Part 3

At 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the hour appointed for the continuation of the inquest, a great throng swarmed in Washington street between Police Headquarters and the Morgue. Kenkowsky was led through this crowd by Chief Donovan and an escort of policemen. The prisoner’s appearance was greeted with the same threatening cries that had been uttered on his arrival in Hoboken, but he bore up against the clamor with real or well-feigned indifference. When he entered the hall and was being led to a seat at the side of the Coroner’s chair his eyes accidentally fell upon the lay figure that had been draped with the clothing of the murdered woman. When he saw it he averted his face with a perceptible tremor. He almost immediately recovered his composure and dropped into his seat.

The Rev. Dr. Mabon, the pastor of the Grove Reformed Dutch Church, testified: “To the best of my knowledge I think the prisoner is the man that I married under the name of Louis Kettler.”

Sarah Jane Rigler, who had directed the couple to Dr. Mabon’s house on May 3, testified: “I recognize the prisoner as the man who was with the woman who asked me where she could get a minister to marry them.”

John E. Schumann, the barber who had been called in by Dr. Mabon to witness the ceremony, said that he believed the prisoner to be the man who was married on that occasion.

Regina Herkfeldt testified concerning her acquaintance with Kenkowsky. She identified a watch that was produced as the one that he gave her. On cross-examination she considerably modified her previous account of the prisoner’s assault upon her.

John E. Luthy, a watchmaker of 315 West Thirty-fifth street, testified that the prisoner called at his place on May 16 with the watch and left it there, taking a receipt for it.

Charles H. Peters, a roundsman of the Twentieth Precinct, this city, testified to a conversation he had had with the prisoner at the station on the night of the arrest. Kenkowsky admitted to him that he knew Mina Muller. He at first denied but afterward confessed that he had given a watch to Luthy to have repaired, and that it belonged to Mina Muller. He told the roundsman that after the trunks had been taken to Christopher street, Mina proposed to him to take a walk, and they went over to New Jersey and visited the Scheutzen Park. They strolled into a saloon on the Guttenberg road and had some beer. After leaving it he told her he wanted to go back to New York, and she objected. As they were talking, two men, he asserted, came along the road. One of them said to the woman: “Hello, Mina! what are you doing over here?” When he heard this familiar language he turned to his companion, and said: “If you are that kind of a woman, I’ll have nothing to do with you,” and then he parted from her, leaving her with the two men.

While the inquest was going on the wife of the prisoner entered the room and managed to force her way through the throng. When she turned her eyes toward her husband she threw up her arms and fell unconscious. She was carried down stairs to the station, where restoratives were applied.

In the evening Kenkowsky was taken to the county jail and placed in the cell formerly occupied by Covert D. Bennett.

In the trunks in Kenkowsky’s possession was found, in addition to a lot of female clothing, a white shirt. The sleeves from the wrists to the elbows were spotted with blood; the bosom, too, was marked with similar stains. On each side of the shirt at about the waist there were marks of bloody fingers. A pair of buckskin gloves with very small spots of blood on the back was also found; the palms were soiled, as if they had been used to handle some rough and dusty article.

THE MURDERED WOMAN’S FUNERAL.

At 11 o’clock on the morning of May 20th, Martin Sanger, an undertaker, removed the body of Mina Muller from the Hoboken Morgue and placed it in a plain coffin, which was put in a hearse and driven to the residence of the deceased woman’s brother, Carl Schmidt, 555 Ninth avenue. On the lid of the coffin was a silver plate with the inscription: “Mina Muller, died May 3, 1881, aged 34 years.” A shield bearing the words “Ruhe in Frieden,” was also on the coffin. A wreath of flowers inwoven with the dead woman’s name rested upon the head of the coffin, surrounded by bouquets. A throng of Germans, mostly women, were waiting in front of the house for the arrival of the body. When the hearse appeared at about two o’clock, the sidewalks for nearly a block were almost impassable. Vehicles blocked the street in some places, and many men and boys had climbed upon the elevated railroad columns. Six carriages containing the husband and brothers of the deceased woman, and the officers of Lodge No. 70, Knights and Ladies of Honor, accompanied the hearse to the grave in the Lutheran Cemetery. Louis Schlisenger, the president of the lodge, read its ritual. Mr. Muller wept during the service.

Mr. Schlisenger said the Lodge would pay the sister of Mrs. Muller $1,000. Mrs. Muller joined the Lodge several years ago. She originally assigned the money she was entitled to as a member to her husband, but on May 3 she revoked this and assigned it to her sister. When Mrs. Muller saw Mr. Schlisenger she told him she was going to France, and in case of her death she desired that her sister should receive the money.

THE PERSON WHO CAUSED KENKOWSKY’S CAPTURE ARRESTED AS AN ACCOMPLICE.--HOW KENKOWSKY SPENT SUNDAY.

At half-past one o’clock on the morning of May 22d, Detectives Heidelberg and Dolan arrested Philip Emden of 414 West Thirty-ninth street, on the charge that he was an accomplice of Martin Kenkowsky. Emden was locked up in a cell at the Police Headquarters. In the morning, however, he was liberated. It was said that he was arraigned at the Jefferson Market Police Court and liberated; but on the other hand it was reported that he was not taken to court at all, but that Captain Washburn of the Twentieth Precinct called at headquarters, and that after a conversation the captain had with Inspector Byrnes, Emden was liberated. The police were reticent about the procedure, but the result was that Emden was freed.

