Great American Crime Stories Page 9

  Such is a description of the woman whom Rose, guilty of almost every crime in the calendar, whose hands are red with the blood of at least three fellowmen, upon whose head three States have set a price, “hooked up with,” to use her own vernacular.

  Perhaps he was wiser in his selection than appears at first glance, because Laura, plain-featured. uneducated and uncouth, would not he tempted to mingle in society dangerous to both, or arouse suspicion by indulging in luxuries and finery above her station, whereas a handsomer and more worldly-wise companion might indulge her fancies to a point that would attract the attention of the vigilant sleuths of the law.

  Although Laura has chummed with outlaws for nearly ten years and was cognizant of many of their secrets, she is not much of a raconteur on this interesting subject, and approaches it with the halting timidity of a victim of a “badger fight” pressed to tell his experience before a company of rounders.

  When she was brought into Chief Desmond’s office yesterday for an interview she still wore the tan dress and jacket which she had on when arrested. A man’s white Fedora hat rested on her hair, the loose ends of which straggled over her brows and around her ears, and down her neck, suggesting that she had not paid much attention to her toilet. She complained of not feeling well, and the lines about her mouth and the droop of her under lip indicated that she was suffering physically. She asked the Chief’s permission to change her dress, which was granted. She selected a muslin housewrap from her trunk and retired to an inner room, where she made the change. During the interview she kept the brim of her hat pulled drawn well over her eyes.

  SUBMITS TO INTERVIEW WITH THE NEWSPAPER MAN.

  “Well,” she began, in answer to a question, “I don’t know what you-all want to know about me, ’cause I’ve done told everything 1 know—and a heap more, I guess,” she added, with a glance at chief Desmond, and a smile.

  “Yes, you know you lied to us,” observed chief Desmond; “now I want you to tell us the truth.”

  “Yes, I lied to you about some things,” she said, “but that was when I was excited and didn’t know what was the best to do. But I’ve done told you-all since then everything I know.”

  “Well, tell us about your connection with this man ‘Rose,’ and how you first met him and all about yourself,” was suggested.

  “Well, I’m going to tell you-all on the start,” she said, “’cause I take it you’re for the newspapers, that they ain’t nothing blood-and-thunder about me. How I come to hook up with this man Rose was because I’d been hooked up with Bill Carver. Carver was in the business, too, and when he got shot up down Texas way his pardners kind o’ thought I’d feel lonesome without Bill nor nobody to look after me, and take care of me, so Bill Cheney he brings me and Rose together, and we’ve been together since. That’s all they is to it.”

  “How old are you, Laura, and where were you born?”

  “I’m 25 years old, and I was born in Arkansas somewheres. I don’t know whereabouts. I don’t know as I ever remember my parents. They spilt up when I was a kid. The first place I remember being is down in Tom Greene County, Texas. My grand-folks lived on a ranch in Knickerbocker, Texas. That’s where I got to know Bill Carver. Carver was raised on a ranch down there, and so was the Ketchum boys, Sam and Tom. I never got much schooling, ’cept a little now and then in the district school.

  “Part of the time I lived out and part time I helped at home, but you-all know how it is in small country places—they ain’t much for a girl to do, and when a girl ain’t got no parents to look after her and tell her how to do right, she just naturally gets to running wild. I got brushed up a heap agin Bill Carver, and he sort o’ took a shine to me, and me and him went to Fort Worth. I expected Bill was fixing to marry me, but nothing ever come of it. I knowed Bill had been train robbing, but he told me he’d reformed, and, as far as I know, he didn’t do nothing in that line while I was with him. ’Course, he’d leave me every little while and go away for days, but I never asked him no questions.

  “The Ketchum boys, they was raised around there, too, and while I knowed them, I never went with ’em none. They went up Northwest after awhile, and was killed there.”

  TELLS ABOUT TRAIN ROBBERY BY CARVER BOYS IN TEXAS.

