True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office Part 14

But Browne indignantly protested his innocence. It was clear, he insisted, that Mrs. Braman was mistaken, for why, in the name of common-sense, should he, a lawyer of standing, desire to forge Hubert's name, particularly when he himself held an unrecorded deed of the same property, and could have executed a good conveyance to Levitan had the latter so desired. Such a performance would have been utterly without an object. But the lawyer was nervous, and his description of Hubert as "a wealthy mine owner from the West, who owned a great deal of property in New York, and had an office in the Flatiron Building," did not ring convincingly in Mr. Hart's ears. The a.s.sistant District Attorney called up the janitor of the building in question on the telephone. But no such person had an office there. Browne, much fl.u.s.tered, said the janitor was either a fool or a liar. He had been at Hubert's office that very morning. He offered to go and find him in twenty minutes. But Mr. Hart thought that the lawyer had better make his explanation before a magistrate, and caused his arrest and commitment on a charge of forgery. Little did he suspect what an ingenious fraud was about to be unearthed.

The days went by and Browne stayed in the Tombs, unable to raise the heavy bail demanded, but no Hubert appeared. Meantime the writer, to whom the case had been sent for trial, ordered a complete search of the t.i.tle to the property, and in a week or so became possessed, to his amazement, of a most extraordinary and complicated collection of facts.

He discovered that the lot of land offered by Browne to Levitan, and standing in Hubert's name, was originally part of the property owned by Ebbe Petersen, the unfortunate Swede who, with his family, had perished in the Geiser off Cape Sable in 1888.

The t.i.tle search showed that practically all of the Petersen property had been conveyed by Mary A. Petersen to a person named Ignatius F. X. O'Rourke, by a deed, which purported to have been executed on June 27, 1888, about two weeks before the Petersens sailed for Copenhagen, and which was signed with Mrs. Petersen's mark, but that this deed had not been recorded until July 3, 1899, eleven years after the loss of the Geiser.

The writer busied himself with finding some one who had known Mrs. Petersen, and by an odd coincidence discovered a woman living in the Bronx who had been an intimate friend and playmate of the little Petersen girl. This witness, who was but a child when the incident had occurred, clearly recalled the fact that Ebbe Petersen had not decided to take his wife and daughter with him on the voyage until a few days before they sailed. They had then invited her, the witness-now a Mrs. Cantwell-to go with them, but her mother had declined to allow her to do so. Mrs. Petersen, moreover, according to Mrs. Cantwell, was a woman of education, who wrote a particularly fine hand. Other papers were discovered executed at about the same time, signed by Mrs. Petersen with her full name. It seemed inconceivable that she should have signed any deed, much less one of so much importance, with her mark, and, moreover, that she should have executed any such deed at all when her husband was on the spot to convey his own property.

But the strangest fact of all was that the attesting witness to this extraordinary instrument was H. Huffman Browne! It also appeared to have been recorded at his instance eleven years after its execution.

In the meantime, however, that is to say, between the sinking of the Geiser in '88 and the recording of Mary Petersen's supposed deed in '99, another equally mysterious deed to the same property had been filed. This doc.u.ment, executed and recorded in 1896, purported to convey part of the Petersen property to a man named John J. Keilly, and was signed by a person calling himself Charles A. Clark. By a later deed, executed and signed a few days later, John J. Keilly appeared to have conveyed the same property to Ignatius F. X. O'Rourke, the very person to whom Mrs. Petersen had apparently executed her deed in 1888. And H. Huffman Browne was the attesting witness to both these deeds!

A glance at the following diagram will serve to clear up any confusion which may exist in the mind of the reader:

1888 MARY A. PETERSEN 1896 CHARLES A. CLARK (Not by her (X) deed conveys same property Recorded conveys to to until 1899) I.F.X. O'ROURKE JOHN J. KEILLY.

| | 1896 JOHN J. KEILLY | conveys to | I.F.X. O'ROURKE |____________________________|

O'ROURKE thus holds land through two sources.

