History’s Rich With Mysteries with Earl Staggs: AGATHA CHRISTIE – The original “Gone Girl"

Texas author Earl Staggs is back with another mystery from the past that fascinates him. This is a case I had never heard of before Earl’s piece below…

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty. In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories. I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend. While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery. 

AGATHA CHRISTIE – The original “Gone Girl”

By Earl Staggs

Born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, Devon, England, she married Archibald Christie, a hero of the Royal Flying Corps, in 1914. The couple had one daughter, Rosalind, and divorced in 1928. In 1930, she married Sir Max Mallowan, a noted archaeologist. She passed away of natural causes on January 12, 1976, at the age of 85.

According to The Guinness Book of World Records, she is the best-selling novelist of all time. Only the Bible and Shakespeare’s works have sold more. Her books have been translated into 103 languages, more than any other author.  

While she wrote six romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott, she is best known for her novels and short stories written under her own name and featuring, among others, two of the most popular characters in the mystery genre, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She also wrote “The Mousetrap,” a murder mystery play which opened in 1952 and as of 2015 is still running after more than 25,000 performances, making it the longest running play in history.

Her novel AND THEN THERE WERE NONE is her biggest seller with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever and one of the best-selling books of all time.

In 1955, she was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award, its highest honor. That same year, her play “Witness for the Prosecution” received an Edgar Award from MWA for Best Play. In 1971, she was made a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Her novel THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers’ Association in 2013.

With all those honors, awards and accolades, you’d think everything about her has been said. Not so. Among mystery readers and writers, she is also well-known for her mysterious disappearance in 1926 and reappearance eleven days later. Agatha refused to explain the incident, simply putting it down to a bout of temporary amnesia.

She reportedly said only, "For 24 hours I wandered in a dream, and then found myself in Harrogate as a well-contented and perfectly happy woman who believed she had just come from South Africa."

Few people were convinced by this explanation. In her autobiography, she made no mention of those missing eleven days. 

Over the years, a number of theories have surfaced regarding the incident. Some believe it was a publicity stunt to boost sales of THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, which was published in 1926 and became her first major success. That same year, her beloved mother died. Agatha considered her mom her best friend, confidante, and biggest supporter and felt her loss deeply. She took her daughter Rosalind to the home where she had grown up to sort through her mother’s things. Her husband Archie did not accompany them. Agatha fell into a deep depression over her mother’s death. When Archie finally came to visit, he gave her more bad news. He had become involved with a woman named Nancy Neele, and he wanted a divorce.

In an effort to save her marriage, Agatha took Rosalind and moved back home. On the evening of December 3, 1926, Archie went out alone. He said he was going to a weekend house party, but most likely, it was a rendezvous with his mistress.

Later that evening, Agatha left the house. Her maids said she was visibly upset. The next morning, her car was found abandoned an hour’s drive from home. Inside the car were clothes and other personal possessions. It appeared she had vanished into thin air.

The police launched a nationwide search involving more than a thousand police officers and members of the public, and for the first time in UK history, airplanes were used in the search effort. Two of Agatha’s fellow authors, Dorothy L Sayers and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, helped with the search. Newspapers offered rewards for information.

Many suspected her husband Archie had murdered her and disposed of the body.

Eleven days after her disappearance, she was recognized at a spa in Yorkshire, two hundred miles from home. She had registered as Theresa Neele, using the surname of Archie’s mistress. Archie traveled there to take her home.

Agatha and Archie may have tried to save their marriage after her reappearance, but it was not to be. They divorced in 1928. Archie married Nancy Neele that same year and Agatha married archeologist Max Mallowan in 1930.

Public sentiment was negative toward the disappearance. Many felt it had been a publicity stunt which had cost the taxpayers a substantial amount of money.

