DEATH AT THE COCOANUT GROVE

The Horrors of America's Worst Nightclub Fire

On November 28, 1942, one of the worst nightclub fires in American history took place at the famed Cocoanut Grove in Boston. The most elegant club in the city, started in 1927 and taken over a few years later by wealthy gangsters, was destroyed in less than 15 minutes and the blaze claimed the lives of nearly 500 people – and left an eerie haunting behind. 

The Cocoanut Grove, named after the famed Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel, started out as a Boston restaurant turned speakeasy. Musician Mickey Alpert had conceived of an idea for a roaring twenties’-style nightclub for Boston. With hundreds of thousands in financing provided by California mobster and swindler Jack Berman (hiding out in Boston), Mickey turned a vacant building near the Boston Common, located in what is now Bay Village, into a fine eatery with top-notch entertainment. After several owners (all mob-connected), the floor space of the Cocoanut Grove was multiplied several times as adjacent buildings were acquired and added to the Grove’s original footprint. The design of the place was to reflect the tropical setting of Casablanca. The walls were lined with imitation leather and the ceilings were draped with thousands of yards of satin. Six pillars, three on each side of the dance floor, were designed to look like palm trees, with large paper palm fronds extending far out over the floor in a circular pattern. An elevated area called “the terrace” was inside the main dining room just off the foyer. Wrought iron railings had been installed along the edges of the terrace, which created a feeling of separation and maintained prime views of the floorshow for VIPs.

The dark basement was created as the Melody Lounge, an intimate area that was so successful that it had to be enlarged twice, finally ending up in an octagon shape that was roughly 35 by 18 feet, in the center of the lounge. This place was to be a bar, pure and simple. No floor show, no dancing and no fancy food. The only entertainment was a singer, playing the piano on a small revolving stage. The basement was also given an exotic feel. There was one soft light in the center of the room, aimed at the floor, and neon lined the underside of the bar. The only other illumination was from the tiny seven and one-half watt lights that twinkled out from the fronds of the imitation palm trees in the corners. The dingy walls were hidden by flimsy paneling and the ceiling was covered with nearly 2,000 square feet of dark blue satin over wooden slats. This was meant to give the customers a feeling of sitting beneath a star-filled night sky. The draped satin extended up the ceiling of the staircase leading from the Melody Lounge to the main floor. 

As the club was expanded, it was done without any concern about the design. No attention was paid to the original layouts of the different buildings the Grove had consumed; they just kept adding and adding. The result was a confusing maze of coat check rooms, dressing rooms, restrooms, service rooms, kitchens and store rooms connected to each other and the three large public rooms by winding and twisting corridors, and to the basement Melody Lounge by a single narrow stairway. Scant attention was paid to Boston’s fire codes either. Thanks to mob connections in the Building Department, licensing boards and elsewhere, the owners could pretty much do whatever they wanted. 

By 1942, shortly before it was reduced to ashes, the single-story Cocoanut Grove was an amalgam of six interconnected buildings, fronting on the south by Piedmont Street, on the north by Shawmut Street and Broadway Street on the east. The Grove’s original size had nearly tripled. There were three large public rooms with three bars, a dining room, a dance floor and a stage for the band. During fair weather, the roof above the dance floor could be electrically rolled back, revealing the night sky and allowing patrons to dance under the stars. The basement had been converted into the dark, intimate Melody Lounge. The newest expansion, The New Broadway Lounge, had opened only 11 days before the fire.

Saturdays were always packed at the Cocoanut Grove and November 28, 1942 was no exception. Legal occupancy was listed as 460 but on that evening, with extra tables and chairs covering every square foot of floor space, over 1,000 patrons were enjoying a night out at the Grove. Among the merrymakers was Buck Jones, the famed cowboy celebrity, star of more than 200 movies. In town promoting war bonds on a bond tour, he was having dinner with a group of fellow promoters. As a VIP, he was seated with his party on the terrace. 

In the Melody Lounge, people drifted back and forth between the basement and the dining room or the dance floor or the restrooms, but as the night went on, the lounge filled up with nearly 400 guests. In one corner, a sailor and his date were enjoying the privacy created by the dim lighting. As their passions heated up, or because the young woman grew shy, the sailor reached up and unscrewed the tiny light in the artificial palm tree over their heads. Goody Goodelle had just started playing the piano and singing Bing Crosby’s new hit, “White Christmas,” when head bartender John Bradley looked up and noticed that their corner was now pitch black. 

Annoyed with the sailor but too busy serving the customers lined up four deep around the bar, Bradley called out to Stanley Tomaszewski, a 16-year-old bar boy, and told him to get the light back on right away. Tomaszewski walked over to the corner and politely explained that it was dangerous having the light out and he had to get it re-lit. Unfortunately, the bulb had fallen completely out and it was far too dark for young Stanley to see the socket inside the tree. Striking a match, he found the socket and got the bulb back on. He blew out the match, dropped it to the floor and stepped on it to make sure it was out. 

As Tomaszewskiy returned to work, he heard someone shout that there was a fire in the top of the palm tree. John Bradley ran from behind the bar and together, the two young men pulled and batted at the tree attempting to put the fire out. As other employees ran to help by throwing pitchers of water on the tree, the scene became almost comedic and witnesses chuckled at their hapless attempts. As the burning fronds were finally pulled down, Bradley looked up in time to see the satin fabric above the tree start to smoke and then burn. A ball of fire erupted from the corner, feeding on the fabric-covered ceiling, and rapidly spread across the room heading for the open staircase. 

Don Lauer, a Marine private, jumped onto a chair and tried to use his pocket knife to cut the fabric down to stop the fire from spreading, but he was too late. In mere seconds, the entire ceiling was a sheet of blue and orange flame, dripping fire onto the frantic patrons below. Almost immediately, the crowd panicked as hair and clothing began to burn. The crowd moved toward the only exit they knew -- the narrow staircase -- and the fire did the same. As the fire reached the staircase, it continued on its path, burning away at the fabric ceiling over the stairs. The staircase quickly became jammed, as four hundred people tried to escape the inferno, not knowing that the fire was taking the same route, in search of the fresh oxygen on the main floor. 

Ruth and Hyman Strogoff were Wednesday and Saturday night regulars at the Melody Lounge. They spotted the “little fire” and deciding not to take their chances, headed toward the stairs. Ruth believed that she and Hyman were among the first to reach the foot of the stairs but by that time, the fire had spread and the crowd began a mass rush behind them. In their frenzy to escape, several people grabbed and pulled at Ruth and Hyman to get past them and Hyman went down. Though Ruth pulled hard on his arm, she was unable to get him up. He was held fast to the floor as screaming men and women trampled on him to get past, or by those who simply collapsed on top of him. Within a matter of seconds, there was a growing tangle of bodies at the bottom of the stairs. As Ruth’s hat and jacket caught fire, she was pushed up the stairs by the moving mass, after which she rolled on the floor to put her own fire out. Knowing there was nothing she could do for her husband and that he was likely already dead, she was forced to leave him behind. Before the night was over, hundreds of others would have to face the same terrible choice of having to leave loved ones behind that they might themselves survive.

