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I have managed to put together a rough timeline of these child murders, mostly by looking at New York papers at the Library of Congress' s Chronicling America Historic Newspapers site.
March 19, 1915: Leonore Cohn, aged five years, nicknamed "Smarty", leaves to get a pail of milk. Later, she was found near death in a darkened hallway on the second floor of the tenement house at 350 Third Avenue, in which she lived with her mother and other relatives. She had been "criminally assaulted" and slashed with, according to differing reports, either a short-bladed penknife or a long-bladed, sharp knife. She was carried upstairs to her family's home, where a cousin tried to give her artificial respiration, but said "she was frothing at the mouth." She expired "soon after the ambulance surgeon arrived." [New York Tribune, Sunday, March 21, 1915, pages 1 and 9
March 22, 1915: Funeral of the little Cohn girl is followed a crowd of women, many with children in tow. Detectives find it necessary to restore order, and do so without trouble. The rabbi prays for God to help the police and detectives. The Evening World, Monday, March 22, 1915, pages 1 and 2
March 25, 1915: A man named James Hoey (alias James Hogan) is arrested on March 23 and detained in case detectives on the Cohn case wish to talk to him, but no detectives show at his arraignment. Hoey was interrupted by Police Solomon as he was "dragging nine-year-old Nellie Palmer toward a dark part of East Thirty-Second street." Hoey is described as in his thirties, unemployed laborer, powerfully built, and with "heavy features and general appearance of deficient mentality." He had on his face fresh scratches and a blackened eye, explained he had fallen out of a barroom chair in which he was sleeping. Magistrate Ten Eyck sentences Hoey to six months on Blackwell's Island. It later develops that this man for the last two weeks roomed with Michael Flood and his wife, at the corner of East Twenty-Sixth Street, only a block from the Cohn girl's home. The Evening World, Thursday, March 25, 1915, pages 1 and 2
March 26, 1915: One week has passed with no arrest, and the papers detail everything the investigators have been doing in the Cohn girl's case. This includes interviewing all tenants in the tenement house, checking into the type of hard candy Leonore was clutching in her hand, examining blood-stained clothing, and assuring the press they have "at least one person under suspicion." Police were quoted as saying "no importance was attached to Hoey's case." Meanwhile, Brooklyn police were searching "for the man who attacked Julia Hawkins, six years old, in the basement of the building in which she lived at 554 Third Avenue, Brooklyn. "Physicians said the child's condition was such that she will be ill a long time." Mrs. Hawkins announced she will organize the women of her church to search for the man, and protect children. New York Tribune, Friday, March 26, 1915, page 16
March 29, 1915: Mrs. Anna Cohn today receives a threatening letter, signed "Jack the Ripper", the text as follows:
MRS. COHN:
Dear Madam: Your family had better call off the police and detectives. They are a lot of rag-pickers. They could not clear up this case or any other in a hundred years. They are going about this job in their usual thick-headed way, accusing an innocent man wrongfully.
I did the job. If you persist in your present methods and conduct I will kill a couple more of your family.
JACK THE RIPPER.
On the other side of the sheet was a barely legible scrawl accusing the Ecker family (the relatives the Cohns lived with) of "having guilty knowledge about the murder. At the bottom of the page are these words:
This is my signature,
H. B. Richmond,
Brooklyn, N.Y.
At the opposite side of the sheet is a vile drawing. Below it are words: This is my business." [The Evening World, Monday, March 29, 1915, page 3
I will come back with more on the second child victim in another e-mail later.
March 19, 1915: Leonore Cohn, aged five years, nicknamed "Smarty", leaves to get a pail of milk. Later, she was found near death in a darkened hallway on the second floor of the tenement house at 350 Third Avenue, in which she lived with her mother and other relatives. She had been "criminally assaulted" and slashed with, according to differing reports, either a short-bladed penknife or a long-bladed, sharp knife. She was carried upstairs to her family's home, where a cousin tried to give her artificial respiration, but said "she was frothing at the mouth." She expired "soon after the ambulance surgeon arrived." [New York Tribune, Sunday, March 21, 1915, pages 1 and 9
March 22, 1915: Funeral of the little Cohn girl is followed a crowd of women, many with children in tow. Detectives find it necessary to restore order, and do so without trouble. The rabbi prays for God to help the police and detectives. The Evening World, Monday, March 22, 1915, pages 1 and 2
March 25, 1915: A man named James Hoey (alias James Hogan) is arrested on March 23 and detained in case detectives on the Cohn case wish to talk to him, but no detectives show at his arraignment. Hoey was interrupted by Police Solomon as he was "dragging nine-year-old Nellie Palmer toward a dark part of East Thirty-Second street." Hoey is described as in his thirties, unemployed laborer, powerfully built, and with "heavy features and general appearance of deficient mentality." He had on his face fresh scratches and a blackened eye, explained he had fallen out of a barroom chair in which he was sleeping. Magistrate Ten Eyck sentences Hoey to six months on Blackwell's Island. It later develops that this man for the last two weeks roomed with Michael Flood and his wife, at the corner of East Twenty-Sixth Street, only a block from the Cohn girl's home. The Evening World, Thursday, March 25, 1915, pages 1 and 2
March 26, 1915: One week has passed with no arrest, and the papers detail everything the investigators have been doing in the Cohn girl's case. This includes interviewing all tenants in the tenement house, checking into the type of hard candy Leonore was clutching in her hand, examining blood-stained clothing, and assuring the press they have "at least one person under suspicion." Police were quoted as saying "no importance was attached to Hoey's case." Meanwhile, Brooklyn police were searching "for the man who attacked Julia Hawkins, six years old, in the basement of the building in which she lived at 554 Third Avenue, Brooklyn. "Physicians said the child's condition was such that she will be ill a long time." Mrs. Hawkins announced she will organize the women of her church to search for the man, and protect children. New York Tribune, Friday, March 26, 1915, page 16
March 29, 1915: Mrs. Anna Cohn today receives a threatening letter, signed "Jack the Ripper", the text as follows:
MRS. COHN:
Dear Madam: Your family had better call off the police and detectives. They are a lot of rag-pickers. They could not clear up this case or any other in a hundred years. They are going about this job in their usual thick-headed way, accusing an innocent man wrongfully.
I did the job. If you persist in your present methods and conduct I will kill a couple more of your family.
JACK THE RIPPER.
On the other side of the sheet was a barely legible scrawl accusing the Ecker family (the relatives the Cohns lived with) of "having guilty knowledge about the murder. At the bottom of the page are these words:
This is my signature,
H. B. Richmond,
Brooklyn, N.Y.
At the opposite side of the sheet is a vile drawing. Below it are words: This is my business." [The Evening World, Monday, March 29, 1915, page 3
I will come back with more on the second child victim in another e-mail later.
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