Some who did not believe it was done for publicity offered other theories. Author Gillian Gill said this:

“I believe that Christie had a definitive and terrible fight with her husband. It drove her over the edge. She had been depressed, now she becomes on some level psychotic. She is not herself. She wanders off. She gets on the train. She takes another name. She goes into this hotel and she lives another life. That’s very, very, very rare, but it’s known. It’s documented in the annals of psychology.”

Another author, Gwen Robyns, thought it was Agatha’s way of exacting revenge on her errant husband and said this:

“I think she took endless delight in the fact that the police shadowed Archie. He couldn’t go anywhere because they suspected him of murdering her. And I think she took marvelous delight in reading this in the papers. Again, I think in a sort of revenge and twisted up sort of way, she was thinking it was very funny.”

Laura Thompson's biography, Agatha Christie, An English Mystery, states Agatha did disappear as part of a publicity stunt. The purpose was not to increase sales in her novels, however, but to create a negative feeling toward Archie for being unfaithful. Unfortunately, instead of saving their marriage as she hoped it would, it cemented the fact that their relationship was over and could never be salvaged.

In his 1998 book, AGATHA CHRISTIE AND THE ELEVEN MISSING DAYS, author Jared Cade believes Agatha’s motive was clear:

“She wanted to disrupt his weekend with Nancy Neele and make him suffer, although she still adored him. What no one could have foreseen was the press reaction. She was propelled from being an author with a reputation into one of the most famous women in England.”

I think the best explanation of the incident comes from journalist John Ezard, writing for the Guardian newspaper in 2000. Ezard interviewed the daughter of Agatha’s sister-in-law and close friend, Nan Watts. The daughter claimed she knew the truth because she was with her mother and Agatha on the night of the disappearance. She said Agatha was hidden away by Nan Watts at their Chelsea home before being put on a train to Harrogate the following day. 

This makes a lot of sense because Agatha could not have pulled it off by herself. After abandoning her car in Surrey, she needed someone to pick her up and transport her eventually to the train station in London.

Here’s how the daughter describes it:

"She then just sat there in her hotel room, hiding away...But she had signed the guests' register in the name Neele - the surname of her husband's lover...It was carefully orchestrated...She wanted Archie back...She wanted to give him a shock...If she had had amnesia she would not have signed the register in the other woman's name...My mother helped her because she was distraught. I think she went to my mother because she had been through a divorce. Mrs Christie never did it for the publicity. That was the last thing she would have thought of. She was very upset and shocked - it all went rather wrong."

It’s interesting that she mentioned Agatha using the last name Neele. That, in my mind, rules out amnesia.  If she had amnesia, now could she have known that name?

It’s easy to compare Agatha’s disappearance and reappearance to the plot of Gillian Flynn’s novel GONE GIRL. In fact, it’s hard not to. Flynn did an excellent job with the novel and she also wrote the screenplay for the successful movie. While Flynn is a fine writer who made her novel interesting and unique in its own right, it’s easy to see examples of homage to Christie.

For example:

. . . in Flynn’s novel, a first person narrator is revealed as the perpetrator as Christie did in THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD.

. . .in both GONE GIRL and Agatha’s real-life disappearance, the plot involves a disintegrating marriage and an unhappy wife who mysteriously disappears.  

. . .in GONE GIRL, the wife disappears and lives under the assumed name “Nancy,” which was the first name of Archie Christie’s mistress.

. . .in GONE GIRL, the husband is suspected of foul play in the disappearance of his wife as Archie was in Agatha’s disappearance.

We are all free to form our own opinions as to why Dame Agatha staged her mysterious disappearance. We will never know for sure. She was the only person who knew, and she chose never to reveal exactly why she did it. That’s okay with me. For all her contributions to the world of the written word, for all the influences her literary legacy have given us, she earned that right.

Besides, once a mystery is solved, it becomes nothing more than a piece of history. An unsolved mystery lives forever and never stops taunting us from just beyond our reach.

Earl Staggs ©2016
  

Earl Staggs earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIEDACTION and has twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year.  He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. 

