PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK versus GEORGE FRANK: OPENING STATEMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION BY FRANCIS L. WELLMAN (June 24, 1891)
MR. WELLMAN: May it please the court, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury:[1]
The first law of God and man is, “Thou shalt not kill.”
The Grand Jury of this County have said, by this indictment, that they find reasonable cause to believe that the defendant at the bar, George Frank, otherwise known as Ameer Ben Ali, has violated the law; and it is for that reason that we are assembled here to try probably the most atrocious crime that has ever been committed in our midst.
The defendant, whose right name is Ameer Ben Ali, is an Algerian, a Mussulman, as they are called, a follower of Mohammed. Very little is known by the prosecution about his former life. He claims to have been at one time a French subject, and to have fought in the Franco-Prussian War, connected in some way with the surgical department of the French Army I believe.
About fifteen or eighteen months ago, he came to this country. There were some friends of his living in Brooklyn, and he went into partnership in the fruit vending business with one of his friends in Brooklyn for a while; but, falling out with that friend, having a quarrel with him and a lawsuit, which got into the criminal courts, and about which you will hear, if he testifies, as it has been suggested in your examination that he will testify, in his own behalf.
MR. HOUSE: We object to the District Attorney’s referring to any matter that he knows or ought to know that he cannot refer to or prove, unless the defendant’s character is put in issue, or he takes the stand. It is, therefore, unfair and incompetent for the District Attorney to refer to the previous character of the defendant at this time.
THE COURT: All that I can say now, in answer to that objection, is that the District Attorney may go on with the history of both of the parties—the defendant and the deceased—as far as he knows it, or claims to know it.
MR. HOUSE: But can he refer to the past life of the defendant?
THE COURT: He may go on.
MR. FRIEND: We will except.
THE COURT: I will take care, when the proper time comes, to instruct the jury what to regard and what to disregard in this case.
MR. WELLMAN: After going out of business with this friend in Brooklyn, we can’t find that he did any business except that of a beggar in the streets, because the next trace we have of him is that we find him over in New York here, constantly, at night, drinking with the women who will be produced here as witnesses, and consorting with them at the East River Hotel and their assignation houses in that quarter. Next we find him arrested in Queens County for vagrancy, he having begged—
MR. HOUSE: Now, if your Honor please we take exception to that part of the statement of the District Attorney, and I desire it to go on the record now, that we protest against the District Attorney stating to this jury that the defendant has ever been under arrest in Queens County, or any other county of this State, or any other State. Your Honor knows that the District Attorney has no right to refer to that, until the character of the defendant is put in issue, and so makes it an issue in the case. I pronounce it as unfair and unlawful and unjust on the part of the District Attorney, and I ask your Honor to stop him now.
THE COURT: As I understand it, the District Attorney has merely stated, as far as he claims to know it, the history of the defendant. I think he has a right to do that, but at the same time, I will instruct the jury that every statement that has been made here, as to the arrest of this man, or as to anything that has a tendency to impeach his character is not to be regarded by the jury, unless the defendant becomes a witness, and puts his character in issue. I do not know whether he will or will not do that, but at this stage of the case I can do no more than I have done.
MR. HOUSE: Will your Honor give me the benefit of the exception?
THE COURT: Yes, certainly.
MR. HOUSE: The stenographer has taken this down I apprehend.
THE COURT: I have no doubt that he has.
MR. WELLMAN: You have heard this application for the list of witnesses for the people. The defendant knows perfectly well many of our witnesses. He knows them, because they were produced before the coroner. He knows that many of our witnesses were from this very jail in which they were incarcerated with the defendant, Ameer Ben Ali, and it must be necessarily part of our case. It is where they knew him and saw him, and where they learned the facts which they will narrate to you—in the Queens County Jail, with this man. He knows that. I do not intend to state anything that is unfair to this defendant, in this opening, and, when the opening is finished, you will bear me out in that statement.
Now I say that he was arrested for begging and for vagrancy on the street, and was incarcerated in the Queens County Jail for that reason, and, at that time, he was found with splints on his arm; and he spent, apparently the money that he got in begging, in New York at the East River Hotel, other assignation houses as we will show you, and with the women we will produce here.