Gunner’s Mate Matt Lane was farther back in the crowd. When he finally reached the bottom of the stairs, the way was completely blocked with bodies, some dying, some already dead. He jumped onto the railing and used it to pull himself along as he climbed over the others to make his escape. He had come to the Cocoanut Grove with his friend Don Lauer, who had tried to slice the fabric from the ceiling only moments before. He would never see Don alive again. 

The way to safety wasn’t easy. The frightened patrons had to make their way up a narrow flight of 15 steps, past the locked emergency exit at the top, then make a U-turn to the right and down a 10-foot hallway, then another right turn around an office and coat check room for 28 feet, then another right turn and 12 more feet across the foyer to the revolving door opening onto Piedmont Street. All of this with a fire raging over their heads and thick black smoke filling the air around them. 

The owners had ordered all the service and emergency exits to which the public had access to be locked while the club was open. This was intended to keep patrons from sneaking out without paying their check. 

Many terrified, confused people never made it out of the basement Melody Lounge. They were overcome by the thick choking smoke or by the heat resulting from the fire. They weren’t aware that there was an exit door in the back of the lounge, as it was disguised with the same paneling used on the walls. It would have taken them down a hallway, up three steps and to an outside exit. The exit door was partially blocked by a sewer pipe so it only opened about 18 inches. But none of that mattered. No one found the door so no one was able to escape that way. 

Two of the people who survived inside the Melody Lounge were Daniel Weiss, a bartender, and singer-pianist Goody Goodelle. They dowsed napkins with water and held them to their noses and mouths to breathe through and then lay on the floor until the fire had passed out of the room and up the stairs. They then crawled along the floor and into the kitchen, where they escaped through a barred window. The fire had been mainly limited to the ceiling so when firemen made their way down the steps to recover the bodies, they found much of the furniture was hardly damaged. The fire had moved on in little more than a minute or two. 

When Melody Lounge customers finally stumbled to the main entrance off the Piedmont Street foyer, only the first few were able to make their way through the revolving door before it was completely clogged by the crush of people behind them. They were unaware that there was a conventional exit door right next to the revolving door. Welansky had installed a coat check room in front of it, with a large wooden coat rack blocking the door from sight. It is questionable however, whether this door would have saved many lives as it swung inward and would have been forced shut by the crush of the crowd.

In a strange irony, at 10:15 p.m., while Stanley Tomaszeswky and John Bradley were trying to put out the small fire in the palm tree, the fire department was responding to an alarm for a car fire just three blocks from the Cocoanut Grove. It only took a few minutes to put out that small fire, and a firefighter noticed what he thought was smoke coming from the area of the Grove. As the firefighters headed toward the club to investigate, people started running toward them to report the fire. When they arrived, they found heavy black smoke pouring out of the building and patrons and employees scrambling out into the street. In short order, the fire chief on site ordered a third alarm to be issued, skipping the second alarm as he realized the scale of the disaster. A fourth alarm was issued at 10:24 p.m. and the fifth alarm went out at 11:02 p.m. By this time, the fire was largely extinguished and the departments responding to the fourth and fifth alarms were called for the rescue and recovery efforts.

While the fire department was assembling outside, the fire continued to rage through the club. 

As the fire arrived at the main floor in search of fresh oxygen and fuel, several hundred unsuspecting revelers were just beyond the foyer, not knowing that many of them would be dead within minutes, and the rest would be frantically searching for any way out of the blaze. Just as the fire entered the main public room, the lights went out, tumbling everyone into near total darkness, except for the firelight.

The dining area, dance floor, bandstand, and the Caricature Bar were all in the main public room. Customers complained that the tables and chairs had been packed in so tightly that they had to twist and turn and walk sideways just to get through the room to the dance floor. Tables were added along the side walls as well, some blocking emergency exits. 

Some heard the screams first, commenting that there must be a fight. Then they smelled the smoke. Then they saw the flames blast through the doorways and charge across the room. The fire was feeding off the fabric on the ceilings and walls. With the flames came extreme heat that seared flesh and lungs as people tried to breathe. The fire gave off carbon monoxide and toxins as the air filled with thick, acrid smoke, making it even harder to breath. The flames moved through the room so rapidly that many were overcome with heat or smoke before they even had a chance to leave their chairs. Some bodies were found burned beyond recognition while others were found next to their tables without any signs of injury. 

Movie star Buck Jones was one such victim. A popular story about Jones circulated after the fire. As the story went, he had escaped the fire but ran back into the building several times, carrying out injured victims until he collapsed on the sidewalk and was rushed to the hospital, where he died a short time later. In reality, Buck Jones was at the club that night having dinner, even though he would have preferred to be resting in his hotel room, nursing a bad head cold. Instead, he found himself sitting at a table on the terrace when the fire advanced across the room. He was rapidly overcome by the heat and smoke and fell to the floor next to his table. Firefighters found him where he had fallen, barely alive. The only accurate part of the story was that he was taken to the hospital where he died. 

It is well known to firefighters that unless directed otherwise, a panicked crowd will attempt to leave a building the same way they came in. The Cocoanut Grove had only two public entrances -- the revolving door in the main foyer on Piedmont Street and the exit leading from the New Broadway Lounge opening onto Broadway Street. This exit entailed a single, inward-swinging door that led into a small vestibule then to double doors opening onto the street. Most of the patrons had entered the club through the Piedmont entrance with only a single revolving door. These two exits were nearly a full city block apart.

Men and women who were able to run did so. They were desperate to find a way out -- any way out. And some of them did get out. All but twenty of the club’s employees survived the fire, largely because they knew where the hidden exits were and where windows would open. Some of the patrons were able to follow employees to safety. The rest were on their own -- lost in the dark.

As the Piedmont foyer continued to fill with people, bodies continued to pile up against the revolving door. Eventually, under the extreme pressure, the door mechanism gave way and collapsed outward. Nathan Greer saw the collapse and jumped forward onto the sidewalk. Sadly, a ferocious wall of fire followed him through the opening as a blast of fresh air rushed in from outside, burning up most of the people in or around the opening. 

A set of emergency doors was located along the Shawmut Street wall behind the terrace. These double doors were covered with wooden slatted doors and were blocked off with tables that were added to accommodate the large crowd. Even so, several people were able to find the doors. Each door was only twenty inches wide and the door on the right was bolted near the top of the frame, where no one could find the bolt in the dark. Joyce Spector witnessed the chaos in the dining room. “The men were the worst. Honest. There were men pushing and shoving to get out.” She was knocked down and started crawling across the floor, lungs burning, eyes stinging, until she felt fresh air on her face. She had found the Shawmut Street exit. As she struggled to get out someone outside pulled her through the door and “threw me across the sidewalk, and grabbed for more people inside. It seemed like an hour I lay there. I couldn’t tell. More people were pulled out and tossed down beside me.” Joyce survived her ordeal but her fiancé, Justin Morgan, did not. 