He invites any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net
 

He also invites you to visit his blog site at http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com to learn more about his novels and stories.

History’s Rich With Mysteries with Earl Staggs: JACK RUBY. . .Why Did He Shoot Oswald?

Please welcome back Earl Staggs with his latest installment in his “History’s Rich With Mysteries” blog series….

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty. In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories. I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend. While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery. 

JACK RUBY. . .Why Did He Shoot Oswald? by Earl Staggs

Say you want to shoot someone.  It’s important to choose the right time and place. You certainly wouldn’t do it:

. . .at a police station.

. . .when you’re surrounded by cops, reporters, and photographers with cameras rolling.

. . .if the man you want to shoot is handcuffed to a cop.

Doesn’t sound very smart, does it? In fact, it sounds like the worst possible way to go about it.

Yet that’s exactly how Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy. I’ve always wondered why Ruby shot Oswald the way he did.

Oswald was arrested on November 22, 1963, a few hours after President Kennedy had been shot. After two days of interrogation at Dallas police headquarters, Oswald was to be transferred to a county jail. As he was being escorted out of the police station into a garage where a car awaited, Ruby stepped out of the crowd of police officers, reporters and photographers and shot him. Ruby was immediately subdued and arrested.

Some researchers and conspiracy theorists contend Ruby was involved with major figures in organized crime, and he killed Oswald as part of an overall plot surrounding the Kennedy assassination. The masterminds behind the assassination didn’t trust Oswald to keep his mouth shut and assigned the task of silencing him to Ruby. A woman who danced at one of Ruby’s clubs lent credence to that theory.  “He had no choice,” she said. “Jack had bosses, just like everyone else. He was instructed on what he needed to do, therefore he did it.”

Variations of that conspiracy theory hold that Ruby was ordered to kill Oswald by Jimmy Hoffa. Another version said the Mafia gave the order. Another had the order coming from Cuba. Still another involves major politicians in our own government.

The plots connecting Ruby to a major conspiracy don’t hold up for two reasons. First, Oswald had been in custody and under interrogation for two days already.  If he had names of co-conspirators to divulge, he probably would have done so by then, and it would have made the news.  Second, everyone who knew him argued that Ruby's connection with gangsters was minimal, and Ruby was not the sort anyone would trust in a high-level conspiracy.^[5]

Dallas reporter Tony Zoppi, who knew Ruby well, claims that one "would have to be crazy" to entrust Ruby with anything as important as a high-level plot to kill Kennedy since he “couldn't keep a secret for five minutes. He'd be the worst fellow in the world to be part of a conspiracy, because he just plain talked too much.” Zoppi and others described Ruby as a man who wanted to be friends with people who had power and money, but only succeeding in being a nuisance to them.

Without exception, his family and friends felt the suggestion that Ruby was connected to the mob was ridiculous and that his killing Oswald for them was laughable. 

The Warren Commission, the group given the responsibility of investigating the Kennedy assassination, eventually found no evidence linking Ruby's killing of Oswald with any conspiracy.

There’s also the timeline of the morning Oswald was shot, which makes it clear Ruby’s act was not even premeditated.

Oswald’s being moved from Dallas police headquarters to the county jail was originally scheduled for 10:00 a.m. The press was there waiting before that time. Postal inspector Harry Holmes arrived at police headquarters unannounced and was invited to question the prisoner. Due to this unexpected delay, Oswald was not brought down to the garage until after eleven. He was shot by Ruby at 11:21 a.m. 

Ruby’s day began with errands. He took one of his beloved dogs (or two – both numbers have been stated) along with him. His last stop was the Western Union office across the street from police headquarters. His transaction there was time-stamped by Western Union at 11:17. He left Western Union and walked across the street, probably to say hello to some of his pals in blue at the station. He often visited his friends on the force, so it was not unusual for anyone to see him there. He walked down the ramp to the garage entrance to the building and was surprised to see a crowd waiting. When he saw Oswald being brought out, he pulled his gun and shot. He frequently had large amounts of money on him and always carried his .38 caliber Colt Cobra revolver for protection. 

