The Crime of the Century Part 13

The feet and legs were deep into the four feet of water. The body was floating, the back and hips alone being above the surface. The three men looked at each other. Strange to say, not one of them thought of connecting the ghastly discovery with the missing doctor. It was evident that it would be no easy matter to bring the body to the top of the basin, and Rosch, hurrying to the grocery store of C. H. Noyes, a little distance away, sent a telephone message to the police headquarters of Lake View. In a little while the patrol wagon, with Captain Wing and Officers Phillips and Malia, was on the scene. At first sight it seemed as though it would be impossible to bring the corpse to the top of the basin without being compelled to mutilate it, but finally one of the party suggested that a horse blanket might be pa.s.sed under the stomach and the remains thus drawn up. This suggestion proved practicable, and the blanket, having been pushed under the body with the aid of the handle of a hoe, the men took the two ends and commenced to lift it to the surface. Owing to the stiff and bent condition of the body, however, it was found necessary at this point to remove the entire top of the basin. A knot was then tied in the blanket, during which operation the arms, released from their pressure, flew apart, and with a little more exertion the ghastly load was entirely removed from its prison of brick and laid upon the ground. As this was being done the face, bloated and discolored, turned up toward the men.

"My G.o.d," exclaimed Captain Wing, "it is Dr. Cronin."

THE BODY AT THE MORGUE.

The little group stood dumbfounded as the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n burst from the officer's lips, and, for the first time, they realized the terrible significance of their discovery. Quickly arousing themselves to action, however, they gently laid the body upon the stretcher and lifted it into the wagon. Little time was lost in making the return trip to the police station. Here the body was conveyed to the bas.e.m.e.nt, which served the purpose of a morgue, and placed upon a low table. A cursory examination developed the fact that the cotton batting, as well as the towel around the neck, were heavily saturated with blood. Upon removing the towel, which had been tied in a knot, there was disclosed to view an

"AGNUS DEI,"

or scapular, a heart-shaped religious emblem very generally worn by adherents of the Roman Catholic faith as a safeguard against injury.

Attached to a ribbon around the neck, it rested just below the collar bone. It was the only thing that the physician had worn in life that had been left to him in death, and, brutal and bloodthirsty as had been the a.s.sa.s.sins in the perpetration of their dastardly crime, they had evidently--even after stripping the corpse of their victim of every shred of clothing, in the hope that all means of identification would thus be destroyed--stood appalled at the idea of molesting the holy emblem of the church with their b.l.o.o.d.y hands. Even in that terrible moment, and in the presence of the naked and reeking corpse of the man they had lured to destruction, the "Agnus Dei," resting mute upon his breast, had possessed an influence that compelled them to pause. Thus far they had gone, but they could go no farther. It had spoken to their affrighted souls in trumpet tones: "Touch me not."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CORPSE WITH "AGNUS DEI" ON BREAST.]

Considering the fact that the body had in all probability, been in the place where it was found for nearly three weeks, it was not by any means in the condition that would have been expected under the circ.u.mstances.

It had swollen, however, to about one-third of the natural size. As it appeared under the gas light it was that of a stout, well-nourished man of about forty-five years of age. The skin was white, although the body and chest was considerably bloated. The feet, which had been the most exposed, were hardly cracked. The hair had peeled from the skin both of face and body. One side of the mustache, with the skin attached, was turned over onto the lip. Only a few straggling hairs were left on the other side, but, just under the lower lip, a small but well-defined goatee of dark bristling hairs was apparent. The forehead was bald, while the thick dark hair lay in matted clots on the back of the head.

The chin--the towel not having been replaced--was sunk well into the neck. The mouth was tightly closed, and for a time resisted all efforts to force it open. About the ears and hands the skin hung in shreds, and the eyelids had swollen to such an extent that they had forced each other partly open. But it was the head that attracted the greatest attention, and brought exclamations of horror from the few spectators.

It was a ma.s.s of wounds. In the forehead at the roots of the hair there were three horrible cuts, each over an inch in length, and attended with a slight discoloration that indicated decay. These had evidently been made with a sharp instrument. Over the right eye there was a wound that looked as though it might have been made with the cutting edge of a blunt axe. Others on the back of the head were evidently the work of a blunter instrument, but the worst one of all, on the top of the head, suggested the use of the back of a heavy axe. There was no need to look elsewhere for horrible explanations of the cause of death. The head told its own story. The unfortunate physician had been hacked to death with a brutality beyond conception.