Charles and Peggy Disbrow found themselves descending the service stairway to the kitchen where they joined a group of people already there. After searching the kitchen in the dark, they found a small window above a counter that had been boarded up. Knocking the boards away, they saw that a pipe was blocking the opening, except for about eighteen inches. Still, most were able to climb through and into a blind alley behind an apartment building. Margaret Foley, sitting in her living room, was unaware of what was going on only a few feet from her home when a woman burst through her back door, ran through her apartment and out the front door. Stunned, Margaret watched as another person, then another, repeated the performance. She later estimated that at least fifty people had escaped through her home. 
Don Jeffers, also having made his way to the kitchen, dropped to the floor as the room filled with smoke. Crawling around trying to find a way out, he heard a voice in the darkness. Following the voice, he joined four other people hiding in the walk-in refrigerator. They waited there until the fire department entered the kitchen and escorted them out. 

Two more exits were located on the main floor but both proved useless. One was a service door located to the left of the stage platform. This door also opened inward but it, too, was locked. The other door was in the New Broadway Lounge, locked and well hidden behind a coat check room. 

The 250 or so customers enjoying themselves in the New Broadway Lounge remained blissfully unaware of the carnage that was taking place on the other side of the adjoining wall for several minutes. 

Meanwhile, the fire in the dining room was getting hotter. When it reached the velour-lined passageway into the Broadway Lounge, extreme heat built up a massive amount of pressure that blasted the flames and hot gasses down the short passage and into the lounge like a torch. That room did not contain the large amounts of flammable decorations that the other rooms had, but the pressure, hot gasses, and scorching temperatures created an environment that caused the fire to burn more completely than in any other area of the club. Twenty-five bodies, burned to blackened cinders, were found where they fell. Dozens of bodies were piled against the only unlocked exit in the room.

Next to the Broadway Street entrance, two large windows had been replaced by glass block. One man was able to break a small hole through the glass block and attempted to crawl out but became stuck. Firefighters found the man reaching partially through the hole but were unable to get him out. They doused him with water but in the end they had to watch helplessly as the man burned to death. 

A long wall on the Piedmont Street side of the building contained four large plate glass windows. These windows, if broken out would have provided an excellent escape route for those trapped in the dining room area. Unfortunately, they had been covered with wood panels and no one knew they were there. Experts estimate that if these windows had not been covered, hundreds could have been saved. 

Firefighters needed to get hoses into the building quickly to save anyone trapped by the fire. Early on, wherever they tried to break through, they were driven back by the extreme heat and thick black smoke. When they were finally able to enter, they went through the area where the revolving door had collapsed. They had to climb over a six-foot-high stack of bodies to get to the dining room area. By the time they were able to enter the foyer, the fire had nearly burned itself out.

Less than half an hour after it started, the fire was largely extinguished, inside and out. Rescuers now needed to clear the entrances. They pulled body after body from the stack blocking the doorway, piling them on the sidewalk in the cold November night. Police officer Elmer Brooks remembered rescuers lifting bodies and having arms and legs come off in their hands. 

Clearing the entrances had been a terrible job in itself, but nothing could have prepared them for the gruesome task that lay ahead. As they moved through the building, they found bodies everywhere. Some were piled up against locked doors, while others were by themselves. Some were horribly burned, while other were unmarked by flames. Some were found where they had been sitting when the fire started while others were in found in the far reaches of the club. Firefighter Winn Robbins saw a dead woman, propped up in one of the Grove’s phone booths, still holding a telephone receiver in her hand.

Firefighters, police officers and volunteer military men began removing the bodies, piling them on the sidewalks. Some of the victims were still alive but there wasn’t time to separate the living from the dead (except for badly charred bodies) so they were all loaded into ambulances and trucks and taken to area hospitals. Medical professionals triaged the victims as they arrived, sorting out the dead and determining the level of medical care required by the living. 

Everyone who died at the Cocoanut Grove, died as a result of the fire, but there were several causes of death. The most straightforward were those who were physically burned. Some died from smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning and still others died from internal burns - burned lungs and nasal passages from breathing the superheated air. Several bodies showed signs of being crushed by a mass of people pushing in on them, or at the bottom of a pile as people collapsed upon them. Even more disturbing was the number of people who had fallen and were trampled to death by the stampeding crowd. 

As they went about their work inside with stunned calm, outside it was rapidly becoming chaotic. The temperature was falling and the water on the cobblestones was making the roads icy. Fire hoses froze to the ground as smoldering bodies, living and dead, were doused with frigid water. Family members, friends and bystanders were pressing in on the building, forcing officials to form a human chain to stop people from entering the building to search for loved ones or to satisfy their curiosity. Unfortunately, some of the bodies piled on the sidewalk suffered the further indignity of being stripped of their money and jewelry as they lay dead or dying by ghouls in the crowds. 

Over the next few hours, nearly 450 fire victims were transported to hospitals. Massachusetts General Hospital received 114 of which 75 were already dead or died soon after. Of the 300 bodies to arrive at Boston City Hospital, 168 were dead on arrival and 36 more died within hours. Some were sent directly to temporary morgues but were found to be alive and transferred to hospitals; a few of those eventually made it home.

For several days, newspapers were filled with stories of those who lived and those who died. Eleanor Chiampa, only fifteen years old, was very excited to be there that evening. This was her first visit to the famous Cocoanut Grove and to top it off, she was sitting on the same terrace as movie star Buck Jones! Her big brother, home on leave from the war, had taken her to the Grove along with his wife and another couple. The two men were the only people from their party to survive. Eleanor lived for a few days in the Mass General Hospital before she became the youngest victim of the fire.

Married earlier that evening, John O’Neil and his bride, Claudia Nadeau O’Neil, had originally planned to celebrate their wedding at the Latin Quarter, another fashionable Boston nightclub. However, at the last minute, they decided to move the celebration to the Cocoanut Grove. Their marriage had lasted only a few hours as neither of them left the Grove alive. Their bodies were found in the dining room, next to those of their best man and maid of honor. 

Harold Thomas was in the main dining room and Thomas Sheehan, Jr. was in the New Broadway Lounge when the fire started. As people dashed madly about, each of them was knocked to the floor and were unable to get up as others fell on top of them. This likely saved their lives. They were shielded from the flames and heat by the layers of bodies above, and from the bottom of the piles, they were able to breathe the cleaner air near the floor. Both men walked away from the fire that night with only a few burns. 
Pvt. Harry T. Fitzgerald of the Army Air Corps, was home on leave from Florida. He had not been home for several months and his three older brothers were anxious to welcome him home and show him a good time. James, John and Wilfred Fitzgerald treated Harry to a night at the Cocoanut Grove. None of the four brothers or their dates survived the night. Their mother, a widow of twenty years, lost her entire family to the fire.