  “Carver and some more boys held up a train down Texas way last spring and hid out in the woods. In April Bill and Kilpatrick come out o’ hiding in get some provisions and horses, they was both shot up by the Marshal and his posse. Then I was left to do by myself, and I guess some of Bill’s pardners kind of felt sorry for me, and so when they got away and went up North they kept looking out for somebody who’d take care of me. Bill Cheney, he told me so, and so one day when Bill was up to Douglass, Arizona, where my grandfolks moved, he meets this here Ross and the boys told him to bring Rose down and stake me to him. Cheney brought Rose down to Fort Worth and said, ‘Laura, this is John Rose. He’s a good fellow and he’ll take care of you.’ So we just hooked up like that, and that’s all they was to it.”

  “Did you know he was a train-robber?”

  “Well, he didn’t say nothing and I didn’t ask no fool questions. I’d read about the Wagner robbery, and when I saw the money Rose had, I had a kind of idea what it was I was getting into. That was about a month ago. He gave me all the money I needed, and treated me right, and I didn’t care for no more. We went from there to Hot Springs and from there to Memphis, and then came to St. Louis. We didn’t stop at Nashville.

  8

  Henrietta Robinson, the Veiled Murderess

  A notorious, mysterious—and infamously unstable and paranoid—woman of means annoyed and frightened her neighbors in Troy, New York. She was known to carry a revolver everywhere, and to brandish it threateningly at a moment’s notice, for any real or imagined slight. She claimed to be the victim of an ill-defined dark conspiracy, and was known to be a heavy drinker. She called herself Henrietta Robinson—but this was a pseudonym and she refused to reveal her true identity. Timothy Lanagan, one of her neighbors, ran a neighborhood store that sold groceries, and also operated a bar on the premises, where Henrietta went frequently to drink. On numerous occasions Mr. Lanagan or his wife would ask her to leave after she got into heated arguments with other customers.

  On May 25, 1853, Mr. and Mrs. Lanagan and Mr. Lanagan’s sister-in-law Catherine Lubee were eating at the store and invited Henrietta to join them. To repay their kindness, she claimed, Henrietta offered to buy beer for all of them. Mrs. Lanagan declined—a decision that probably saved her life. But Mr. Lanagan and Catherine drank the beer, and before long both were dead, poisoned with arsenic. There was little doubt that Henrietta was responsible, and she was soon arrested. A local pharmacist testified that he had sold her arsenic, and more was found in her home.

  Throughout her trial, Henrietta insisted upon wearing a black veil, lifting it only briefly so a testifying witness could see her face. Because there were many months of delays and postponements before the trial began, many people assumed she had friends in high places.

  The Veiled Murderess.

  Henrietta Robinson, better known by the soubriquet of the “Veiled Murderess” was born in Canada East, in the year 1827, where her youthful days were spent in the possession of every luxury that wealth and refined taste could furnish. All the pains that affectionate parents and experienced teachers could confer, were bestowed on her education. At the age of sixteen she was sent to a distant institution of learning, where she remained two years. During her residence at this place, she became acquainted with an accomplished and intelligent young gentleman, whom she soon loved with the whole of her ardent and impulsive heart; but he, though wealthy and of good character, was not of so exalted a rank as her parents desired for her future husband. They therefore removed her from school, thinking that absence would be the most effectual remedy for what they called her “love-sick fancy.” This separation it seems in no wise lessened her attachment
, as we find that a correspondence was for some time maintained by her with her lover, to whom she was so fondly attached, that she attributes her subsequent misconduct and misery to her coerced separation from him.

  About one year after her return home, she was married, notwithstanding her reiterated assurances, both to her parents and to her intended husband, that her heart was irrevocably given to another—to a young lieutenant in the British army then stationed in Canada, of an aristocratic family and great wealth, with whom she shortly started for England. Soon after marriage she began to manifest bursts of passionate and undisciplined rage, which ultimately merged into periodical fits of insanity, to which she owes her present degradation. She remained with her husband (to whom she does not attach the least blame) three years, during which period she visited with him a considerable portion of Europe; he thinking that the excitement of travel might restrain her unhappy temper; but nothing could do so. Her dislike to him gradually turned into such disgust, that she determined to leave him and her two children and return to her parents in America. On her arrival at home she was received with such a torrent of reproaches and upbraidings that she left her father’s house on the night of her arrival and threw herself, unprotected and almost without means, on the world.