On the 22nd of April, this defendant spent most of his day around the East River Hotel, and other drinking places in the neighborhood. He was drinking most of the day with this woman “Shakespeare,” Carrie Brown, who was found the next morning, murdered in the East River Hotel.
On Wednesday—Tuesday or Wednesday, the 21st or 22nd of April, this defendant slept in the East River Hotel, with some woman unknown to the prosecution—whose name is unknown to the prosecution. They knew him, they had then seen him, and had had trouble with him, which they will narrate to you, before, with women in that hotel. I speak of that simply to show that he was acquainted with those premises. And they gave him a room with a woman on Tuesday or Wednesday, the 21st or 22nd of April. In the morning he passed out in the ordinary way through the bar. If you remember, as you were there today, one of the entrances is through the bar room. He passed out at 7 o’clock that morning—at 5 o’clock he passed out. At 7 o’clock in the morning he was at another assignation house at 49 Oliver Street, and there had to do with a woman named Alice Sullivan; and I might say, here, that this man is unnatural in his sexual desires.
At 10 o’clock he is around with “Shakespeare,”—Carrie Brown—drinking in saloons. At 3 o’clock he is with “Shakespeare” and several other women at several other saloons, drinking, in the neighborhood. At 8 o’clock, again with women in another saloon, drinking, and “Shakespeare” is among them, the woman that was afterwards murdered. At 8:30 it rained, on Wednesday night, and Alice Sullivan, the girl who had been with him that morning, at 7 o’clock, and who had seen him in many saloons with the woman “Shakespeare,” during the afternoon, was passing along the street after she saw the defendant and the woman “Shakespeare” on the street. She was hurrying on her way, and she heard only, “Sleepa tonighta at the Fourtha Warda Hotel,” that being only another name for the hotel that you visited today. At 9 o’clock in the evening he is at the bar of the East River Hotel drinking, and at 10 o’clock that same evening that woman, “Shakespeare” is in the “box,” which you have noticed at the hotel, the small place where the women sit and drink with men, aside from the bar. This woman, “Shakespeare,” was there with a man unknown to the prosecution. At about a quarter past 10, that evening, the bell rang on the Water Street entrance—the door that you went in today—which is always locked, and through which couples who wish for rooms in the hotel must apply. They ring this bell, which connects with the bar, and under the bar where the bell is, is the key of the door. That door is always kept locked. That bell rang about a quarter past 10. The woman, Mary Miniter, the Assistant Housekeeper at the hotel, went to the door and admitted Carrie Brown, or “Shakespeare,” with a light-haired man. They paid 50 cents for their room, and ordered a tankard of beer, and went to Room 31.
At about half past 12, that night—between 12 and 1—the bell rang again. Mary Miniter, in the meantime having gone to some room herself with a man, and Samuel Shine, the barkeeper, being engaged in playing cards, the doorbell was answered by Eddie Fitzgerald, who was the bootblack of this hotel, and who was also the night watchman. He went to this door, and there admitted the defendant. He recognized him. He had seen him two days before—had seen him about the hotel. The defendant asked for a room for himself, which was against the rules of the hotel. They never let a room to a single man. They let a room to a single woman for 25 cents, and they let rooms to couples for 50 or a dollar, but they never let a room to a single man, especially on the top floor, because the men would wander around on that floor, and that was their rule, and I believe before that time that rule had never been broken. But Eddie Fitzgerald, not being the person ordinarily in charge of the door, and it being late at night, and Mary Miniter being already in bed, Fitzgerald took the 25 pennies that this man gave him, and gave him a candle and a key of Room 33, and he went to Sam Shine, who was playing cards, and gave him the 25 pennies, that he had received from the defendant, and said that he had let a man go upstairs—the dark man, “Frenchy,” as they knew him around the hotel.
At 5 o’clock the next morning, Fitzgerald who had been up all night, in charge of the bar—the bar was closed, but he was in charge of the bar room—at 5 o’clock in the morning his duty it was to sweep out the bar, and he was sweeping it out when his attention was attracted by a man sneaking, as he uses the term, along the wall, with his head turned in towards the wall. It was nothing unusual for men to go out at 5 o’clock in the morning, but they ordinarily walked out directly and stopped at the wash stand, there being no water in the rooms upstairs, and then washed themselves and passed out through the bar into Catherine Street, through the main entrance. But his attention was attracted, as he says, by this man who was apparently sneaking out, keeping close along to the wall—the wall farthest from him—that is, farthest from his angle of vision, Fitzgerald’s—and he had his face turned in toward the wall. It was the wall of the “box” that I have spoken of. He looked at him, because he was running along in this way, and he recognized the defendant, and saw him shoot out of the box into the other entrance and into Water Street.