A few found interesting ways to save themselves. One young soldier reportedly urinated into a handful of napkins and placed them over his mouth and nose. Another young man found a container of ice cream to bury his burning face in as he searched for an exit. Both men survived the fire without injury to their lungs or throats. 

A party of ten, members of a family of funeral directors from a nearby town, were enjoying a night out, dining and dancing at the Grove. One of the couples decided not to stay for the second floor show, opting to see a program at a theatre just a few blocks away. When they returned, nearly their entire family had been wiped out. 

Two young couples were at the Grove to celebrate their wedding anniversaries. Helping them celebrate were 11 of their friends and family, including five brothers and sisters and their spouses. One member of their party had risen to walk to the Caricature Bar when he noticed the fire moving rapidly across the ceiling. He shouted for his group to follow him out of the room, but none of them did. He was the only one from the group of fifteen to survive. The others were found later, still at their table.

Coast Guardsman Clifford Johnson, who was at the Grove that night on a blind date, got out safely but went back into the inferno four times looking for his date. He wasn’t aware that she had already gotten out safely. He aided others in their escape until he finally collapsed onto the pavement with third degree burns over fifty percent of his body. No one had ever survived such severe burn injuries but Clifford became a medical miracle. Twenty-one months later, he was discharged from the hospital. In an ironic twist of fate, fourteen years later, back in his home state of Missouri, Clifford was killed when the car he was driving left the road, rolled over and burst into flames.

Francis and Grace Gatturna were waiting for the floorshow to begin when they smelled smoke. Francis grabbed Grace by the hand and attempted to pull her from the room. As they tried to make their way out, they became separated. Francis made it to safety but Grace did not. After Francis was dismissed from the hospital, he became very depressed, telling family members that he should have either saved his wife, or died with her. His family became worried and checked him back into the hospital. He seemed to be improving with the help of therapy when on January 9, 1943, he jumped through a closed hospital window to his death.

The last Cocoanut Grove victim died in the hospital on May 5, 1943.

By the time it was over, the fire had involved 187 firefighters, 26 engine companies, 5 ladder companies, 3 rescue companies, 1 water tower and countless volunteers. The property losses were in the hundreds of thousands. The cost in human suffering was immeasurable.

Just twelve hours after the fire was extinguished, Arthur Reilly, Boston’s Fire Commissioner, convened a series of public hearings to determine the cause of the fire and find who was to blame. More than 100 witnesses gave testimony, including several public officials and over 90 survivors. The results of the inquest revealed that club owner Barney Welansky manipulated local politicians to his advantage and cut corners, putting his customers at risk, to save a buck or make a buck. 

At the same time, the politicians and public officials were busy playing pass the buck. Everyone had a good story that seemed to be designed to leave the teller free of any blame or questionable activities. 
Lieutenant Frank Linney, an inspector for the fire department had inspected the Cocoanut Grove just eight days before the fire. His report gave new meaning to “cursory inspection.” The entire report took only one page. Linney passed every topic and made only two specific notations -- No flammable decorations and a sufficient number of exits. The testimony of the 93 survivors corrected Linney’s erroneous observations.

Perhaps the most bizarre testimony was in the form of an opinion offered by James Mooney, commissioner of the Boston Building Department. “I don’t believe a panicked crowd would get out even if there were no exterior walls. They would get entangled among themselves and not get out anyway.” Mooney’s department had allowed the New Broadway Lounge to open without the fusible fire door, no new fire exit, no final inspection and the only emergency exit blocked by a coat check room.

The only person who came forward and told the truth as he knew it, regardless of the implications, was 16-year-old Stanley Tomaszewski. He testified to exactly what happened just before the fire started. Tomaszewski had been vilified in the newspapers but he stood tall and told the truth about lighting the match near the paper cocoanut tree in the ill-fated Melody Lounge. He insisted that he had carefully blown out the match and stepped on it. In the end, he admitted that he believed that this was probably how the fire started. 

Fire Commissioner Reilly did everything he could to ease the strain on Tomaszewski and ease his fright. He praised him and described him as an honorable young man. The Boston Globe advanced the idea that the blame should not be placed on the shoulders of this fine young man, but rather on the heads of the corrupt officials. Even with high praise and reassurances supporting the shy young man, his life was threatened. For the next several months he was kept under protective guard in a Boston hotel. 

On New Year’s Eve, a Suffolk County Grand Jury handed down 10 indictments, carrying charges from neglect of duty to twenty counts of manslaughter. Barnett “Barney” Welansky and his brother, Jimmy, received the harshest charges. Indictments were distributed to such officials as Frank Linney and James Mooney. Also charged were interior designer Reuben Bodenhorn, and the construction contractor and construction foreman. Stanley Tomaszewski was officially exonerated of all blame.

Barney Welansky alone was found guilty on 19 counts of manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. Nearly three years into his sentence, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Governor Tobin, mayor of Boston at the time of the fire, quietly pardoned Welansky. When he walked out of prison, Barney was a sick, bitter man. While speaking with reporters, he told them “If you were wrongfully convicted, framed, you’d feel you had a perfect right to be free. I only wish I had been at the fire and died with those others.” Welansky got his wish and died just nine weeks after being released from prison. 

Stanley Tomaszewski died in 1994 at the age of 68. He had gone to college, married, and raised three children and led a responsible life as a federal auditor. No matter what he did or how he lived, he was never able to escape the shadow of the tragedy. He had escaped the fire without injury but was terribly scarred just the same. For decades, he had been called “every bad name in the book” and had received threats and phone calls in the night. Shortly before he died, he said he had suffered enough and wished to finally be left alone.

The burned shell of the infamous Cocoanut Grove was finally demolished in September of 1945.

Today, the streets that used to box the Cocoanut Grove nightclub have been reconfigured to allow for the construction of the Boston Radisson Hotel and Theater Complex. The Grove’s original footprint has been swallowed up by the much larger hotel along with a tiny parking lot. The only physical reminder of what happened on the site is a small bronze plaque with the Cocoanut Grove’s floor plan. The plaque was prepared as a memorial by the Bay Village Neighborhood Association and embedded in the brick sidewalk next to the parking lot in 1993.

