Today’s Animal-like Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The case of a woman in Eichstätt, Germany, Anna Kaserin, wife of an innkeeper, shows the lengths the authorities went to in order to crush suspected witches. Brought to trial in 1629, she was severely tortured (thumbscrews and strappado) and chained to her cell wall, in this case with a female jailer as a guard. First denying everything, she finally admitted that twice when she was drunk and had lain down, “someone” had come in and had sex with her. Trying to satisfy the court, she names him “Beelzebub” and says that he placed his devil’s mark on her right foot. She also confessed to having killed her own child. She attempted suicide by emptying her bowels and bladder into a bowl, breaking bread into it, and trying to eat it, hoping this would kill her. But she vomited it up and survived to be beheaded and burned. The way in which these trials were carried out was designed to reduce people to animal-like behavior, to break their spirits and minds.
Beelzebub seducing a witch, again…
Culled from: Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts
Crime Scene Du Jour!
The murder took place on April 10, 1936, at a fashionable Manhattan address, 22 Beekman Place. The victim was a writer, thirty-four years old, married to an NBC executive. The story of the murder appeared on the front page of The New York Times. The police found no sign of forced entry, but evidently there had been a struggle: the woman’s clothes were torn off, and her own pajamas were used to strangle her. She seemed to have been killed in the bedroom, then deposited in the bathtub. There was no mention of rape, but this was 1936 and the paper was the Times.
Twelve days later, a suspect was arrested: an ex-con who had upholstered a chair for the victim and who with another man “discovered” the body when they delivered a couch to the apartment later on the day of the murder. John Fiorenza, twenty-four years old, was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.
Culled from: Shots in the Dark: True Crime Pictures
I found more details from the April 11, 1936 issue of the Daily News:
NBC EXECUTIVE’S WIFE SLAIN IN BEEKMAN PLACE
The talented wife of a National Broadcasting Company executive was bound, strangled and flung into a bathtub yesterday by a powerful cat-like killer who invaded her boudoir at fashionable 22 Beekman Place. She was Nancy Evans Titterton, 33, brilliant short story writer and founder of a detective story club.
The club published mystery novels, and as editor-in-chief Mrs. Titterton read hundreds of such stories, but the enigma of her own death outrivaled fiction.
In a search for clues police questioned twelve persons last night without success. They included Mrs. Titterton’s husband, three friends of the family, the janitor of the apartment house and his assistant, a colored man who was seen near the building late in the afternoon, two furniture delivery men, and four painters who worked in the building yesterday and the day before.
In a rich setting which belied the grimness of the tragedy, the murderer seized his victim; ripped most of the clothes from her body and flung her on a bed. Whether he attempted to attack her will not be learned until an autopsy is made today.
Struggles Enrage Killer.
Her silent struggles apparently enraged the killer. He tied her hands with a piece of cord. He seized a red blouse and the top of the young wife’s pajamas. He wound them around her neck, knotted them, strangled her to death. Then he tossed the body into a bathtub empty of water.
Only three material clues were left behind. One was the fingerprints of the killer smeared on the tiling of the bathroom wall. Another consisted of his footprints on the coverlet of the bed. A third was an ordinary fountain pen of the type sold in 5-and-10-cent stores.
Still another lead was obtained by police from a Mrs. Bath, a widow who lives with her daughter, Marion, next door, to the Titterton’s apartment house. She saw a “plug ugly” loitering outside the building at 3 P.M., Wednesday. She gave police a good description of the man, and later will be asked to look at pictures in the rogues’ gallery.
The red-haired young wife was known to be alive at 11 A.M. At that hour she talked with Mrs. F. R. Mansbridge of 12 St. Lukes Place, a friend, and discussed the clothes they planned to wear at a dinner tonight.
Two hours earlier, at 9 A.M., Mrs. Titterton saw her husband off to his work as head of the continuity department of the NBC. He is L. H. (Lou) Titterton, an honor graduate of Cambridge and Harvard, whose literary achievements rivaled his wife’s.
Sometime after 11 A. M. the murder was committed. It was done so silently that none of the other tenants, each renting a floor in the expensive building on one of Manhattan’s choicest streets, heard a single suspicious sound.
Noose About Neck.
At 4:30 P.M. Theodore Kruger of 617 Second Ave. and John Fiorenza of 1601 65th St., Brooklyn climbed the stairs with an upholstered chair ordered by Mrs. Titterton. The door was ajar, but no one answered their ring. The men walked in, set down the piece and looked about for Mrs. Titterton.
The open bathroom door attracted their attention. Inside, they saw the body. It had been tossed in the tub and no effort made to straighten the crumpled form. The knees were bent at a distorted angle. One arm was under the body, the other outstretched. The makeshift noose still remained around the neck. All the clothing consisted of a tattered slip and a pair of stockings.
Dr. Thomas A. Gonzales, medical examiner, said death was caused by strangulation. He found red marks on both wrists, indicating her hands had been bound. In his opinion she had been dead between five and six hours when found.
Footprint Slight.
The cheerful bedroom, with its maple twin beds, at first glance appeared to be undisturbed. A brassiere and skirt lay on the foot of one bed, almost as if Mrs. Titterton had placed them there herself. But the brassiere was torn—ripped from her body by the murderer. And on the coverlet of the bed police later found a muddy footprint.