Browne was the witness to both these parallel transactions! Of course it was simple enough to see what had occurred. In 1896 a mysterious man, named Clark, without vestige of right or t.i.tle, so far as the records showed, had conveyed Ebbe Petersen's property to a man named Keilly, equally unsubstantial, who had pa.s.sed it over to one O'Rourke. Then Browne had suddenly recorded Mrs. Petersen's deed giving O'Rourke the very same property. Thus this O'Rourke, whoever he may have been, held all the Petersen property by two chains of t.i.tle, one through Clark and Keilly, and the other through Mrs. Petersen. Then he had gone ahead and deeded it all away to various persons, through one of whom William R. Hubert had secured his t.i.tle. But every deed on record which purported to pa.s.s any fraction of the Petersen property was witnessed by H. Huffman Browne! And Browne was the attesting witness to the deed under which Hubert purported to hold. Thus the chain of t.i.tle, at the end of which Levitan found himself, ran back to Mary Petersen, with H. Huffman Browne peering behind the arras of every signature.

MARY PETERSEN CLARK BROWNE, to to attesting witness.

O'ROURKE KEILLY | | | KEILLY BROWNE, | to attesting witness.

| O'ROURKE | | |____________________|

O'ROURKE BROWNE, to attesting witness.

WILLIAM P. COLLITON

WILLIAM P. COLLITON to BROWNE, JOHN GARRETSON attesting witness.

JOHN GARRETSON to BROWNE, HERMAN BOLTE attesting witness.

HERMAN BOLTE to BROWNE, BENJ. FREEMAN attesting witness.

BENJ. FREEMAN to BROWNE, WILLIAM R. HUBERT attesting witness.

The a.s.sistant District Attorney rubbed his forehead and wondered who in thunder all these people were. Who, for example, to begin at the beginning, was Charles A. Clark, and why should he be deeding away Ebbe Petersen's property? And who were Keilly and O'Rourke, and all the rest-Colliton, Garretson, Bolte and Freeman? And who, for that matter, was Hubert?

A score of detectives were sent out to hunt up these elusive persons, but, although the directories of twenty years were searched, no Charles A. Clark, John J. Keilly or I. F. X. O'Rourke could be discovered. Nor could any one named Colliton, Freeman or Hubert be found. The only persons who did appear to exist were Garretson and Bolte.

Quite by chance the a.s.sistant District Attorney located the former of these, who proved to be one of Browne's clients, and who stated that he had taken t.i.tle to the property at the lawyer's request and as a favor to him, did not remember from whom he had received it, had paid nothing for it, received nothing for it, and had finally deeded it to Herman Bolte at the direction of Browne. Herman Bolte, an ex-judge of the Munic.i.p.al Court, who had been removed for misconduct in office, admitted grumblingly that, while at, one time he had considered purchasing the property in question, he had never actually done so, that the deed from Garretson to himself had been recorded without his knowledge or his authority, that he had paid nothing for the property and had received nothing for it, and had, at the instruction of Browne, conveyed it to Benjamin Freeman. Garretson apparently had never seen Bolte, and Bolte had never seen Freeman, while William R. Hubert, the person to whom the record showed Freeman had transferred the property, remained an invisible figure, impossible to reduce to tangibility.

Just what Browne had attempted to do-had done-was obvious. In some way, being a real-estate lawyer, he had stumbled upon the fact that this valuable tract of land lay unclaimed. Accordingly, he had set about the easiest way to reduce it to possession. To make a.s.surance doubly sure he had forged two chains of t.i.tle, one through an a.s.sumed heir and the other through the owner herself. Then he had juggled the t.i.tle through a dozen or so grantees, and stood ready to dispose of the property to the highest bidder.

There he stayed in the Tombs, demanding a trial and protesting his innocence, and a.s.serting that if the District Attorney would only look long enough he would find William R. Hubert. But an interesting question of law had cropped up to delay matters.

Of course, if there was anybody by the name of Hubert who actually owned the property, and Browne had signed his name, conveying the same, to a deed to Levitan, Browne was guilty of forgery in the first degree. But the evidence in the case pointed toward the conclusion that Browne himself was Hubert. If this was so, how could Browne be said to have forged the name of Hubert, when he had a perfect legal right to take the property under any name he chose to a.s.sume? This was incontestable. If your name be Richard Roe you may purchase land and receive t.i.tle thereto under the name of John Doe, and convey it under that name without violating the law. This as a general proposition is true so long as the taking of a fict.i.tious name is for an honest purpose and not tainted with fraud. The a.s.sistant District Attorney felt that the very strength of his case created, as it were, a sort of "legal weakness," for the more evidence he should put in against Browne, the clearer it would become that Hubert was merely Browne himself, and this would necessitate additional proof that Browne had taken the property in the name of Hubert for purposes of fraud, which could only be established by going into the whole history of the property. Of course, if Browne were so foolish as to put in the defence that Hubert really existed, the case would be plain sailing. If, however, Browne was as astute as the District Attorney believed him to be, he might boldly admit that there was no Hubert except himself, and that in taking t.i.tle to the property and disposing thereof under that name, he was committing no violation of law for which he could be prosecuted.