Though all other physical reminders of the Cocoanut Grove are now gone, there are other reminders that still linger. Hopefully, most of those who lost their lives have moved on in peace. So many lives were snuffed out before they could know what was happening; bodies were found still sitting where they had been sitting or collapsed where they had been standing when the smoke and fumes found them. It is considered by many that these unfortunate victims are still wandering the site, trying to find their way to safety, or maybe discover a friend or loved one. Several employees of the Boston Radisson Hotel might agree that they are. On a few occasions, people have witnessed strange appearances throughout the hotel. Disheveled and confused men or women, seeming to appear out of nowhere, wander past and disappear just as mysteriously. There have been other experiences reported in the hotel bar and in the kitchen, odd noises, flashes, and loud popping sounds, without any discernible cause.

The Stuart Street Playhouse, the Radisson’s theatre, is another location where fire victims make their presence known. On occasion, the quiet, shadowy form of a man can be seen passing a doorway or walking down an empty hall. When approached by employees, he fades away to nothing. Other phenomena include water -- unexplained flooding in different areas within the building and a singular water faucet in a restroom on the second floor that reportedly turns itself on, even when no one is in the room. On one occasion, employees entered the auditorium and found a seat completely soaked, with no explanation. Others have described hearing their names called while working in the theatre at night, with no one else around.

It seems that not all of those who stayed behind after the fire remained at the Cocoanut Grove. Another Boston location believed to be haunted by victims of the fire is Jacques Cabaret, just a few blocks away from where the tragedy occurred. Not everyone at Jacques is willing to discuss the ghostly happenings there, but one former bartender said that, “spooky stuff happened there all the time.” The most significant experience he had while working at the bar happened late one night when he was cleaning up after closing. He had left the bar area for a moment and when he returned, he saw bodies lying in long rows all across the floor. He turned to switch on the overhead lights and when he turned back, everything had returned to normal. 

The night of the fire, as bodies were pulled from the building, some were taken directly to hospitals while others were taken to a temporary morgue or to one of the designated mortuaries. Many who were believed to be still alive and taken to hospitals were already dead, and conversely, some of those taken to the morgue or mortuaries were still alive. A film distribution garage located near the Cocoanut Grove was set up as a temporary morgue on the night of the fire. The bodies were laid out side by side in rows on the tile floor to await identification and transportation. That garage is now known as Jacques Cabaret. 

There is a record of every person who was killed or injured in the Cocoanut Grove fire, but there will never be a complete list of everyone who was inside when it started. Some of the people who escaped the building unharmed, or with only minor injuries, left the scene and went home. In this case, lists didn’t matter. What bound these people together for the rest of their lives was the common experience. They went from joy and celebration to horror in a matter of seconds. Most of those who saved themselves lost someone dear. They had to contend with their own horrifying experience while simultaneously grieving their loss. They wondered at the randomness of who was taken and who was spared. And none of them ever forgot...

"THE BATTLE OF BARRINGTON"

The End of "Baby Face" Nelson

On this date in 1934, gangster George “Baby Face Nelson” was gunned down west of Chicago in one of the most terrifying gun battles in mob history. Law enforcement officers managed to corner the feared Dillinger gang member near the city park in and a harrowing car chase ended in a bloodbath that left several dead in what came to be known as the “Battle of Barrington.”

“Baby Face” Nelson was born as Lester Gillis in Chicago on December 6, 1908. He grew up just steps away from the South Side Stockyards and roamed the streets with a gang of young hoodlums during his early teens. He grew up tough but at five feet, four inches tall, his height was always a source of agitation to him. He wanted recognition and fame and later in life, he got it as one of the most bloodthirsty bandits of the Depression era.

By the age of fourteen, Gillis was an accomplished car thief and while he wanted to be known as “Big George Nelson,” fellow members of his gang dubbed him as “Baby Face” because of his juvenile appearance. Nelson’s early career included stealing tires, bootlegging, and armed robbery. In 1922, he was convicted of auto theft and committed to a boy’s home. He was paroled two years later, but within five months he was back in again on another charge. When he was finally released, Nelson graduated from petty theft to sticking up brothels and bookie joints and then selling the same establishments protection against further theft. 

While working the protection rackets in 1928, he met a pretty young salesgirl at a Chicago Woolworth’s store named Helen Wawzynak, and he married her. His wife retained the name Helen Gillis throughout their marriage. She stuck with him no matter what happened and would be with him until the very end of his life.

In 1929, Nelson began working for the Capone operation, specializing in labor relations. He could always be counted on to get labor unions to kick back part of their dues to the organization. He enforced his demands with beatings and strong-arm tactics and eventually, his brutality got him dropped from the roster of reliable gunmen. Nelson went back to robberies and later that year was apprehended for a jewelry store heist.

Nelson was sent to prison in January 1931 and after a year’s confinement, was removed from the state Penitentiary in Joliet to stand trial for a bank robbery charge in Wheaton. On February 17, 1932, he escaped from prison guards while being returned to Joliet and fled the state. He turned up next in Reno, Nevada, and then moved on to Sausalito, California. There, he met John Paul Chase, with whom he would be closely associated for the rest of his life. 

Chase, who was just a few years older than Nelson, had lived most of his life in California. He had worked on ranches and in railroad repair shops and then, in 1930, became associated with a liquor-smuggling operation that was run by bootlegger Joe Parente. When Nelson arrived in California, Chase was still involved with the bootleg gang. Nelson worked with Chase as an armed guard for the liquor trucks and the two of them became close friends. Chase frequently introduced Nelson as his half-brother.

Nelson’s wife joined him and they remained in California until May 1933. Nelson went to Long Beach, Indiana, to recruit a bank-robbing gang. The first member of his crew, after Chase, was expert machine-gunner Tommy Carroll, a light-hearted character who had once been a promising boxer. Eddie Green, an expert at scouting out bank locations, also joined Nelson and they began hitting banks all over the Midwest.

In February 1934, Nelson and the others joined up with the Dillinger gang. By then, most of the members of Dillinger’s original gang, save for Homer Van Meter and John Hamilton, had been killed or incarcerated. They worked together during several chaotic and dangerous robberies and then ended up at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin in April 1934.

When the FBI agents arrived, the gangsters holed up at the lodge managed to slip away, leaving wives and girlfriends, including Helen Gillis, behind. 

Nelson managed to escape in the chaos after the botched FBI raid and made his way back to Chicago. He hired a lawyer to try and spring his wife in Wisconsin while the couple’s children, a five-year-old boy and four-year-old girl, stayed with Nelson’s sister at 5516 Marshfield Avenue in Chicago. The Dillinger girls appeared before a federal magistrate on May 25 and all of them feigned ignorance, offered guilty pleas to harboring fugitives, and were let off with a probationary slap on the wrist. Helen joined back up with her husband about a month later.

After Dillinger was killed (or vanished, depending on what you believe) at the Biograph Theater in July 1934, Nelson, Helen and John Paul Chase left Chicago for California. That summer, Nelson and Chase made several trips back and forth and on one occasion, they were stopped for speeding in a small town. They paid the $5 fine at the local police station and were released. The automobile, which contained machine-guns, rifles, and ammunition, was never searched.