If he’d planned to kill Oswald that day, he would have been there at 10:00. Also, author Norman Mailer and others found it hard to believe Ruby would have left his beloved dog (or dogs) in his car if he’d planned on killing Oswald. He would only have done that if he’d planned to return shortly.

So if no shadowy figures or big time conspirators ordered him to shoot Oswald, and if he hadn’t gone there to do it, why did he? The only place to look for a motive would be within Jack Ruby himself.

Jacob Leon Rubenstein was born in Chicago on March 25, 1911, the fifth of ten children. He later shortened his name to Jack Ruby. His troubled childhood and adolescence were marked by    time spent in foster homes. His father was a drunk and an abuser, and his mother spent time in a state hospital for mental illness. In his early years, Jack supported himself as a street hustler scalping sports tickets and other activities. He was drafted into the Army in 1943, was discharged in 1946, and moved to Dallas in 1947.

In Dallas, he managed nightclubs and dance halls and eventually owned three clubs of his own, although they weren’t great moneymakers. By 1963, he had been arrested eight times for various misdemeanors and liquor law violations. During that time, he built relationships with local underworld figures as well as a number of Dallas police officers who visited his nightclubs and received free liquor, prostitutes and other favors.

Jack Ruby was foul-mouthed and mean-tempered and didn’t drink or smoke. Although he was violently opposed to drugs, he maintained his high energy level by popping Preludin – a popular “upper” sold as an appetite suppressant.

Shortly after his arrest for shooting Oswald, Ruby told several people he did it so Dallas could “redeem” itself and so that Mrs. Kennedy would be spared the ordeal of coming back to Dallas for Oswald’s trial. In a private note to one of his attorneys, however, Ruby wrote, “Joe, you should know that my first lawyer told me to say I shot Oswald so Caroline and Mrs. Kennedy wouldn’t have to come to Dallas to testify. OK?”

Based on that, the House Select Committee on Assassinations discounted that explanation for the shooting of Oswald as “a fabricated legal ploy." Ruby’s lawyer apparently thought it would buy his client some sympathy from the jury.

Ruby was devastated over the death of Kennedy. His friends, relatives and associates all told how upset he was. He closed his clubs for three days as a mark of respect.

Melvin Belli, who became Ruby's lawyer, wrote, ''There was one weird trait. Unfailingly, at the mention of a member of President Kennedy's family, tears would start to course down his cheeks.”

Ruby's sister, Eva Grant, testified to the emotional turmoil Ruby experienced the weekend of the assassination. ''He was sick to his stomach and looked terrible.” According to his sister, Ruby remarked, “I never felt so bad in all my life even when Ma and Pa died. Someone tore my heart out.''

After the assassination, Ruby visited his synagogue and cried. His brother Hyman said, ''They didn't believe a guy like Jack would ever cry.”

Based on Ruby’s mental state at the time, it’s not hard to conclude that when he accidentally found himself not ten feet from Oswald, he did not think about it at all. His emotions exploded, he brought out his gun and pulled the trigger. He reportedly yelled "You killed the president, you rat!"

Ruby told Assistant D.A. Bill Alexander, ''Well, you guys couldn't do it. Someone had to do it. That son of a bitch killed my President.''

Two other points need to be mentioned. After Ruby died, an autopsy revealed his body was riddled with cancer, including brain tumors. The disease was not diagnosed, but had been eating away inside him for some time and might have warped his common sense and sound judgment.

In addition, Ruby had always wanted to be a hero. James Leavelle, the homicide detective handcuffed to Oswald when he was shot, asked Ruby why he did it. Ruby’s answer was, ''I wanted to be a hero. It looks like I f***ed things up.'' Leavelle also said Ruby told him years before, “I'd like to see two police officers sometime in a death struggle about to lose their lives, and I could jump in there and save them and be a hero.''