At about 10 o’clock that morning, Mary Corcoran, the regular Housekeeper, in going to the top floor, found the door of Room 33 was locked, and opened it with her pass key, and there saw a naked body on the bed, and pools of blood on the floor. She slammed the door and ran out and ran downstairs and called upon this Eddie Fitzgerald. He went up and opened the door and saw the same sight that had driven Mary Corcoran away. The door was then locked, and the police were notified.
Captain O’Connor was the first to arrive. He got several detectives—Sergeant Crowley and Detective Griffin, and they together went up into this room, and made an investigation. They found Carrie Brown’s body. However, hours afterwards she was identified as Carrie Brown. They found the body lying on the bed with the back to the door, and the head was covered with underclothing, and the neck was tied with the apron string, and the clothes tied around it. Otherwise, the body was naked. The backside was turned to the door. They found that the blood had come from the wounds in the body of this woman, and had soaked through the mattress and had run from the edges of the mattress to the floor, forming a pool of blood on the floor, and there were other traces of blood on the sheet and other parts of the floor, where the blood had apparently been rubbed with the foot.
The woman was strangled to death. Her mouth was open, her tongue was hanging out. She had likewise been cut in her abdomen by a dull knife which had not readily cut, but there had been two or three attempts to make each cut that was made in her body. There was one cut from about here (indicating) on the abdomen through to the vagina—a cut six or eight inches deep, penetrating the smaller intestine and running into the bowels, and there was another and separate cut going back from the vagina and separating the perineum between the vagina and the rectum. And there were several other separate cuts five or six inches deep in the woman’s body. The police began to investigate the premises. They first found that the candle in Room 33, it being a whole candle—it being the custom in that hotel to give a “green” or fresh candle to each person who occupied a room—was burned down and exhausted. They found in Room 31—33 being directly opposite—three feet and a half across the way, a room that had been occupied by this defendant—they found on the door of that room bloodstains, as though a person whose hands were covered with blood had touched the door, it opening inward. And there they saw the prints of the fingers and a streak of blood which had dropped down on the side of the door. On the inside of the door and corresponding to where the hand would come, if the door was pushed open and closed with the hand was another spot of blood. They found in the hallway leading in between the two rooms three spots of blood, three droppings of blood on the wall. On the chair in Room 33 they found blood on the edge of the chair, blood on the candles, in Room 33, and one spot of blood on the woodwork or floor of Room 33.
They then naturally made inquiries as to who had occupied Room 33, and it was to find out from Eddie Fitzgerald that a man known as “Frenchy,” the dark man known as “Frenchy,” tall and thin and black, had occupied Room 33.
By going around among the women who were accustomed to sleep and drink in this hotel, they soon found out the man whom the women called “Frenchy,” and who corresponded to the description given by Eddie Fitzgerald as the man who occupied that room.
That evening, at about 8 o’clock, the arrest of the defendant occurred. He was arrested by Officer Lang. Officer Lang went up to him and said, “Come along with me. I want you.” He walked along with him and said, “Where did you sleep last night?” And the Frenchman said, “I slept in Brooklyn.” He said, “Well, you slept in Brooklyn?” The defendant said, “Yes. Me do nothing; me do nothing.” He had not been accused of doing anything. He had been simply asked where he slept. So the officer said, “Well, come along with me.” They walked along to the East River Hotel. They went in and Saw Eddie Fitzgerald, and Eddie Fitzgerald immediately identified this man as the man whom he let in between 12 and 1 o’clock the night before, he had given him 25 pennies in payment for Room 33, and the description he had given to Sam Shine, when Sam Shine complained of his letting a man go up there to that floor—and when he gave him these 25 pennies in payment for this room. They, therefore, took him to the station house.
Meanwhile, they had identified the dead body as that of Carrie Brown, known by the nickname of “Shakespeare” in that vicinity.
