Historical Crimes

Helen Jewett

Helen Jewett was famous in 1830s New York. Elegant and strikingly dressed, she was known to every pedestrian along Broadway. Young Richard P. Robinson, one of her regular clients at the brothel, became infamous by murdering her in bed and getting away with it.

by Doris Lane

The Courtesan

Helen Jewett was a great letter writer. She was a familiar figure in the mid-1830s as she strolled along Broadway to the post office at Wall Street, fashionably dressed in green silk. Among the many illustrations that appeared in the New York penny press and crime pamphlets in which she was featured dead, one with both breasts fully exposed, another with the blade about to fall on her neck, was one in which she appeared as in public life in her signature green silk dress and a veiled hat. She carried a parasol in one hand and a letter in the other.

In her room at 41 Thomas Street, one of a row of Federal townhouse brothels, Helen hung a picture of Lord Byron, who was her favorite poet. She had a small library of books by Byron, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Sir Walter Scott, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and a copy of Flowers of Loveliness, recently published by Lady Blessington. She had current subscriptions to literary journals, such as the Knickerbocker and the Albion. Theatrical sketches were pinned over her mantle. A worktable held pens and ink and good quality writing paper. Police found a trunk in the room holding almost 100 letters to and from Helen's admirers.

Ozark Mountains

John Avy, the "Phantom of the Ozarks," was a "godfather" a century before his time. His criminal exploits in the 1830s – wholesale thievery, counterfeiting, murder-for-hire and the political corruption to make it all possible – marked the most lawless period in Missouri history, making Jesse James' gang a few decades later seem mild and inept by comparison. It took a vigilante group known as the "Slickers" to bring him down.

by Ronald J. Lawrence

"The ruling spirit was a man far removed from his assumed character of a simple pioneer. He was so shrewd in concealing his identity and his connection with the outlaws … " J. W. Vincent

John Avy was a chameleon, adept at blending with his immediate surroundings. He wore different faces designed not only to deceive and confuse, but also to conceal his true identity and give him anonymity. They helped create the enigma that surrounded the man who was to become known as the "Phantom of the Ozarks."

The face Avy most often wore was that of a simple, decent, soft-spoken man. There appeared to be nothing sinister about him. He kept to himself and no one really knew, or cared, for that matter, what he did for a living or from where he came. He seemed just another settler who had drifted west in the late 1820s as the frontier, then Missouri, opened up. He preferred the obscurity of the backwoods near what is now the sprawling tourist center of the Lake of the Ozarks. A low profile was the way he wanted it and this posture served his purposes well for many years.

Behind another face, rarely seen by the public, was a calculating, perverse and violent man.

Avy was, in fact, a Mafia "Godfather" a century before his time. He and his trusted, loyal soldiers, a collection of murderers, robbers, thieves, swindlers, manipulators and extortionists, were the precursor of organized crime in Missouri, if not the country. As primitive as it might have been, the Avy mob was unlike the rag-tag outlaws of the time. It was as sophisticated, ruthless, disciplined and as cohesive as any contemporary crime family, perhaps lacking only in the opportunities that exist today. Jesse James' gang a few decades later would seem meek and inept by comparison.

Big Harp Little Harp Sign

The first known serial killers in American history were the Harp boys. During the years of the Revolutionary War, the two cousins went on an indiscriminate killing rampage, killing anyone who got in their way. They killed infants, including their own, children, women and numerous men. They killed for the sake of killing.

by Doris Lane

Harp's Hill is near the Pond River in western Muhlenberg County, Ky., not far from Highway 62. There is a crossing in the road near Dixon named Harp's Head and one of the crossing roads is named Harp's Head Road. Some miles away, the precise location lost to time, there is a cave known as Harp's House. To tell how these places earned their names is to tell the story of Micajah (Big) and Wiley (Little) Harp, America's first known serial killers.

They passed for brothers, but were cousins, sons of brothers John and William Harpe, Scottish immigrants to Orange County, N.C. The boys were named William (Micajah/Big), son of John, and Joshua (Wiley/Little), son of William. Big Harp and Little Harp left home as young men in 1775, aiming to become overseers of slaves in Virginia. Career plans diverted by the American Revolution, the Harps instead became Tory outlaws in a gang that roved the North Carolina countryside, raping farmers' daughters, pillaging livestock and crops, and burning farmhouses. In the attempted kidnapping of one young girl by a Tory rape gang, Little Harp was shot and wounded by local Patriot Captain James Wood.

Lt. Charles S. Becker

The shocking story of a corrupt New York City police lieutenant who was sent to the electric chair by a politically ambitious prosecuting attorney.  The story of Lt. Charles S. Becker is a compelling story of corruption and betrayal, ambition and final dignity.

by Mark S. Gado

In the history of the United States, there has been relatively few police officers convicted and executed for a crime. One such officer was Charles Becker, a high-profile lieutenant for the New York City Police Department during the heydays of Tammany Hall, who was convicted of murder. His execution didn’t end that storied era of corruption, but it sharply punctuated it by giving it flesh and bones. His trial and re-trial were the biggest to ever hit New York. Before this case would close, it would leave the New York City Police Department in a shambles and create a worldwide sensation. For three years it would dominate the headlines of a frenzied press.

Caught in the whirlwind of reform that was decades in the making, Becker was a victim of his time as much as anything else. Whether or not he was actually guilty remains an open question. Yet his sinister ties with The Tenderloin underworld cannot be denied. If he had tried to defend himself on the stand, perhaps the outcome would have been different, but it is doubtful. Becker had much against him: a blindly ambitious District Attorney who astutely saw a death sentence for Becker as a free pass to the Governor’s Mansion, a hostile press dedicated to the ruin of a corrupt police lieutenant, and a devil’s pact hatched in New York vilest prison, The Tombs, by three desperate killers eager to trade Becker’s life to save themselves from the electric chair.

Ruth Brown

Ruth Brown was only 13 when she went to work as a telephone operator. She worked the night shift. During the day she studied shorthand and bookkeeping and dreamed of growing up and marrying her boss. Not the boss at the telephone company, but some ideal of a wealthy executive with whom she would live happily ever after. Not that Ruth would lack for marriage proposals. Later in life, while on trial for murdering her husband, she would receive a total of 164. 

by Doris Lane

Ruth was 20 in 1915 when she married her employer, the editor of Motor Boating magazine, Albert Snyder. Before marrying Ruth, Snyder had been engaged 10 years to Jessie Guishard and he hadn't exactly gotten over her. When Albert and Ruth set up housekeeping, one of the first pictures to hang on a wall of the family home was Jessie's. When Albert bought a boat he named it after Jessie. When Ruth objected, Albert declared that Jessie was "the finest woman I have ever met."

Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton Duel

Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the most star-crossed political foes in U.S. history, joined together in 1800 to defend a man accused – and all but convicted in the court of public opinion – of the murder of his fiancée.

 by Doris Lane

If you stood on Greene Street, off Spring Street in SoHo, looked around and imagined the past, you might be able to picture Lispenard's Meadow of 1799. Not flat, like now, but gently hilly: A rural pleasure ground for strolling New Yorkers in summer; a vast ice-skating arena when the meadows froze over in winter.

Broadway then was a narrow country lane used to herd cows north from the city to feed at the grassy salt meadow. Spring Street, today lined with art galleries and expensive shops, was a path to the Hudson River. From the corner of Broadway and Spring Street, in 1799, there would not be a cobble-stoned street in sight. If you looked through the trees you could see the white country mansion of Aaron Burr, the New York lawyer soon to be Vice President of the United States.