It’s possible that in his grief-laden mind where tumors were growing, Ruby thought it was his duty to avenge the death of the President by killing Oswald. It’s possible in those few seconds before he drew his gun and fired, he thought he would be given a medal and cheered as a great American hero. When one of his dancers came to visit him in jail, he told her she needn’t worry and everything would be okay after the first of the year. He believed he would soon be out of jail and running his nightclubs as usual.

After his arrest, he was diagnosed as a ''psychotic depressive.'' He also became obsessive about the treatment of Jews. His family was staunchly Jewish, and while in jail, Jack urged his brother to pack up and go into hiding because another Holocaust was coming.

While awaiting trial, Ruby asked to speak to the Warren Commission but got no response. On March 14, 1964, Ruby was convicted of murder with malice received a death sentence. Finally, three months after the sentencing, Chief Justice Earl Warren and other members of the Commission traveled to Dallas to see him. 

"My life is in danger here,” Ruby said. “I want to tell the truth, and I can't tell it here." Ruby said he wanted to go to Washington so he could convince President Lyndon Johnson that he was not part of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Ruby held President Johnson in high esteem and believed him to be an honest and fair man. Warren did not take him to meet with President Johnson.

''In the beginning,'' Attorney Joe Tonahill said, ''Ruby considered himself a hero. He thought he had done a great service for the community. When Mayor Earle Cabell testified that the act brought great disgrace to Dallas, Jack started going downhill very fast. He got more nervous by the day. When they brought in the death penalty, he cracked. Ten days later, he rammed his head into a cell wall. Then he tried to kill himself with an electric light socket. Then he tried to hang himself with sheets.''

The reality of being convicted of murder and sentenced to death instead of being hailed as a hero drove Ruby’s mind even more down the road to delusion. He even became somewhat of a conspiracy theorist himself. In March 1965, a year after his conviction, Ruby said in a televised news conference, “Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world." 

When asked if the people he referred to were in high office, Ruby responded, “Yes.” Apparently, by then, he had changed his mind about President Johnson. He said, “When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson, if he was vice president there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy. Well, the answer is the man in office now.”

It seems Ruby decided that since Johnson would not let explain why he did what he did, he would put the blame for everything on him.

When told he had cancer, he claimed the higher-ups had injected it into him, which was ridiculous. If they wanted to shut him up, they would have chosen a weapon more rapid and efficient than cancer cells.

Eventually, the appellate court ruled that a motion for a change of venue before the original trial court should have been granted. Ruby's conviction and death sentence were overturned. Arrangements were underway for a new trial to be held in February 1967 in Wichita Falls, Texas. On December 9, 1966, however, Ruby was diagnosed with pneumonia and admitted to Parkland Hospital, the same hospital both Kennedy and Oswald had been taken to after being shot. 

According to the Associated Press , Ruby stated from his hospital bed on December 19, 1966, that he alone had been responsible for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. He said, "There is nothing to hide. There was no one else."

He died on January 3, 1967, three weeks after being hospitalized. An autopsy revealed the brain tumors and massive spread of cancer. A blood clot in his leg finally killed him.

I think his final statement came in a rare moment of clarity during his last days and is close enough to be considered a deathbed confession. Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald completely on his own and for his own reasons because, in his cancer-addled mind, he thought he would be considered a hero.

But Jack Ruby’s legacy goes beyond the shooting of an alleged assassin. There will always be those who believe Oswald did not act alone and that people in high places were involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.  If Oswald had lived, there’s a possibility his trial might have brought out some truths. Jack Ruby obliterated that possibility. Because of what he did, there could be facts about that incident in Dallas that will always be shrouded in mystery.

Earl Staggs ©2015

Earl Staggs earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year.  He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. 

He invites any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net

He also invites you to visit his blog site at http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com to learn more about his novels and stories.