Carrie Brown was a woman who was born in Salem, apparently of respectable parents and of a respectable life, at first, but who had gradually drifted into the life she led, and into the very dregs of New York City, and in this vicinity which you visited today, and had become a low woman of the town, not an inhabitant of a house of prostitution, but one who had her own room and earned the money that she lived on by going with sailors and the men of the class of the defendant, going with them to the East River Hotel, and other assignation houses in that vicinity.
Now, after this man was arrested, every effort was made—every possible effort—to allow him to clear himself. It was seen that he did not speak the English language well. It appears that he speaks the English language well enough to come and travel to this country and get along here for 15 months and consort with all these women. Well, he didn’t speak English well, and every effort, as I say, was made to allow him to clear himself. An officer who speaks French fluently was put in charge of him, and he was asked everything that he could be asked to give him an opportunity to clear himself. In the first place, he was asked by the officer where he slept that night. Having been identified by this boy, Fitzgerald, and having been taken to this hotel, he admitted that he slept at the East River Hotel, and that he occupied Room 33 in that hotel that night.
When they began to strip him and search him, they discovered that he had a great mass of blood on the front of his shirt, and that his socks were soaked with blood on the heel, and in the instep, and they immediately took an ivory nail cleaner and cleaned his nails.
Detective Aloncle, who is the French officer or detective that I spoke of, asked him where he got the spot of blood that was there—how could he explain it. He said that about ten days before he had been in Jamaica, and there he had met a girl in the streets to whom he took a fancy, and he had taken her to a Frenchman’s, named Joseph, who kept a hotel near there, and that he gave her three francs and some beer and had connection with her; that she was unwell at the time, and that he had got this blood from connection with her during her courses.
That seemed a natural explanation of it—certainly a shrewd and cunning one, and not an ignorant one, and so they went to investigate. They went to Jamaica. They hunted all around for a Frenchman by the name of Joseph who kept a hotel in the neighborhood, and they could find no trace of any man or anything of the kind, and they came back and told him that they could not find any Frenchman by the name of Joseph who kept a hotel there, and could not find any such place and asked him if he was willing to go with them and point out the place, and he said, “Why, certainly,” and consented to go, and they took him up on his proposition, and at about 5 o’clock in the morning they took him with Aloncle and another police officer and asked him to show where Joseph kept the hotel. He took them across the ferry and on to the Brooklyn Elevated, and finally, when they got pretty well along in Brooklyn, he said to them, “What I told you was not true. Me know no woman in Jamaica. Me got the blood in New York, staying with a woman at 49 Oliver Street, yesterday morning.” He may have said two or three mornings before—at all events, the morning of the murder—Thursday morning. He said, “She was sick. I went with her at 49 Oliver Street.” And they said, “what have you brought us out here for? How do you know the locality?” And he said, “Well, I was arrested out here, and was in the jail here.” So they took him to the police station, and he was identified by the clerk or by the police justice there, and it was found that he had been in the Queens County Jail, and they took him to the Queens County Jail, and there he was examined by the people who were in the charge of the jail and identified as having served 30 days for vagrancy, with splints tied around his left arm. He had been released from that jail on the 12th of April.
They went to 49 Oliver Street, where he said he got this blood, and they found that he had had connection with a woman there by the name of Alice Sullivan on Thursday, the morning of the murder, at 7 o’clock, as I told you, but she was not in that condition, had not been in that condition, had not been in that condition for some weeks before, and was not for some time after that time, and she denied absolutely that he got any blood from her on his clothes.
They then took him before Mary Ann Lopez, Alice Sullivan, and a woman that is known as Dublin Mary, and several of the women who cohabited with men at the East River Hotel, and asked him if he knew them—if all of them had had connection with him—Dublin Mary, Alice Sullivan, Mary Ann Lopez and all of them, and he said “No. Me don’t know any of these women.” Thereupon, Mary Lopez said, “What? Why, you don’t know me? There is my arm that you bit in the East River Hotel.” One night when he was staying with her in that hotel he had given her a dollar, and as she went downstairs he sneaked behind her and grabbed her by the back of the head, and bit her through and through the arm until he made her release the dollar, and he got the dollar back, and she ran downstairs. “Don’t remember me!” she cried out. “Why, you bit me here in the arm.” She said this in his presence, right there and then.