FRIENDS IDENTIFY THE REMAINS.

With amazing rapidity the news had spread throughout the suburb, and by this time the station was besieged by an excited crowd, while hundreds of voices clamored loudly but vainly for admission. Down in the city, too, where the information had been telephoned as soon as the remains had reached the morgue, the excitement was equally intense. It was just at the hour when the mercantile establishments, business houses, and manufactories, were emptying their army of toilers at the conclusion of the work of the day, and the bulletins that were displayed at the newspaper offices and a score of other places in the most frequented thoroughfares, were surrounded by thousands of people, who read and commented upon the startling information that was thus conveyed. Many gave vent to shouts of horror, others loudly breathed imprecations upon the murderers. Extra editions of the evening papers, giving the facts so far as known up to the hour of publication, were successively issued, and added to the popular excitement. Before midnight the fact that the body of the missing physician had been discovered under such revolting circ.u.mstances was known under almost every roof in the great western metropolis, and was being discussed by Irishmen in scores of towns throughout the country, to which it had been flashed over the electric wires.

Among the earlier arrivals at the morgue were several citizens of Lake View, who had known the physician when in the flesh, and with one or two exceptions, their identification of the remains was instantaneous and complete. They were soon joined by John F. Scanlan, Mortimer Scanlan, Pat McGarry, James Boland, and John E. Scanlan, all intimate friends of Dr. Cronin and members of the committee which had the case in charge.

They made a careful examination of the remains and pointed out the resemblances. The Doctor had large hands, as had the corpse; he was a hairy man, and there was lots of loose body hair on the corpse. The water had rotted this off, but it lay in ma.s.ses and tufts on the body.

The height of the man and his build agreed with that of the physician.

Next to this they relied upon the "Agnus Dei." Cronin had worn one of these reliquaries, and had never taken it off even while bathing. Then some one remembered that the Doctor had an extravasion of blood under the finger nail of the right thumb; and this, too, was found upon the corpse. A mark upon the side was also declared to be identical with one upon the body. Cronin had a superfluity of hair about the wrists, and this point of resemblance was found on the corpse. There was also a peculiarity of the second finger of the right hand, which might be described as a base-ball finger, with which Dr. Cronin had been afflicted. This malformation was apparent on the same hand of the dead man. But the most convincing and conclusive identification of all was that of Dr. T. W. Lewis, a dental surgeon, who had done considerable work for the Doctor. Upon his arrival at the morgue, John F. Scanlan pried open the mouth of the corpse with a pencil, and Dr. Lewis immediately recognized his handiwork in the gold filling of some of the upper teeth. It was a remarkable fact, moreover, that in a lower jaw plate that he had made for the physician he had placed several teeth peculiar to themselves, and known to the profession as "crown sunk." He had done this something in the line of an experiment. This identical plate was taken from the mouth of the dead man, while, to make the proof still more positive, the cast of Dr. Cronin's mouth, taken for the purpose of making the plate, was found to fit the mouth of the corpse to a fraction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCANLAN AND CONKLIN IDENTIFYING THE BODY.]

After Dr. Lewis came Cronin's tailor, Joseph J. O'Keefe, and who, upon making tests, found that the measurements of those portions of the body that had not perceptibly increased in size were identical with the figures in the order book kept by his cutter. John Buck, the barber who had counted Dr. Cronin among his customers for over a year, recognized the shape of the head and the texture of the hair; and immediately after, Dr. John R. Brandt, President of the staff of the Cook County Hospital, and who had been comparing the dead man's hair with the lock of hair found in the trunk three weeks before, declared that they had come from the same head. In this he was corroborated by Dr. Ruthford.

T. T. Conklin arrived at the station at 8 o'clock. He was taken down-stairs and looked long and earnestly at the bloated corpse. "It is the body of Dr. Cronin," said Conklin, his eyes filling with tears. "I have known him for twenty years and cannot be mistaken. I have been in swimming with him and know him better than any man living. There is no chance for a mistake. I don't like to say 'I told you so,' but this substantiates what I have said from the start. Dr. Cronin was murdered, and if the police had done their duty, instead of believing the lies invented by Dr. Cronin's enemies, the murderers would have been captured before this time."