Near the footprint was a slight displacement. It was here, according to Inspector Francis Kear, that the killer apparently flung the woman, perhaps leaping on the bed to do so. Kear thought it certain that a criminal attack was planned, but Dr. Gonzales doubted whether it was carried through.
There was no indication that robbery was a motive. A platinum wedding ring was left on Mrs. Titterton’s finger. Other obvious valuable were not touched, although a sum estimated at $5 that she should have had was unaccounted for. Her husband said he had given her $10 on Thursday to pay a part-time maid and for other household expenses. He thought she had not spent all of it. If the small sum was taken, police though, the murderer might have been a petty thief surprised in the act.
Her husband almost collapsed when brought to view the body. Recovering himself, he pointed to an unlocked bathroom window.
“We just didn’t bother to lock it,” he said. The window was open, and the killer might have come and gone by the fire escape just outside.
Police also learned that Mrs. Titterton was in the habit of opening her apartment door when the bell rang without first waiting to ask who was there. They also learned that the latches and locks were not all in alignment and some of the doors closed with difficulty. They said it was possible the door did not catch when Mrs. Titterton closed it after her husband left.
…
The murder itself was an ironic commentary on the writer’s life. The Tittertons formerly lived in an apartment on W. 49th St., in the Hell’s Kitchen district.
“What a relief it is to move to Beekman Place,” she told her intimates. “It’s grand to live in a safe neighborhood. We had to have bars on our windows in Hell’s Kitchen.”
A pretty, fresh-looking little woman, who loved to dress in tweeds and sports clothes, Mrs. Titterton was described by her friends as “a marvelous, unaffected person.” She was very quiet and self-controlled. At literary teas, where notables gathered, she always chose to stay in the background.
Last August her latest published work appeared in Story Magazine. “I Shall Decline My Head” was its title.
I looked up 22 Beekman Place on Google Maps, but the building that is stand there now is not the same building as shown in this photo. Apparently the current building was built in 1957 and it’s very ugly. Pity.
In the end, it was a length of cord and a horse hair left at the scene that fingered the murderer. From the Daily News, March 16, 1975:
… Meantime, detectives were working on the piece of cord Gonzales had lifted from the bathtub. Analysis showed it be made of low-grade Italian hemp, some ixtle (a tropical fiber) and jute. Twenty-five American companies made this sort of cord and detectives were checking them all.
From the crime lab, police brass learned that on the bed near the bathroom had been found a hair thicker than human hair, apparently that of an animal, and that research was continuing to establish precisely what it was.
A cordage company in York, Pa., reported that it may have made the twine and added, significantly, that it was the kind of cord used by upholsterers. On top of this, the research lab reported that the hair found on the bed was a horse hair. Horse hair was used by upholsterers in stuffing furniture.
Investigators were dispatched to see upholsterer Theodore Kruger. Where was he on the morning of April 10? In his shop. What about his assistant, young Fiorenza?
“He was late that morning,” said Kruger. “He phoned to say he would be late because he had to report to his parole office downtown.” Fiorenza had a record as a burglar and a petty thief.
“When he did finally arrived at the shop, did Fiorenza say he’d seen his parole officer?” one investigator asked. Kruger said, “Yes.”
That meant that Johnny Fiorenza was a liar. Because the murder occurred on Good Friday and the parole office was closed that day.
Police questioned Fiorenza and 16 hours later announced he had confessed. He was booked just 10 days after the murder.
Police said that he told them that when he and Kruger first called for the love seat April 9, the sight of Mrs. Titterton, attractive, small, vulnerable, alone in her apartment, stirred him. He went there next morning, with some upholsterer’s cord, and when she opened the door, he said he wanted to see where she wanted the couch placed.
He was quoted as saying that he followed her into the bedroom and there he pounced. She didn’t scream; terror may have made her mute. He assertedly tied her hands and ripped off her garments and, to prevent outcry, stuffed her pajama legs into her mouth, and he assaulted her as she struggled. Later, it was said, he knotted a slip to the pajama top and looped it around her neck.
He reportedly told police that he put her in the tub and turned on the faucet and the tub filled partly but he couldn’t find the stopper. He cut away the bonds. But he left behind the cord and that, along with the horse hair, trapped him.
…. On the evening of Jan. 21, 1937, as he sat in a cell in Sing Sing’s Death House, Fiorenza said: “I’m sorry I caused my mother all this trouble.”
They came for him later that night and led him to the electric chair. He seemed quite calm. A priest stood beside him and prayed and then held forth a cross and Fiorenza kissed it.
Robert Elliott, the famous electrician-executioner, dropped the hood of death over Fiorenza’s head and a moment later dynamos whirred. The convicted killer of Nancy Evans Titterton was pronounced dead at 11:12 p.m.
And here’s the Sing Sing prison record for Fiorenza.
Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!
This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).
Here’s today’s entry:
October 6th. Cloudy and rain. My sleep was broken by teethache. I trade away my ration of meal for beans, which I eat as dry as possibly to check the progress of scurvy. Rations to-day of bread, beans, bacon, beef, and molasses, just enough to keep life in the lice and fleas, which companions in misery stick closer than brothers.
Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost
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