  Shortly after her leaving Canada, subsequently to the quarrel with her parents, we find her living in Troy, N. Y., under the assumed name of Henrietta Robinson, and under the (so called) protection of one whose name shall not sully these pages. A year or two passed in this manner, when the memory of her children seems to have induced her to make an effort to break the vicious bands that held her, and to return to her husband in England. Under the influence of this feeling, she left Troy clandestinely, and reached Boston, when her evil genius in the shape of her “protector” overtook her, and fatally for herself, induced her to return with him to her late residence at Troy.

  Her fall seemed now to be complete, and her case hopeless to herself. During the next few years of her life, she seems to have set at defiance all outward forms of modesty and respectability, to have become addicted to the use of intoxicating liquors, and to have completely surrendered herself to the impulses of her disposition already verging towards madness. She imagined that a conspiracy was formed to rob her of life and property. The slightest provocation was resented as an insult, and she carried pistols (which she often threatened to use) in her bosom, to protect herself from imaginary assaults. In fact, reason seems at times, to have completely deserted her, for we find her attending a dance at a low grocery kept by an Irishman called Lanagan—for the poisoning of whom she was subsequently tried—where her conduct was so improper that she was expelled from the place.

  Her funds getting low, her “protector” absent, (if he had not deserted her altogether,) her mind distracted by reports that he was about to marry, seems completely to have driven away whatever reasoning powers she had left, that we find her absolutely wandering about the streets of Troy in her night clothes, associating with drunken rowdies, invoking the aid of the police for imaginary assaults, and acting as only a maddened woman would. Rendered desperate and perfectly reckless by treatment which she did not think was deserved, she now approached the climax of her evil deeds and unrestrained temper. The Troy papers of the 20th May, 1853, contained the following paragraph:—

  Horrible double murder by poisoning!—The upper part of the city was thrown into a state of great excitement yesterday, by the startling report that two persons had been poisoned, and that both would probably die from the effects. Before seven o’clock, P.M., the truth was partially realized by the death of one of the victims, and at an early hour this morning by the death of the other. The supposed murderess, a Mrs. Robinson, who undoubtedly nourishes under an alias, was during the evening arrested in the street, near the Mansion House, by officers Sayles and Burns, night policemen, and committed to jail. Coroner Boutccou was soon after called, and an inquest held over the man, and after taking some testimony, adjourned until this morning. We were unable to put the evidence before the Coroner, as the jury have not, as yet, rendered their verdict. The stomachs of the deceased persons have been taken charge of by him for analyzation. We give the particulars of the affair as near as we have ascertained them. We learn that the supposed murderess, Mrs. Robinson, had been in and out of the store of Mr. Lanagan, the murdered man, a number of times during yesterday, and in the forenoon wanted to borrow some money. She was refused and left, but returned in the afternoon, when she was evidently laboring under the effects of strong drink.

  About one o’clock she called at the grocery for the last time, and asked for some beer. Lanagan’s wife brought it into the back room, with two tumblers. Mrs. Robinson then asked for some white sugar, which was supplied in a saucer. She took the saucer and walked across the room a number of times, and then poured out the beer into the tumblers, and put the sugar into it. She invited those present to drink. Timothy Lanagan and the murdered girl, Catharine Lubee, both partook of the beverage—Mrs Lanagan refused. The girl remarked immediately after drinking it, that it did not taste good, and asked the woman, Robinson, what she had put into it. “Nothing but what will do you good; do not spit it out.” The girl was soon after taken sick, and died at five o’clock this morning. The man died at the hour above mentioned. He left his store to go down street soon after drinking the fatal draught, was taken ill on the way, but managed to get back home, where he soon breathed his last.