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES with Earl Staggs: SHE CRIED FOR HELP. . .And No One Came

It has been awhile, but Earl is back today with his latest guest post…..

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty. In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories. I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend. While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery. 

SHE CRIED FOR HELP. . .And No One Came by Earl Staggs

Two weeks after it happened, the New York Times published an article with the headline, "Thirty-Seven Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police.” (That number soon and inexplicably became “thirty-eight” rather than “thirty-seven.”)

Author Harlan Ellison later wrote that thirty-eight witnesses stood by and watched a woman “get knifed to death right in front of them and wouldn’t make a move.”

The story raised a fury nationally and internationally, and New York City gained a reputation of “an urban hell where no one would lift a finger to help a neighbor.” The story is often featured in psychology textbooks as an illustration of onlookers failing to help someone in distress.

That’s how the horrific murder of Catherine Susan "Kitty" Genovese came down to us through legend and urban myth. Her story has become a notorious and appalling example of citizens who could have saved a life but chose not to get involved. The story as reported led to what has become known as the “Bystander Effect or “Genovese Syndrome.” 

But that’s not exactly what happened. Let’s take a look at the facts.

In Queens, New York, at approximately 3:25 a.m. on March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese, a twenty-eight-year-old bar manager, arrived home after work, parked her car and walked toward her apartment building a hundred feet away. Frightened by a strange man approaching her, she began to run. He overtook her and stabbed her twice in the back. She screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" A man in the neighborhood shouted, "Let that girl alone!" and the attacker ran away.

Seriously wounded, Kitty tried to make it home. The attacker waited until he was sure no one was coming to her aid and, wanting to finish her off, returned a few minutes later and searched until he found her. Kitty had managed to make her way into an alleyway leading to the entrance to her building, which put her out of view of anyone who might have looked out their windows and further out of hearing distance.  At that time, she was barely conscious and unable to cry out. The attacker stabbed her several more times, raped her, stole $49 from her, and left her for dead. The two attacks spanned a time period of about thirty minutes. 

The incident occurred in the Kew Gardens area of Queens, primarily a quiet residential area where it is highly unlikely thirty-eight people were outside on the street to witness the attack. At 3:25 a.m., those “witnesses” would have been inside the buildings, probably sleeping. The only sounds to be heard during the initial attack were a man chasing a woman on foot for a short distance, a brief scuffle, stab wounds, and her crying, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" In March, it is not normally warm enough in Queens to leave windows open at night. How many people inside the buildings would have been awakened by that and be able to comprehend what was going on?

The furor about the incident was based on erroneous information. There weren’t thirty-eight people watching Kitty get stabbed to death and doing nothing. There were no actual “eye” witnesses to the stabbings. An investigation later revealed that approximately a dozen people were aware an attack was taking place. Calls were made to the police, but were not given high priority.  The last visible sight of her was her staggering toward her home after the first attack, and at that point, no one knew she had been stabbed. While some who were aware she was being attacked might have decided not to get involved in someone else’s business, some of them did make calls to the police. 

One caller reported after the initial attack that a woman was "beat up, but got up and was staggering around." Nothing was said about her being stabbed. The caller and the police apparently considered it an altercation between a man and a woman who would kiss and make up the next day.

The police and an ambulance arrived at 4:15 a.m., fifty minutes after the attacks began. Kitty Genovese died on the way to the hospital.

Could Kitty Genovese have been saved that night? Possibly. Perhaps if the police and the ambulance had arrived sooner. The story might have had a different ending if the callers could have dialed 9-1-1, but that system was not in place until four years later.