MR. HOUSE: I desire an exception entered on the record to that statement.
THE COURT: Certainly.
MR. WELLMAN: “Why? You don’t know me? Why you bit my arm at the East River Hotel and there are the marks.”
MR. HOUSE: And to that we take an exception.
MR. WELLMAN: And he said, “Me don’t know the woman.” Alice Sullivan was there, too. And he said he didn’t know her—the woman he had been with that very morning.
Under this man’s bed on the morning she was discovered—the body of the “Shakespeare” woman—they discovered a knife. It was an ordinary table knife, sharpened to a point, with a black handle and three groves in it—three places that may once have been tied with string, but in it was three grooves, making the handle easier to hold, to retain a hold on. These three cuts or grooves on each side of the handle they found. That knife was covered with blood, and was underneath this woman’s back, and was evidently the knife with which this cutting was done.
Knowing that he had been in the Queens County Jail for 30 days, the detectives went to the jail and found the man with whom he had bunked, who had slept with him in the bunk next to him. He had eaten all his meals with him, and had been confined with him 14 days of the 30 that he served there, and he described this man as having a knife, and said that he thought the knife was wound with twin in three different places on the handle; that it was an ordinary table knife, and was cut off sharp to a point, and that is certainly as this knife looks to be when held at a little distance. It looks as though it were wound with twin in three different places. When shown the knife he said that it was the knife—not that he would say that it was the identical knife—that there might be two like it, but it was so far as he could tell the knife that that man had and used three times a day in the Queens County Jail while he was taking his meals. This man had had the knife, not in his own hands, but before him, and had seen it across the table, and had seen the defendant eating with it, and laying it down on the table and had seen him use it at each meal for 14 days three times a day.
They found another man who had seen this man when others had thrown things at him—he had very little to do with the people in that jail, and they would sometimes throw or toss bread at him, and then he would get in a rage, and they saw him draw this knife on one occasion to rush down on a man who had been throwing bread at him, and he saw, not the handle of the knife, but that he had a knife and it was like an ordinary table knife which had been ground down to a point. And they, while they cannot identify the knife as the chum could, who had bunked near him, as far as they could see the knife they say the knife resembles the knife that they saw in his hand.
MR. HOUSE: I suppose, your honor will give us an exception as to the statement of the alleged assault made by the prosecuting attorney?
THE COURT: Yes, I will give you an exception to everything.
MR. WELLMAN: And there was a third man in that place who said that it resembled, the knife, though he only saw the blade of it, and only saw the man using it at his meals. Now, strangely once before—I have already stated to you there was trouble—what it was I will not state—but in consequence of this trouble this man was searched. There was then found on him and taken from him a knife that is almost identical with the knife that was found under the bed.
MR. HOUSE: I invoke to the aid and assistance of the defendant the decision of the General Term in the case of the People against Everett. That was a case where the district attorney sought to introduce in evidence a knife which had been taken from the person of the defendant after he had been arrested, but no claim was made on the part of the district attorney that that knife was the instrument with which the crime had been committed. If this is good law—
THE COURT: It is good law, but it does not apply, I think, to this case.
MR. HOUSE: Well, I take an exception to the statement about it by the district attorney.
MR. WELLMAN: As I say, it resembled the knife taken from beneath the woman’s body on the day of the murder, that is, it was a common table knife, ground down to a point; and the resemblance of the two knives will be show, the resemblance between the two knives, carried by this man.
MR. HOUSE: No, it won’t; not at all.
MR. WELLMAN: And altogether the circumstances naturally point to, and satisfy, a reasonable man’s mind, that this man was the man who committed the crime in Room 33. But they say, “You have got no eyewitness to that crime. No one saw. It. It is all circumstantial. It is not so, gentlemen. There was an eyewitness to that crime, and it was the eye of God. And the hand of God has written on the wall the name of this assassin, and science has allowed us to demonstrate it beyond any possible power of contradiction.
MR. FRIEND: You can’t call the writer as a witness.[2]
MR. WELLMAN: The blood that flowed from this woman and was found on the floor in a pool, beneath her bed, the blood on this man’s shirt, the blood on his shirt cuff, the wrist band, the blood on the door leading to his room, the prints of his fingers, the blood inside of the door, was found to be one identical blood, from the same subject—anemic blood, the same correspondence of white and red corpuscles, showing that it came from an anemic person. It was found, further, that the blood on his shirt, and the blood on that floor, was mixed with the intestinal fluid that would naturally come from the smaller intestine which was cut by this knife.