And so for hours the friends of the murdered man came in singly, and in twos and threes, and added their testimony to what had already been given. Many of them were profoundly affected, and there were many pitiable scenes of grief as one man after another turned away from the bloated corpse that was all that remained of the man with whom they had been so closely a.s.sociated for years. Captain Wing, when interrogated, said that the place where the body was found was a particularly lonely one, the nearest house being over a block away. A hundred yards to the east was the depot of the Chicago & Evanston railroad. The spot was a little over three-quarters of a mile beyond the point where the trunk was found on the morning after the physician's disappearance, and four miles north of Fullerton avenue. It was surrounded with swampy land, the few trees growing to the north serving to shut off the view from the residences that were located in the neighborhood.

All this time the excitement outside was at fever heat. For hours the streets in the neighborhood were crowded with vehicles, and thousands of people blocked the approaches to the morgue until the police were compelled to use their clubs again and again. The station was filled with Chicago officers, who consulted with those of the suburb upon the best method to be adopted with the view of running down the a.s.sa.s.sins.

The tumult continued until midnight, and then the morgue was cleared in order that a more careful examination of the head might be made by Dr.

Gray. It was first placed in an upright position and photographed, and when he had finished his examination, Dr. Gray said:

"There are five wounds. No. 1 is on the front parietal suture, just here," and he took a skull which he had brought with him and used it in the demonstration. "That could easily have been fatal in itself. No. 2 is on the vertex, to the right of the sagittal suture," and he touched a point on the skull before him squarely on the top, but a little forward of the crown. "The skull is not strong there, and a heavy blow would be fatal. The third wound is one-half inch posterior to No.

2--just here," and he again ill.u.s.trated by laying his finger almost on the crown of his object lesson. "The fourth is on the left temple, and is only one inch long. The rest are about an inch and a half in length.

The fifth is a crushing wound, immediately below the external angle of the left eye. This one fractured the cheek bone, and must have been delivered with great force."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SKULL SHOWING LOCATION OF WOUNDS THAT CAUSED DEATH.]

"The absence of wounds on the hands," said Walter V. Hayt, a city health inspector, "would indicate that the first blow, whichever one of these five it was, was delivered unawares; otherwise there would have been a struggle which would have left its mark on the hands or arms, either in striking or warding off blows. He must have been surprised and stunned at the first blow."

Dr. Brandt, who also a.s.sisted in the examination of the wounds, said the blows must have been made by some sharp instrument, perhaps an ice-pick.

He said if the instrument had not been sharp the skull would have been fractured, whereas it was only indented, or marked by the blows.

To many of the dead man's friends it seemed remarkable that the body had not sooner been discovered, more especially as the Lake View police had started out to search the catch basin on the day after the trunk was found, and continued at the work for nearly a week. This was satisfactorily explained, however, by Alderman Maxwell, of the city council, who was one of the searching committee. It appeared that there were four catch basins at the intersection of Evanston avenue and Fifty-Ninth street, the body being discovered in the one on the south-east corner. The committee, aided by fifteen police officers and six volunteers, had commenced their operations at Evanston avenue and Sulzer street, where the trunk was found, and went east and west from that corner. From here they had gone through the basins north and south along Evanston avenue, but no clues being discovered, they arrived at the conclusion that the trunk had been left for a blind, and that, in all probability, the body had been hidden some distance away. They had consequently gone to Graceland and looked through the basins up and down the avenue and on the cross streets for a distance of several miles.

This occupied an entire week, until, tired and disgusted, they had stopped, by sheer bad luck, two blocks north of Fifty-Ninth street.

Hence it was that the catch-basin in which the body had been hidden was missed.

THE STORY OF THE AUTOPSY.

All that night the body rested on the little table in the morgue, with an automatic sprinkler pouring water upon the face and breast.

Decomposition advanced with such terrible swiftness, however, that by morning it was apparent that unless the process of embalming was resorted to without delay it would soon be unrecognizable. One of the earliest arrivals was John T. Cronin, of Bradford, Kansas, the only brother of the dead man. He wept bitterly, and sobbed and moaned when taken into the morgue, and at once recognized the corpse, not only from its facial characteristics, but also from a malformation of a portion of the body that the physician had kept secret from even his most intimate friends. He was with difficulty persuaded to leave the bier, and, prostrated with grief, was half carried from the room. The county authorities now took charge of the case. From the police department the following proclamation, over the signature of Chief Hubbard, went to every station in the city and was read to the men at the morning muster:

"TO CAPTAINS:--In view of the fact that the mutilated body of Dr. Cronin has been found in a catch-basin in the town of Lake View, and that much public comment will be aroused, you will instruct your officers to note the nature of any such comment that they may overhear, and follow up all clues which may be thus obtained. The order is sent out merely because some person having some criminal knowledge of how Dr. Cronin met his death may be indiscreet enough to make some statement when excited that would lead to the solving of the mystery. In such a case we want our officers to be on the alert and ready to take advantage of any such admission."