The Man Who Killed Kitty Genovese

The attacker, Winston Moseley, a twenty-nine-year-old man with no criminal record, married with two children, was arrested as he burglarized a house six days later, and he confessed to the murder. His motive? He wanted to “kill a woman.”  He said he got up at two a.m., left his wife asleep at home, and drove around until he found a victim. He further confessed to raping and killing two other women and to as many as forty burglaries. He was sentenced to death on June 15, l964. His sentence was reduced to life imprisonment on the grounds he had not been allowed to argue at his trial that he was medically insane when he killed Kitty. He escaped from prison in 1968 and committed more crimes before surrendering to police. He received two additional fifteen-year sentences. 

In December, 2013, Moseley was denied parole for the seventeenth time. Now eighty years old, he is one of the longest-serving inmates in the state of New York. 

The brutal and senseless murder of a young woman with a lot of life ahead of her is a gut-wrenching tragedy under any circumstances. The circumstances surrounding Kitty Genovese’s death leave me wondering about the moral responsibility of bystanders. In a deadly situation, should they step up and try to save a life at the risk of their own? 

Perhaps Kitty would have been saved if some of the people aware of her plight had gone out to help her. Suppose the man who shouted during the first attack for the attacker to “Let that girl alone” had instead gone out to intervene. Maybe he could have saved Kitty. It’s possible, however, that the man with the knife would have turned on him and there might have been two victims that night. 

One woman bravely went outside to investigate after the second attack and found Kitty barely alive. Fortunately for her, the attacker had driven away by then. The woman cradled Kitty in her arms until the ambulance arrived. Suppose that woman had gone out a minute earlier. The attacker might have still been there, and she might have been a victim also.

I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been there that night. 

Do you?
 

Earl Staggs ©2015

Earl Staggs earned all Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. He invites any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net  He also invites you to visit his blog site at http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES with Earl Staggs --- Albert DeSalvo – Was He Really The Boston Strangler?

Please welcome back award winning Texas author Earl Staggs with his latest installment of his History’s Rich With Mysteries series. This installment he considers the question of whether Albert DeSalvo was The Boston Strangler?

When I look at the past, I find stories about people which fascinate me, particularly those in which there is a curious mixture of fact, legend, and mysterious uncertainty.  In this series of articles, I want to explore some of those stories.  I think of them as mysteries swaddled in legend.  While truth is always desired in most things, truth easily becomes staid and boring. Legend, on the other hand, forever holds a hint of romanticism and an aura of excitement borne of adventure, imagination and, of course, mystery. 

HISTORY’S RICH WITH MYSTERIES

Albert DeSalvo – Was He Really The Boston Strangler?

The answer to that question is: realistically - probably not; technically - definitely not since he was never charged, tried, or convicted for The Boston Strangler killings.

Albert Henry DeSalvo, born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on September 3, 1931, tortured animals as a child and was arrested at the age of 12 for battery and robbery. After a stint in a school for boys, he worked as a delivery boy but was soon returned to the same school for auto theft.  Upon release this time, he joined the Army and served in an Armored Cavalry Regiment. After an honorable discharge, he returned to civilian life in the Boston area.

Between June 1962 and January 1964, thirteen women between 19 and 85 were murdered in and around Boston, most of them also sexually assaulted. Due to the wide gaps in the victims’ ages and other variant details of each case, the police were not convinced they were the work of a single individual. The public and the media, however, chose to believe they were all committed by one man. He was called The Mad Strangler of Boston, The Phantom Fiend, The Phantom Strangler and other names, but eventually became known as The Boston Strangler.

In October 1964, ten months after the last reported Strangler killing, Albert DeSalvo, now married with two children, gained entry to a woman's home by posing as a detective, tied her to her bed, sexually assaulted her, and then left. The woman's description led to his arrest, and when his photo was published, a number of women came forth and identified him as the man who had assaulted them. 

DeSalvo was arrested and charged with a number of rapes. He was NOT connected to the Strangler killings at that time. He was known to the police as “The Measuring Man,” because he approached women posing as a fashion model recruiter and fondled them under the pretense of taking their measurements.  He was also known as “The Green Man,” because he dressed in green when he reputedly committed more than 300 sexual assaults over a two-year period. 