The blood on the floor was mixed with intestinal contents, the blood on his shirt was mixed with intestinal contents, such contents as come from the smaller intestine, which was cut in this case. Further, not only can they tell from science that it is the intestinal contents but that it is in the same stage of digestion. The intestinal contents on the shirt is the same as the intestinal contents mixed with the blood on the floor of that room, and on her clothes and on the bed clothes in her room. It was the same intestinal contents that is in the blood on the door of Room 33, and when they examined the parings from this man’s nails, they found that it was blood—not only that it was blood, but that it was mixed with intestinal contents from the smaller intestine, at the same state of digestion as the fluid mixed with the blood that was on her body at the time she was found.
But even that is not all. They can tell the stage of digestion hadn’t yet got to the stage of feces. It was in the smaller, not the larger, intestine; and they say the substances were at the same stage of digestion. She had eaten cheese, she had eaten cabbage, she had eaten rhubarb, and she had eaten corned beef, and they can show, they claim, by the blood taken from her room, that there was evident partially digested meat and cabbage and rhubarb and cheese. And they find, they claim, in the parings of this man’s fingernails, that this man had his hand in that woman’s—they find cheese and rhubarb, and corned beef and cabbage, and they find it on his shirt. It cannot be denied, and there is no possibility of contradicting or refuting it, and the highest scientific mind on that subject, in this country, will swear to it before you, not as his opinion, but as an absolute scientific fact. Professor Formad, of Philadelphia, has devoted his life to the study of blood, and is the most celebrated microscopist in this country.
MR. HOUSE: And who is always appearing for the prosecution.
MR. WELLMAN: Now, what he says is not alone confined to his authority, but he is corroborated in every detail by Dr. Austin Flint, the greatest physiologist in this country, who is a world-renowned microscopist. Dr. Flint, not knowing of the autopsy, or what it showed in this case, but from his examination alone, both chemical examination and microscopical examination—they put it to every possible test—found that the fluid came from the smaller intestine, and located on the body the part that really the autopsy showed that the cut was made in; and at that time he knew nothing of the autopsy, or where the cut was made.
Now, there is one more thing that science shows, and which cannot be contradicted—it is demonstrated as surely as a mathematical proposition—and that is, that the blood on this man’s shirt not only was not menstrual blood—that they can tell, and they say it was not menstrual blood—but it was the blood of a dead person. The blood in his nails was the blood of a dead person, the blood on his door is the blood of a dead person. She was strangled, Dr. Jenkins says. She got her death from asphyxiation. The marks of the assassin’s hand are in her throat. Her tongue was protruding, and there is blood in the lungs. She was strangled to death. The moment that life goes from the body, the arteries, as you well know, and as everybody knows, will not spurt. During life, the arteries will spurt. There is life in the blood. The moment you take the oxygen from the body and asphyxiate the blood, you lose the life of the blood. The blood under the microscope shows it to be in that shape. The moment you kill a person, the blood loses its elasticity, and the globules go into that shape. And so, science can tell beyond contradiction the blood that flowed from a living or dead subject. In all the blood on this man’s shirt, and all the blood on this man’s clothes, and on the bod, and on the floor, is blood without the elasticity of blood flowing from a living person, and blood in a state showing that it was a dead person’s blood, and it was her blood mixed with her intestinal fluid at the same stage of digestion, from the same human subject with the same proportion of red and white corpuscles; and these gentlemen tell us that it is demonstrated to them, not as an opinion, but as an absolute, decided scientific fact, and that the man from whom the shirt was taken, stained with that blood, was the assassin of that woman. And, as I have said, is it not the hand of God, writing the name of the assassin on the wall?
[1] Wellman’s opening statement comes from Crime in New York, 1850, 1950: People of the State of New York versus George Frank, Trial # 16, Reels ## 4-5. Lloyd Sealy Library, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, 1891, pages 5-39.
[2] This remark by Lawyer Friend is not in the transcript. It is taken from “Invoking the Microscope,” New York Sun, June 30, 1891.
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