The case was moved for trial on the twelfth of March, 1906, before Judge Warren W. Foster, in Part Three of the Court of General Sessions in New York. The defendant was arraigned at the bar without counsel, owing to the absence of his lawyer through sickness, and Mr. Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler, the later Lieutenant-Governor of the State, was a.s.signed to defend him. At this juncture Browne arose and addressed the Court. In the most deferential and conciliatory manner he urged that he was ent.i.tled to an adjournment until such time as he could produce William R. Hubert as a witness; stating that, although the latter had been in town on December 14th, and had personally given him the deeds in question, which he had handed to Levitan, Hubert's interests in the West had immediately called him from the city, and that he was then in Goldfields, Nevada; that since he had been in the Tombs he, Browne, had been in correspondence with a gentleman by the name of Alfred Skeels, of the Teller House, Central City, Colorado, from whom he had received a letter within the week to the effect that Hubert had arranged to start immediately for New York, for the purpose of testifying as a witness for the defence. The prosecutor thereupon demanded the production of this letter from the alleged Skeels, and Browne was compelled to state that he had immediately destroyed it on its receipt. The prosecutor then argued that under those circ.u.mstances, and in view of the fact that the People's evidence showed conclusively that no such person as Hubert existed, there was no reason why the trial should not proceed then and there. The Court thereupon ruled that the case should go on.

A jury was procured after some difficulty, and the evidence of Mr. Levitan received, showing that Browne had represented Hubert to be a man of substance, and had produced an affidavit, purported to be sworn to by Hubert, to the same effect, with deeds alleged to have been signed by him. Mrs. Braman then swore that upon the same day Browne had himself acknowledged these very deeds and had sworn to the affidavit before her as a notary, under the name of William R. Hubert.

Taken with the fact that Browne had in open court stated that Hubert was a living man, this made out a prima facie case. But, of course, the District Attorney was unable to determine whether or not Browne would take the stand in his own behalf, or what his defence would be, and, in order to make a.s.surance doubly sure, offered in evidence all the deeds to the property in question, thereby establishing the fact that it was originally part of the Petersen estate, and disclosing the means whereby it had eventually been recorded in the name of Hubert.

The prosecution then rested its case, and the burden shifted to the defence to explain how all these deeds, attested by Browne, came to be executed and recorded. It was indeed a difficult, if not impossible, task which the accused lawyer undertook when he went upon the stand. He again positively and vehemently denied that he had signed the name of Hubert to the deed which he had offered to Levitan, and persisted in the contention that Hubert was a real man, who sooner or later would turn up. He admitted knowing the Petersen family in a casual way, and said he had done some business for them, but stated that he had not heard of their tragic death until some years after the sinking of the Geiser. He had then ascertained that no one had appeared to lay claim to Mrs. Petersen's estate, and he had accordingly taken it upon himself to adveritse for heirs. In due course Charles A. Clark had appeared and had deeded the property to Keilly, who in turn had conveyed it to O'Rourke. Just who this mysterious O'Rourke was he could not explain, nor could he account in any satisfactory manner for the recording in 1899 of the deed signed with Mary Petersen's mark. He said that it had "turned up" in O'Rourke's hands after O'Rourke had become possessed of the property through the action of the heirs, and that he had no recollection of ever having seen it before or having witnessed it. In the latter transactions, by which the property had been split up, he claimed to have acted only as attorney for the different grantors. He was unable to give the address or business of O'Rourke, Clark, Keilly or Freeman, and admitted that he had never seen any of them save at his own office. He was equally vague as to Hubert, whose New York residence he gave as 111 Fifth Avenue. No such person, however, had ever been known at that address.

With the exception of the upper left hand signature and the four immediately below it of H. Huffman Browne, these are all the signatures of imaginary persons invented by Browne to further his schemes. The upper right-hand slip shows the signatures to the Wilson bond, among which appears that of W.R. Hubert.