In late August, they returned to Chicago and a month later, Nelson went to Nevada and Chase traveled to New York City. They eventually joined back up again in Chicago and on November 26, they went to Wisconsin.

On November 27, the Feds tracked Nelson, Helen, and Chase to Wisconsin. They intended to hide out at the Lake Como Inn (now the French Country Inn), just north of the Illinois state line. The Lake Como was a no-questions-asked kind of place on the waterfront, owned by Hobart Hermansen, a former bootlegger who was courting the estranged wife of George “Bugs” Moran, who had a summer place a little farther down the same dirt road. FBI agents received a tip from Chase’s girlfriend, Sally Blackman, that the bank robbers intended to winter at the inn. The agents pressured Hermansen into loaning them his place. They were caught off guard when a Ford they mistook for the owner’s pulled up out front. Nelson realized that he had driven into an ambush at the same time the agents recognized the driver of the car. Nelson, with a pistol hidden on his lap, exchanged a few pleasantries with the agents and then drove away unhindered, since one of the agents had driven the only FBI auto into the town of nearby Lake Geneva for groceries.

A frantic telephone call to Chicago sent three carloads of federal agents toward Wisconsin in hopes of intercepting Nelson on the Northwest Highway (then US 12, now US 14). The first team of agents, Thomas McDade and William Ryan, encountered Nelson’s car near the village of Fox River Grove and turned around to chase him, only to discover that Nelson had also turned around. As the two vehicles passed one another a second time, Nelson spun the wheel and, instead of running, started chasing his pursuers. The surprised feds accelerated, but Nelson stayed right behind them. Agent McDade pressed the gas pedal to the floor and his car surged ahead. As he did so, Nelson grabbed Helen’s shoulder, pushed her down to the floor of the car, and screamed at Chase to let them have it. 

Chase opened fire and his bullets punched holes in the right side of the agents’ windshield. Nelson accelerated to keep pace with the FBI men, snatched up his pistol with his left hand, leaned it out the window, and began firing shots at the car ahead. Agent Ryan returned fire, blasting out the back window of Nelson’s car. He fired a full clip at the pursuing sedan. Meanwhile, McDade struggled to keep control of the car, which was now traveling at more than seventy-five miles per hour. They were rapidly overtaking a slow-moving milk truck, lumbering along in the lane ahead of them.

As Ryan’s automatic emptied, he reached for a second pistol and realized that Nelson’s car had backed off. He told McDade, who had not had time to worry about the gangsters behind them. He swerved into the opposite lane to miss the milk truck and was horrified to see a westbound car hurtling towards them. He pushed the car ahead and managed to pass the truck and swerve back into the right lane, narrowly avoiding a fatal collision. 

Ryan continued to watch through the ragged glass of the back window as he saw Nelson maneuver around the milk truck, and then slow down to widen the gap between them. Suddenly, McDade missed a sharp turn in the road and their car bounced into a field and came to a stop. Both agents jumped out, guns in hand, and took cover behind the vehicle. However, Nelson’s sedan never appeared.

Ryan and McDade were not aware that within moments of pulling away from Nelson, two more FBI agents had joined the chase, once again turning Nelson into the one being pursued. At some point between Fox River Grove and Barrington, agents Sam Cowley and Herman Hollis encountered the high-speed gun battle that was taking place. Wondering why it was going in the wrong direction with the wrong car in pursuit, they turned around to try and catch up with Nelson from behind. 

As they came up behind Nelson’s Ford, they saw smoke and steam start to bellow from under the hood. Apparently, a bullet from Ryan’s gun had struck the radiator of Nelson’s car. As the gangster hopelessly punched on the accelerator, the second FBI car came in close behind them. One of the agents leaned out of the window of the car with a machine-gun in his hand. As Chase opened fire, Nelson tried valiantly to get just a little more speed and distance from the faltering car. The guns roared as Helen crouched on the floor, her head between her knees, her left hand clutching her husband’s leg.

Through the smoke that was churning from the damaged engine, Nelson saw that they were entering the northwest side of Barrington. The FBI car continued to gain on them and then pulled alongside. Nelson had to make a desperate move.

Ahead, along the north side of the highway, were three gas stations – a Standard, a Shell and a Sinclair. On the opposite side of the highway, surrounded by a mostly open field, was a gravel road leading to Barrington’s North Side Park. About four hundred yards ahead, houses began to appear on both sides of the road. 

Thinking fast, Nelson suddenly swerved into the park entrance and hit the brakes, causing the Ford to slide to a stop. Hollis slammed on his brakes but the FBI vehicle slid past the entrance in a long, shaking slide. As the car passed by Nelson’s halted automobile, Agent Cowley fired a burst of shots.

Nelson ordered the others out of the vehicle and lunged out of the driver’s side door. He hurried around to the back of the car as Chase and his wife tumbled out of the passenger’s side. He yelled at his wife to run, instructing her to get into the nearby field and lay flat on the ground. Helen sprinted through the tall grass between the road and the park’s football field, dropping to her stomach as gunfire erupted. 

The first shots came from Chase, who was crouched down at the front of the Ford. Steam from the damaged radiator slightly concealed his position and he used the distraction to open up on the FBI agents on the road. Seconds later, Nelson, standing at the rear of the sedan with a machine gun, also opened fire.

The FBI agent’s Hudson had screeched to a halt in the middle of the highway, about one hundred and twenty feet away. Bullets tore into the vehicle as Cowley jumped out of the passenger side and took cover behind the vehicle. Hollis, shotgun in hand, scrambled out of the same door and hid behind the front bumper. For the next three minutes, a furious battle raged as bullets slammed into the two cars, kicked up clouds of dust, and bounced off the pavement of the road.

Hidden in the weeds about twenty yards away from the Ford, Helen raised her head for one quick look as the shooting continued. She later reported, “I saw Les jump and grab his side. I knew then that was the end.”

Less than a minute into the battle, a .45 slug from Cowley’s Thompson machine-gun pierced Nelson’s left side, just above his belt. The bullet tore through his liver and pancreas before punching a hole out of the lower-right portion of his back. Doubled over and clasping his side, he ran to the running board of the car and exchanged weapons with Chase, firing the other bandit’s gun as Chase reloaded his own. No words were spoken, according to Chase, who later swore that he didn’t know his friend had been wounded. 

With a fresh drum in Nelson’s Thompson, he attempted to fire through the Ford’s side window. Between shots, Chase heard him complain about his weapon jamming and he threw it aside. Nelson picked up a rifle from the backseat and moved to the rear of the vehicle. Chase assumed that he was going back to his original position, but soon discovered that Nelson had walked out into the open and was advancing on the FBI agents and their Hudson. 

Nelson charged at them, almost manically, firing at them and sweeping his weapon back and forth. Cowley suddenly abandoned his position and darted left to the south side of the highway, where he stumbled into the ditch. Rising to his knees, he attempted to shoot at Nelson, but his machine-gun refused to fire. Nelson sent several slugs in his direction and Cowley crumpled onto his left side.