Following this action, the county coroner, H. L. Hertz, decided to proceed with the official autopsy without delay. A jury was first empanelled, and, a view of the body having been taken, and an adjournment for several days decided upon, the physicians commenced the post-mortem examination. It was conducted with great care and deliberation and occupied over five hours. Drs. James F. Todd and Egbert, respectively county physician and a.s.sistant county physician, were materially aided by Drs. Bell, Porter, Miles, Kuhn and D. G. Moore, while Deputy Coroner Barrett, Captain Wing and Lieutenant Spengler watched the proceedings as the representatives of the authorities. The skull was cut open and the brains removed. When the scalp had been taken off it was discovered that the bones composing the skull had scarcely been marked by the blows of the instruments. There were no signs of congestion about the brain, but the lungs and pulmonary cavity were filled with blood, a condition which was explained by the fact that the head had been placed head downward in the catch-basin. A cut one-half inch deep was found upon the head and numerous bruises on the lower limbs. There were no signs of suffocation or any bruises about the neck such as would result from the choking of a man with a towel or rope. The pa.s.sage through the wind-pipe was un.o.bstructed. The surgeons were considerably puzzled by the fact that there was no fracture of any of the skull bones or of the small bones about the face, even the inner table of the skull being unfractured. In technical language the injuries to the head included a deep wound over the left temple four inches long, through the scalp and into the skull, a cut one and a half inches long over the left parietal bone, this one also marking the skull, a cut one and a half inches long over the frontal bone at the junction of the left parietal; a cut three inches long through the scalp marking the occipital bone, and two cuts each an inch long, together with a bruise, back of the forehead on the right parietal bone. There was also a severe contusion apparently made by a bludgeon on the forehead, as well as a lineal incision on the neck that had been made by some sharp instrument. It was the opinion of the medical men conducting the autopsy that more than one instrument must have been used to produce the apparent wounds, and that their direction indicated that they must have been inflicted from behind and were struck downward from above.

After the autopsy had been completed the friends of the deceased were permitted to take charge of the remains, and they were removed to an undertaker's establishment within a short distance of his former residence. The process of embalming was successfully carried out, the features being reasonably life-like, and their natural character well preserved; and the body, having been clothed in a suit of broadcloth, was placed in the elegant casket that had been prepared for it. This was of metal, overlaid with French walnut, and heavily mounted in gold, ornamented with silver flowers. Upon each end of the surface filling the two s.p.a.ces beside the plate, were two large wreaths of gold wheat, intertwined with roses and set off with silver pansies. At close intervals around the top of the casket were heavy gold k.n.o.bs, and along each side of it a continuous heavy rail of silver was mounted in lieu of handles. The ends of this were decked with heavy gold and silver ta.s.sels, the whole effect being very rich. On the ma.s.sive and elaborately chased silver plate, in the center, were the simple words in English text:

PHILIP PATRICK HENRY CRONIN,

BORN: August 7th, 1846.

DIED: May 4th, 1889.

A SISTER'S GRIEF.

The first stage of the journey to the tomb was now commenced. Under escort of a number of friends the casket was taken to the Armory of the First Cavalry, on Michigan avenue. Here it was placed upon a catafalque, which had been erected in the center of the vast hall. It had no more than been placed in position, however, when a gray-bearded man, dressed in a gray overcoat and low-crowned hat, stepped to the front and demanded the opening of the casket.

"Why?" asked the attendant.

"I am his brother-in-law, and his sister here desires to see him." He pointed, as he said this, to a lady of above middle age, gray haired, and wearing a black bonnet and sober, gray shawl, who stood at his side.

She was weeping freely, and pressed a handkerchief to her face.

The casket was partially opened when a number of the committee of arrangements appeared and ordered the attendants to screw it up again.

"Why should the casket be opened?" he asked.

"This lady is a sister of the deceased and desires to view the remains,"

replied the stranger.

"Well, I don't know you and don't know whether you are his brother-in-law or not. Where is Mr. Conklin?"