  Timothy Lanagan kept a grocery store on the corner of River and Rensselaer Streets, was 37 years of age, and has left a wife and four small children. The girl, Catharine Lubee, was unmarried, and aged about 25 years. She resided in Albany, but had been on a visit here some weeks. Her acquaintance with Mrs. Robinson, who pretended to be her friend, had been short. We learn, also, that no quarrel had existed between Mrs. Robinson and Lanagan, except some slight words that had passed on his refusing to give her liquor on a previous occasion. Mrs. Robinson, alias_____, the supposed murderess, lived nearly opposite Lanagan’s. in a cottage adjoining the residence of O. Boutwell, Esq., on the North. She is 25 or 30 years of age, good looking, and has a foreign air. She claims to be French, but is undoubtedly English by birth. Her manner of late has attracted the attention of the neighborhood. She has manifested an ungovernable spirit, resisting all efforts to restrain her, and has frequently threatened to use her revolvers, with which she is supplied. Her house was well furnished, and she has been reported as having plenty of money, until within a short time. Since her imprisonment last night, she appears rather excited, and does not seem to realize her situation. She was searched after her arrest, and her pistols taken from her, as it was thought she might commit suicide.

  During her long confinement in jail previous to her trial, she did not seem to have comprehended her awful situation. She was continually impressed with the old ideas that she was in danger of violence, and that she was the victim of a political conspiracy. One of her wild notions was, that two persons, a man and a woman, entered her cell in the night, heated a cauldron of water, and gave her the option of getting in herself, or of being put in by violence, and boiled to death. While telling this circumstance with a wild, frightened look, to a friend who was visiting her, she suddenly stopped short and referring to her dress, said, “ Don’t I look shabbily.” She made an unsuccessful effort to destroy herself by taking vitriol, and also played the following trick upon the grand jury. We copy the account of it from the Times of April 27th:—

  “The Grand Jury sold !—As usual, the grand jury at the close of the sessions to-day, visited the jail, for the purpose of seeing its inmates.

  They visited the different departments, and found every thing clean and in good order. Finally, the jailor, Mr. Hegeman, offered to conduct them to the room of Mrs. Robinson, in compliance with their particular request, as each one of them was very anxious to see her. The door was opened, and the grand jury with much dignity walked in. They surrounded a large rocking chair i
n which she sat closely veiled. Some of them very politely requested her to withdraw it; she made no response whatever, but sat perfectly silent and motionless. Their anxiety was so great, that they requested the jailor to remove the veil, which he respectfully declined to do. Finally, one of the jury stepped up and removed it himself, when to their great surprise, no Mrs. Robinson was there; but on the contrary a silk dress, neatly stuffed, after the latest Parisian fashion! The bird had flown—where? The jailor was asked if she had escaped. Search was instantly made. A slight titter at length was heard proceeding from under the bed. The curtain was raised, and there she lay, so full of laughter that she could hardly contain herself.

  Between the time the crime was committed and the day of trial, the newspapers teemed with curious and contradictory stories about her birth and parentage. The absorbing question in every-one’s mouth was, “Who is she?” Whole sheets were written, some attempting to prove one thing and some another. Indeed, so much was written and said on the subject, and so long a period has elapsed since, that I prefer leaving the matter as it was; merely adding that whoever are her relatives, we hope that in their day of tribulation they may find a firmer Friend and greater mercy than any of them have proved to this poor fallen one.

  After considerable delay, the day of trial was at length appointed. On Monday, the 22d day of May, 1854, the trial commenced before a full bench and with a great array of counsel on both sides.

  The prisoner, most magnificently attired, was brought into court by the Sheriff, and accommodated with a seat near her counsel. After the jury was impannelled, the District Attorney rose and opened the case on the part of the people, with a brief outline of the testimony he proposed to offer.