A second later, Hollis leaned out and fired his shotgun. The impact from the heavy weapon knocked the legs out from under Nelson. He fell to the ground, but managed get back up and he kept on coming toward the FBI agent. Nelson fired at Hollis, turned to fire several more shots at the downed Cowley, and then hammered the front of the Hudson. 

As Nelson came closer, Hollis turned and tried to run. He ran toward a telephone pole on the north side of the road, located between the Standard and Shell stations. As he ran, he fired backward at Nelson, but then his gun jammed. As he neared the telephone pole, he dropped the shotgun and drew an automatic from inside his coat. Before he could fire, Nelson’s next barrage of bullets hit him. Nelson kept coming at the agent, firing again and again as Hollis slumped against the wooden pole, which was now chewed up by stray bullets. He cried out, and then fell facedown onto the edge of the highway. 

Nelson stood over the agent for a moment, his weapon poised to fire more shots into the man on the ground, but then he lowered it, apparently satisfied that Hollis was dead. He limped across the road toward the Hudson, dragging his left leg behind him and spattering blood on the pavement. He climbed behind the wheel of the Hudson and pulled up behind the disabled Ford. He shouted for Helen and Chase, who gathered their weapons and trotted over to where Nelson was parked in the car. When he saw Chase, Nelson groaned, “Drop everything and get me to a priest.”

Chase told him to wait a minute while he grabbed their cases from the other car, but Nelson told him to forget all of it. He tried to crawl over the passenger side, leaving a trail of gore on the seat. He told Chase, “You’ll have to drive, I’m hit pretty hard.”

Helen came running out of the field and climbed into the car. Chase hit the accelerator, pointing the vehicle back west toward Fox River Grove. Helen sat in back, next to her wounded husband, cradling his head in her arms. Nelson looked up at her, his eyes blurry and filled with pain. “I’m done for,” he gasped.

Chase drove as fast as he could along the unfamiliar road with no idea of where to go. Nelson was slumped against the passenger door, drawing deep breaths, while Helen wept and continued to hold his sagging body. Nelson did the best he could to direct his friend to safety. Three miles west of Barrington, he told him to turn right on Kelsey Road, then right again on Route 22. Heading east again, they passed two miles north of Barrington, heading toward Lake Zurich. When not in town, Chase kept the gas pedal mashed to the floor and within a half hour, they reached Highland Park. Nelson was fading fast, but he instructed Chase to head south on Skokie Road. Entering Wilmette, they drove to 1155 Mohawk Road, a home that belonged to the sister of Father Phillip Coughlan, a Catholic priest who had grown up on Chicago’s West Side and who had close ties to many gangsters and underworld figures. 

Late in the afternoon, the rectory maid notified Father Coughlan that there was a young woman knocking on the back-door window, asking to see him. The priest went to the kitchen and found Helen Gillis in the doorway. She urgently told him that her husband had been shot and needed his help. Coughlan grabbed his coat and hat and followed her. Chase had pulled into the garage and helped Nelson get out, hoping to bring his wounded friend into the house. Nelson muttered a faint greeting when the priest arrived. He was leaning against the back of the car, his face white and bloodless. Helen begged the priest to bring Nelson inside, but Coughlan refused because it was his sister’s house. Instead, he offered to lead them to safe location. Helen asked that they all go in the same car, but again, the priest refused. The bullet-riddled Hudson could not remain in his sister’s garage. Coughlan helped to ease Nelson back into the passenger seat of the Hudson. Once the bandit was situated, the priest noticed a warm stickiness on his right hand. He looked down to see it was covered with blood.

Father Coughlan got into his Ford coupe and backed out into the street. With the Hudson following, he turned north on Ashland Avenue, then west on Skokie Road. Two blocks later, he noticed the Hudson do a quick u-turn and speed off in the opposite direction. He turned around and tried to catch up with them, but he lost the vehicle in traffic near Lake Street. He later confessed that he was relieved, but also saddened. He realized that Nelson must have thought he was leading them into a trap.

Coughlan was right. Even in his weakened state, Nelson was suspicious about the way that the priest was acting, mistaking his confusion about where to safely hide the injured outlaw for possible betrayal. As they drove, he instructed Chase to lose him, and they drove off with an alternate destination in mind. Nelson feebly told Chase where and when to turn, traveling south and keeping mostly to residential streets as they left Wilmette and entered Winnetka, then Niles Center (which is now Skokie.) At one point, Nelson appeared to pass out and Chase turned into an alley to wait for him to wake up. A minute or so later, Nelson regained consciousness and urged his friend to keep driving. 

On Sixteenth Street, Nelson told Chase to slow down. Pointing to a narrow alley that ran behind Walnut Street, he told him to make the turn. Chase drove down the alley to a red two-car garage at the rear of a light gray stucco cottage that faced Walnut Street. The address of the cottage was 1627 Walnut Street. Chase pulled into the garage and asked Nelson who lived there. Nelson mumbled, “Friends.”

Chase went to the front door and knocked and a tall, dark-complexioned man in his late 30’s answered. Chase told him that someone outside needed him and the man accompanied him back to the garage. 
When the man saw Nelson in the car, Chase knew that he instantly recognized him. The two men, with Helen following, carried Nelson into the house. They entered through a side door and passed through the kitchen. Along the way, Chase glimpsed an older man and a young woman who appeared frightened at the sight of the bloody and wounded bandit. They went into a small bedroom, where they placed Nelson on a large iron bed. The other man walked out, leaving Chase and Helen to take care of Nelson. Helen later recounted, “All three of us knew Les was dying, but there was nothing we could do.”

They did their best to make him comfortable and stop the bleeding. Helen was given scissors and other supplies and she cut the bloody clothing from her husband’s body. She stuffed cotton into the bullet hole in his stomach and the gaping exit wound in his back, and then covered both wounds by wrapping him with long strips of cloth that were torn from a bed sheet. Helen cleaned his buckshot-spattered legs, and then covered him with a blanket when he told her that he was cold. 

Nelson sighed. He felt better, he told his wife and friends, the pain was gone and now he just felt numb all over. Helen held onto his hand and waited for the end to come.

About an hour after Nelson, Helen, and Chase had arrived at the house on Walnut Street, the man who had helped carry the bank robber inside came and told Chase that he needed to move the damaged government vehicle. Chase agreed but Nelson begged him not to leave. Minutes later, the man came back again and reiterated that the car had to be moved. Nelson again appealed to his friend to stay and Chase promised to stay, but noticing that Nelson was slipping in and out of consciousness, he made the decision to slip away for a few minutes. Before long, Chase quietly left the bedside, exited through the side door, and drove away. He later insisted that he had planned to return after he ditched the car, but being unfamiliar with the area, he soon became lost. Attempting to head south into Chicago, he ended up going north and found himself back in Winnetka. When the Hudson ran out of gas, he abandoned it near some railroad tracks. This forced him to make another decision. Knowing there was nothing he could do to help his friend, he realized that he needed to try and get away. Chase caught a train to Chicago and disappeared.