While he was in jail awaiting trial, however, he confessed to being The Boston Strangler. F. Lee Bailey then became his lawyer and set up interrogations and interviews. There was no physical evidence tying him to the killings, but in his confession, DeSalvo gave some details of the murders which had not been made public. Bailey wanted to present an insanity plea for DeSalvo so he would be hospitalized rather than simply imprisoned. Bailey said, "My goal was to see the Strangler wind up in a hospital, where doctors could try to find out what made him kill.” He felt studying serial killers might provide a means of identifying and deterring other mass murderers.

The judge, however, would not allow his Strangler confession or the insanity plea. Instead, DeSalvo was tried and convicted of being a serial rapist and sentenced to life in prison. He was never charged with The Boston Strangler killings. 

So why was his confession not accepted and why was he not charged with being the Strangler? 

From the very beginning of the murders, some investigators found it hard to believe one man committed all the killings attributed to the Strangler. The victims were from different age and ethnic groups, and the MO varied from one to the other. While most of the victims were strangled with articles of their own clothing, one died of a heart attack and two others were stabbed to death, one of whom was also badly beaten.


Two expert examiners felt DeSalvo was not the Boston Strangler. One called him "a very clever, very smooth compulsive confessor who desperately needs to be recognized." A former FBI profiler said, "You're putting together so many different patterns, that it's inconceivable behaviorally that all these could fit one individual." Author Susan Kelly argued that the stranglings were the work of several killers rather than one single man. Adding more doubt was the fact that while DeSalvo was right about some details of the Strangler killings, some of what he said didn’t match the facts. 


A fellow inmate claimed he overheard another convict coaching DeSalvo about the murders. The inmate who coached him may have been George Nassar, who was in prison for an unrelated murder. Many who have investigated the case in great detail now feel Nassar may have actually been the real Boston Strangler.  In fact, the only survivor of the Strangler attacks insisted that Nassar was her attacker, not DeSalvo.

Why would Nassar coach DeSalvo? One theory holds that the two inmates formed a plan between them. Nassar would report that DeSalvo was The Boston Strangler, DeSalvo would confess, and Nassar would collect a reward which he would share with DeSalvo’s wife and children. In this theory, DeSalvo would be providing some financial support for his family in addition to having the everlasting notoriety he craved. Since he was already sentenced to life in prison, he had nothing to lose.

In 1973, Albert DeSalvo recanted his confession to being the Boston Strangler while serving time at a maximum security prison known as Walpole. Shortly after that, he was stabbed to death in the prison infirmary. He may have been killed because he was selling drugs at a lower price that his competition in the prison, or it may have been to keep him from revealing the true identity of The Boston Strangler. Another convict was tried for the murder, but the trial ended in a hung jury. No one else has been charged, and DeSalvo’s murder remains unsolved.

The final chapter in the Strangler story involves DNA evidence.  The only DNA sample from any of the Strangler killings was seminal fluid found near the body of his last known victim, 19-year-old Mary Sullivan. She was sexually assaulted and strangled with nylon stockings on January 4, 1964. DeSalvo's remains were exhumed in July 2013, nearly fifty years after the crime, to obtain a sample of his DNA.  Test results proved that Albert Henry DeSalvo was the source of that fluid and, therefore, he killed her. 

While we can say with reasonable certainty that DeSalvo killed one of the victims attributed to the Strangler, there are serious doubts as to his involvement with the others. Perhaps George Nassar was really The Boston Strangler, or perhaps Nassar was only one of several who committed the crimes. 

So we’re left with a number of unknowns, unsolveds, and unanswereds. Putting it all together, we have to grant The Boston Strangler a solid position in the All-Time Mystery Hall of Infamy.

Earl Staggs ©2015

Earl Staggs earned a long list of Five Star reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has twice received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year. He served as Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Magazine, as President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. 

Email: earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net Website: http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com