Browne gave his testimony in the same dry, polite and careful manner in which he had always been accustomed to discuss his cases and deliver his arguments. It seemed wholly impossible to believe that this respectable-looking person could be a dangerous character, yet the nature of his offence and the consequences of it were apparent when the State called to the stand an old broom-maker, who had bought from Browne one of the lots belonging to the Petersen estate. Holding up three stumps where fingers should have been, he cried out, choking with tears:

"My vriends, for vifteen years I vorked at making brooms-me und my vife-from fife in the morning until six at night, und I loose mine fingern trying to save enough money to puy a house that we could call our own. Then when we saved eight hundred dollars this man come to us und sold us a lot. We were very happy. Yesterday anoder man served me mit a paper that we must leave our house, because we did not own the land! We must go away! Where? We haf no place to go. Our home is being taken from us, und that man [pointing his stumps at Browne]-that man has stolen it from us!"

He stopped, unable to speak. The defendant's lawyer properly objected, but, with this piece of testimony ringing in their ears, it is hardly surprising that the jury took but five minutes to convict Browne of forgery in the first degree.

A few days later the judge sentenced him to twenty years in State's prison.

Then other people began to wake up. The Attorney-General guessed that the Petersen property had all escheated to the State, the Swedish Government sent a deputy to make inquiries, the Norwegian Government was sure that he was a Norwegian, and the Danish that he was a Dane. No one knows yet who is the real owner, and there are half a dozen heirs squatting on every corner of it. Things are much worse than before Browne tried to sell the ill-fated lot to Levitan, but a great many people who were careless before are careful now.

It soon developed, however, that lawyer Browne's industry and ingenuity had not been confined to the exploitation of the estate of Ebbe Petersen. Before the trial was well under way the City Chamberlain of New York notified the District Attorney that a peculiar incident had occurred at his office, in which not only the defendant figured, but William R. Hubert, his familiar, as well. In the year 1904 a judgment had been entered in the Supreme Court, which adjudged that a certain George Wilson was ent.i.tled to a one-sixth interest in the estate of Jane Elizabeth Barker, recently deceased. George Wilson had last been heard of, twenty years before, as a farmhand, in Illinois, and his whereabouts were at this time unknown. Suddenly, however, he had appeared. That is to say, H. Huffman Browne had appeared as his attorney, and demanded his share of the property which had been deposited to his credit with the City Chamberlain and amounted to seventy-five hundred dollars. The lawyer had presented a pet.i.tion signed apparently by Wilson and a bond also subscribed by him, to which had been appended the names of certain sureties. One of these was a William R. Hubert-the same William R. Hubert who had mysteriously disappeared when his presence was so vital to the happiness and liberty of his creator. But the City Chamberlain had not been on his guard, and had paid over the seventy-five hundred dollars to Browne without ever having seen the claimant or suspecting for an instant that all was not right.

It was further discovered at the same time that Browne had made several other attempts to secure legacies remaining uncalled for in the city's treasury. In how many cases he had been successful will probably never be known, but it is unlikely that his criminal career dated only from the filing of the forged Petersen deed in 1896.

Browne made an heroic and picturesque fight to secure a reversal of his conviction through all the State courts, and his briefs and arguments are monuments to his ingenuity and knowledge of the law. He alleged that his conviction was entirely due to a misguided enthusiasm on the part of the prosecutor, the present writer, whom he characterized as a "novelist" and dreamer. The whole case, he alleged, was constructed out of the latter's fanciful imagination, a cobweb of suspicion, accusation and falsehood. Some day his friend Hubert would come out of the West, into which he had so unfortunately disappeared, and release an innocent man, sentenced, practically to death, because the case had fallen into the hands of one whose sense of the dramatic was greater than his logic.

Perchance he will. Mayhap, when H. Huffman Browne is the oldest inmate of Sing Sing, or even sooner, some gray-haired figure will appear at the State Capitol, and knock tremblingly at the door of the Executive, asking for a pardon or a rehearing of the case, and claiming to be the only original, genuine William R. Hubert-such a denouement would not be beyond the realms of possibility, but more likely the request will come in the form of a pet.i.tion, duly attested and authenticated before some notary in the West, protesting against Browne's conviction and incarceration, and bearing the flowing signature of William R. Hubert-the same signature that appears on Browne's deeds to Levitan-the same that is affixed to the bond of George Wilson, the vanished farmhand, claimant to the estate of Jane Elizabeth Barker.

IX.