Capt. Washburn was indignant at Emden’s arrest. He said: “Emden was the first man to give a clue to Kenkowsky, and I promised to keep his name a secret. We are in the habit of taking informers’ names in confidence; otherwise people wouldn’t give us information. Prosecutor McGill also promised me that he would not disclose the name. I think Kenkowsky’s wife found out that Emden had given me information, and she tried, out of revenge, to throw suspicions on him. Emden has lived three years in the district, and is a quiet, well-behaved man. Chief Donovan was perfectly willing that Emden should be set at liberty. Emden will accompany me to testify at the inquest. He certainly has not behaved like a man who has committed a murder.”

Philip Emden was found at his house, 414 West Thirty-ninth street. According to his statement he met Kenkowsky shortly after the latter came to this country. Emden is a mason, and found odd jobs for Kenkowsky, who is of the same trade. On Feb. 19 last Emden married Bertha Himmelsbach, and Kenkowsky was one of the witnesses to the ceremony, though on the certificate his name appears as Martin Karkowsky. Shortly after the marriage Emden was told by Kenkowsky that Mina Muller, a friend of his, knew Bertha Himmelsbach, who, she said, was a bad woman. This led to difficulties between Emden and his wife, which ended in their separation on April 17. Since that time he has seen very little of Kenkowsky, but he says that on one occasion the prisoner showed him a gold watch and chain corresponding to those owned by Mina Muller. Emden does not know whether this was before or after the murder.

On Thursday morning he read of the identification, and in H. Luhr’s liquor store, 587 Tenth avenue, he mentioned that Kenkowsky had known Mina Muller. Luhr, who knew Kenkowsky, suggested that the description of the man who was married in Guttenberg tallied with Kenkowsky’s appearance. Emden made up his mind to see if Kenkowsky was still at his house, 510 West Thirty-sixth street. As his pretence for calling, he determined to say that he had a job for the alleged murderer. He found him in bed, and, when he asked if he wanted the job, Kenkowsky said that he was engaged as a cook in a Jewish family on Fifth avenue, and only came home nights. After working hours, Emden went to Capt. Washburn and informed him of his suspicions, and a policeman was sent with him to watch the house. In front of the house they found Strang, the trunkman, who in the meantime had been tracked by Seide. Strang asked Emden if he could speak German, and, when the latter answered in the affirmative, requested him to ask the German woman up stairs if a trunk he was to deliver belonged to her, saying he had left three trunks there some time previously. Emden went up stairs and asked Mrs. Kenkowsky if three trunks had been delivered there, and she said they had not. When Emden came back to Strang with this answer, Strang requested him to ask again, and this time she replied in the affirmative; and when Strang brought up Kenkowsky’s trunk, she said, in surprise: “Why, he told me he had taken it to where he was working in Fifth avenue.”

Kenkowsky’s wife was found at 510 West Thirty-sixth street. She had just returned from a visit to her husband in jail. Her eyes were red as though she had been weeping.

“Philip Emden,” she said, “has been a good friend to me and my poor little ones. When I told my husband this afternoon in jail that Philip had been arrested, he threw up his arms and exclaimed: ‘Philip arrested! Philip, who has always been so good to us? He is innocent, Katrina, as innocent as I am myself.”

Martin Kenkowsky spent Sunday quietly in his cell in the Hudson County Jail at Jersey City. He ate his meals regularly and with much relish, and slept for an hour after dinner. In the afternoon his wife and two children visited him. He embraced them and had a long conversation with them in the presence of a turnkey. In the course of their talk the woman charged him with having stolen a five-dollar gold piece from her room on the evening of May 3d. That was the day on which the murder was committed. Kenkowsky admitted that he had taken the money. He said that after he had left Mina with the two men at Union Hill, he returned to New York city and went home. There he found the $5 piece, which his wife had saved, and put it in his pocket. When he was told of the arrest of Emden he seemed to be very much surprised. He said he knew Emden, and had become acquainted with him only a short time ago.

“But,” he exclaimed, “he is as innocent as I am.”

The prisoner referred frequently to his former narrative as to the circumstances under which he parted with Mrs. Muller in New Jersey. He stated that one of the two men who accosted her in the Schuetzen Park, and with whom he says he left her, was tall, and had a red moustache, and the other was shorter and thinner. He was convinced, he declared, that they murdered her.

City Missionary Verrinder held divine service in the corridor of the jail on Sunday morning. Kenkowsky, at his own request, was permitted to attend the exercises. He sat on the foremost bench, directly in front of the minister, and although he did not understand the sermon, he bowed his head reverently whenever the name of Jesus was uttered by the preacher. At an early hour he went to bed, and fell asleep a few moments later.

The reader who has followed us thus far will perceive that scarcely ever in the records of modern murder cases has such a steel coil of circumstantial evidence, in such a small space of time, so completely woven itself around a murderer. Kenkowsky attempted to prove an alibi by asserting that on the day of the murder, and several hours before it could have taken place, he was on his way to cross the river, and that on his way he had asked the direction to the ferry of a carpenter whom he saw putting up posts for a fence. This carpenter was found, and testified that a man on that date had asked him the way to the ferry, but he failed to recognize Kenkowsky as that man. The bottom of the alibi leaked, however, when the gentleman on whose property the fence was being put up showed his diary, in which was recorded a mem. of that particular job, dated several days after the date of the murder. What verdict could a coroner’s jury bring in but one fastening the crime on Kenkowsky? The trial will be read with great interest.

THE END.

Transcriber’s Note

Efforts have been taken to transcribe this work as originally published, including inconsistent capitalization and punctuation, and alternative titles, names and spelling, except on page 37 where “ogether” has been changed to “together”.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Cruel Murder of Mina Miller, by Unknown