that same day resulted from the
Journal
’s diligent canvass of dry goods retailers. A reporter had interviewed Mrs. Max Riger, who worked the counter of her husband’s establishment in Astoria. A day or two before Guldensuppe’s torso had floated down the East River, she had sold a quantity of red gilt oilcloth to a woman who appeared to be in a hurry and who looked remarkably like Mrs. Nack.
66
Journal
’s fourth day of coverage, along with a sketch of the interiors of Mrs. Nack’s rooms and a floor plan of her apartment. The paper’s suspicions were clearly focused on the ex-husband, Herman Nack, the former owner of a Tenth Avenue bologna shop. He had lost his business and his wife, but his jealous temper was still very much with him. A further break in the case that same day resulted from the
Journal
’s diligent canvass of dry goods retailers. A reporter had interviewed Mrs. Max Riger, who worked the counter of her husband’s establishment in Astoria. A day or two before Guldensuppe’s torso had floated down the East River, she had sold a quantity of red gilt oilcloth to a woman who appeared to be in a hurry and who looked remarkably like Mrs. Nack.
66
Hearst himself was up to his ears in the Guldensuppe case. He was seen charging down Park Row at the fore of his journalistic “murder squad,” an investigative team formed for just such a story. On learning Mrs. Nack’s address, he rented every available apartment in her building and guarded the entrance to keep competing reporters out. His murder squad not only led police to Mrs. Nack but remained in the room while detectives conducted their initial interrogation of her.
The
Journal
continued to lead the coverage as suspicions shifted from Mr. Nack to his wife’s second male friend, another German, whose name was not “Fred” but Martin Thorn. A black-eyed barber with curly hair, Thorn had lately joined the ranks of Mrs. Nack’s boarders and had replaced Guldensuppe in her affections. The two men had quarreled, violently, on at least one occasion, and Thorn had since boasted to his fellow barbers that he had killed his rival. Police arrested Thorn and Mrs. Nack, charging both with murder.
Journal
continued to lead the coverage as suspicions shifted from Mr. Nack to his wife’s second male friend, another German, whose name was not “Fred” but Martin Thorn. A black-eyed barber with curly hair, Thorn had lately joined the ranks of Mrs. Nack’s boarders and had replaced Guldensuppe in her affections. The two men had quarreled, violently, on at least one occasion, and Thorn had since boasted to his fellow barbers that he had killed his rival. Police arrested Thorn and Mrs. Nack, charging both with murder.
The trial began in November. The defense, led by William F. Howe, the most celebrated criminal defender in the United States, seemed to present the stronger arguments in the early going, but the case would never reach the jury. The
Journal
interrupted the proceedings with yet another spectacular scoop. At the behest of the paper, a Presbyterian clergyman made a mid-trial visit to Mrs. Nack in prison. He took along his four-year-old son, an angelic-looking boy who apparently climbed into the accused’s lap and told her that if she was guilty of a crime, God would want her to confess. The next morning, as reported by the
New York Times,
William Howe walked up to his other client, Martin Thorn, and handed him a copy of the
New York Journal,
its headlines announcing Mrs. Nack’s confession:
Journal
interrupted the proceedings with yet another spectacular scoop. At the behest of the paper, a Presbyterian clergyman made a mid-trial visit to Mrs. Nack in prison. He took along his four-year-old son, an angelic-looking boy who apparently climbed into the accused’s lap and told her that if she was guilty of a crime, God would want her to confess. The next morning, as reported by the
New York Times,
William Howe walked up to his other client, Martin Thorn, and handed him a copy of the
New York Journal,
its headlines announcing Mrs. Nack’s confession:
A deep, dull red blush rose quickly over Thorn’s face, but there was not a flicker of his eyelids, not an extra beat in the blood vessels of his jaw or neck. . . . Thorn looked at [the newspaper] and evidently comprehended it. His next act looked like that of a partly frozen and insensible man, in whom courtesy was instinctive. . . . He handed the newspaper back to his counsel, inclining his head as he did so, but moving slowly and stiffly, as a man asleep and barely comprehending might do. With that act the color left his face. The wholesome pink that had shone through his skin vanished and was replaced by a dull, cheesy pallor, which remained. During all the day his face looked as if it might be cut without a drop of blood flowing from the blade. It was a ghastly face—the eyes and likes of a living man, the hue and skin of a dead man above a living, moving, nervous body.
67
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