A Murder Conspiracy[4]

William M. Rice, eighty-four years of age, died at the Berkshire Apartments at 500 Madison Avenue, New York City, at about half after seven o'clock on the evening of Sunday, September 23, 1900. He had been ill for some time, but it was expected that he would recover. On or about the moment of his death, two elderly ladies, friends of the old gentleman, had called at the house with cakes and wine, to see him. The elevator man rang the bell of Mr. Rice's apartment again and again, but could elicit no response, and the ladies, much disappointed, went away. While the bell was ringing Charles F. Jones, the confidential valet of the aged man, was waiting, he says, in an adjoining room until a cone saturated with chloroform, which he had placed over the face of his sleeping master, should effect his death.

Did Jones murder Rice? If so, was it, as he claims, at the instigation of Albert T. Patrick?

These two questions, now settled in the affirmative forever, so far as criminal and civil litigation are concerned, have been the subject of private study and public argument for more than seven years.

Mr. Rice was a childless widower, living the life of a recluse, attended only by Jones, who was at once his secretary, valet and general servant. No other person lived in the apartment, and few visitors ever called there. Patrick was a New York lawyer with little practice who had never met Mr. Rice, was employed as counsel in litigation hostile to him, yet in whose favor a will purporting to be signed by Rice, June 30, 1900, turned up after the latter's death, by the terms of which Patrick came into the property, amounting to over seven million dollars, in place of a charitable inst.i.tution named in an earlier will of 1896. It is now universally admitted that the alleged will of 1900 was a forgery, as well as four checks drawn to Patrick's order (two for $25,000 each, one for $65,000, and one for $135,000, which represented practically all of Rice's bank accounts), an order giving him control of the contents of Rice's safe deposit vaults (in which were more than $2,500,000 in securities), and also a general a.s.signment by which he became the owner of Rice's entire estate. Thus upon Rice's death Patrick had every possible variety of doc.u.ment necessary to possess himself of the property. Jones took nothing under any of these fraudulent instruments. Hence Patrick's motive in desiring the death of Rice is the foundation stone of the case against him. But that Patrick desired and would profit by Rice's death in no way tends to establish that Rice did not die a natural death. Patrick would profit equally whether Rice died by foul means or natural, and the question as to whether murder was done must be determined from other evidence. This is only to be found in the confession of the valet Jones and in the testimony of the medical experts who performed the autopsy. Jones, a self-confessed murderer, swears that upon the advice and under the direction of Patrick (though in the latter's absence) he killed his master by administering chloroform. There is no direct corroborative evidence save that of the experts. Upon Jones's testimony depended the question of Patrick's conviction or acquittal, and of itself this was not sufficient, for being that of an accomplice it must, under the New York law, be corroborated.

In the confession of Jones the State had sufficient direct evidence of the crime and of Patrick's connection with it, providing there was other evidence tending to connect Patrick with its commission. This corroborative evidence is largely supplied by the facts which show that for a long time Patrick conspired with Jones to steal the bulk of Mr. Rice's estate at his death. This evidence not only shows Patrick's possible motive for planning Mr. Rice's murder, but also tends to corroborate Jones's whole story of the conspiracy.

Rice did not know Patrick even by sight. He had heard of him only as a person retained by another lawyer (Holt) to do "the dirty work" in an action brought by Rice against Holt, as executor, to set aside Mrs. Rice's will, in which she a.s.sumed, under the "Community Law" of Texas, where Rice had formerly resided, to dispose of some $2,500,000 of Rice's property. If Rice was a resident of Texas she had the legal right to do this,-otherwise not. Holt employed Patrick to get evidence that Rice still was such a resident. Rice knew of this and hated Patrick.

Patrick's connection with the Rice litigation had begun four years before the murder, which was not planned until August, 1900, His first visit to Rice's apartment was made under the a.s.sumed name of Smith for the purpose of discovering whether the valet could be corrupted into furnishing fict.i.tious proof of Rice's intent to reside in Texas. He flattered Jones; told him he was underpaid and not appreciated, and, after a second visit, at which he disclosed his right name, persuaded him to typewrite a letter on Rice's stationery addressed to Baker, Botts, Baker & Lovett (Rice's attorneys), in which he should be made to say that he had lost hope of winning the suit against Holt, was really a citizen of Texas, and wanted to settle the litigation. Patrick said that he could arrange for the signing of such a letter and was willing to pay Jones $250 for his help. Jones agreed.