Helen was left alone with her dying husband. Shortly after Chase departed, Nelson seemed to realize that he had little time left. He asked her to say goodbye to their family and when he began to talk about their children, he cried a little. Finally, he gasped out his final words, “It’s getting dark, Helen. I can’t see you anymore.”

Nelson’s eyes glazed over and his breathing became shallow and raspy, and then stopped altogether. The infamous “Baby Face” Nelson was dead.

Rain fell on the Walnut Street cottage until the early morning hours. Helen Gillis sat with her husband’s corpse until nearly dawn, and then the man who had helped them came into the room and told her that the body needed to be moved. Helen wanted to take her husband to an undertaker’s, but she knew it was impossible. The man told her that he would find a place where the body could be left. He promised to call an undertaker later on.

After wrapping the body in an imitation Indian blanket, Helen and the man carried it outside and placed it in the backseat of an Oldsmobile that was parked in the driveway. She climbed in next to her husband, cradling him in her arms as the man drove. They drove deeper into Niles Center and at the southwest corner of Niles (now Conrad) and Long Avenues, they reached St. Paul’s Cemetery. The driver pulled over to the curb and they wrestled the body from the car. Nelson’s naked, bloody corpse was placed on the grass. Helen tucked the blanket around him, hoping that he would be comfortable because Lester “always hated the cold.”

A few blocks away, just south of Howard Avenue, Helen dropped Nelson’s bloodstained clothing out the window. The driver continued south until they reached Chicago’s North Side. The man asked her if this was a suitable spot for her to be let out and she said that it was, even though she had no idea where she was or where she should go. Before she stepped out of the car, she gave the driver the name of a mortician who had handled the funerals of her mother and her sister. He promised to call and notify the undertaker where to find Nelson’s body and then drove away.

Helen wandered the unfamiliar streets for over an hour. Finally, around 5:00 a.m., she hailed a cab and slipped into the warm backseat. The driver asked her where she wanted to go and she just told him to keep driving.

At 6:45 a.m. the bullet-riddled Hudson was discovered by a Winnetka milkman, who notified a local patrolman. Federal agents arrived at the scene within an hour and found bullet holes and plenty of blood.

At 7:30 a.m., Philip Sadowski, the owner of a funeral home on North Hermitage Avenue, received a telephone call from a man with a “rough voice” who informed him that the body of a man named Gillis was lying in a graveyard in Niles Center, a block away from Harms Road. Sadowski told him that he was unable to retrieve the body. He was in the midst of preparing for a funeral and besides, he added, morticians don’t recover bodies, he would have to notify the coroner to do that. The man on the other end of the line told him to notify anyone he wanted to, but that he wanted him to handle the arrangements.

Sadowski reported the anonymous call to the Chicago Coroner’s Office and was advised to contact the Niles Center Police. Acting on the undertaker’s information, Captain Axel Stolberg and a patrolman went out to the area to look around. Sadowski, however, had failed to mention the name of cemetery and the body was not found. The pair returned to the police station, only to hear about a call that had just come in from someone who found bloody clothing near where the officers had just been searching. 

News of the discovery was passed on to federal agents who had spent the morning searching Winnetka. Four agents arrived to help Captain Stolberg search the area again. It was almost noon when FBI agent Sam McKee signaled that he had found the remains of Baby Face Nelson. 

Nelson’s body lay in the grass, with his head resting on the curb. He was naked, except for the cloth strips that had been wrapped about his waist and he was drenched with blood. His right arm was across his chest and his left hand was frozen into a claw just above the wound in his stomach. His feet were crossed and the agents realized that he had been dead long enough for rigor mortis to set in. The body was picked up, carried to a car, and then driven to the mortuary for an official identification. Fingerprints confirmed that the dead man was Lester Gillis, a.k.a. “Baby Face” Nelson.

The body was photographed and examined. The press reported that he had been shot 17 times, but the official count was actually nine. By mid-afternoon, news of Nelson’s death was sweeping the city. The body was transported to the Cook County Morgue and placed on a slab for public display. More than two thousand morbid curiosity-seekers filed past the dead bank robber during the hours that followed.

Once Nelson was confirmed dead, the massive manhunt for the killers of FBI agents Cowley and Hollis shifted to his two companions at the “Battle of Barrington” – John Chase and Helen Gillis.

With little cash and no car, Chase had checked into the Garfield Arms, a downtown hotel, and hid out in his room, only venturing out a couple of times to buy newspapers. Chase soon devised a clever way to get out of the city by answering a newspaper ad looking for drivers to deliver automobiles on the west coast. Using the name Elmer Rockwood, Chase applied and was accepted. He received a paycheck for driving a Studebaker to Seattle, and when he arrived there, he disappeared once again.

The search for Helen got the most publicity. When Hoover ordered his agents to “find the woman and give her no quarter,” the press interpreted this to mean that Helen was to be shot on sight. Some stories even suggested that she had replaced her husband as Public Enemy Number One. Even worse, a United Press story labeled Helen as “the Tiger Woman” and portrayed her as a “ruthless gun moll of the Bonnie Parker type, leading her cohorts in bank raids and battles with officers of the law.” She was the brains of the gang, they claimed, pushing her husband into a life of crime. The account also claimed that during the gunfight in Barrington, Helen had been loading guns for Nelson and Chase. 

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, but even the FBI started to believe the newspapers. One agent was quoted as saying, “I’d hate to shoot a woman but I’m not following Cowley and Hollis because of ideas over a woman like that.” Assistant Director Clegg echoed the sentiments when reporters asked him what the government’s procedures were in apprehending Helen. He told the newsmen, “From now on, mercy goes by the boards.”

On Thanksgiving morning, November 29, Helen Gillis – America’s most wanted “outlaw” and the so-called “Tiger Woman – resumed wandering around the streets of Chicago. She had spent most of the night sleeping in the doorway of an abandoned building. She eventually ended up in her old neighborhood, where she watched her father, from a safe distance, as he left for work with a small crowd of people around him. The ones that were not reporters were FBI agents, waiting for Helen to show up. Asked if he had a statement for his daughter, Vincent Warwick made a plea that was published the following day: “Come home. Surrender and give up alive or you’ll be mowed down by machine guns. Remember your babies.”

Helen moved on and spent the rest of the day around Humboldt Park. She considered calling her sister-in-law, Julie, but was certain that her telephone was tapped. As evening approached, she dreaded the idea of spending another night on the streets. Near Lafayette School, she stopped a young girl and paid her a dollar to deliver a note to Julie’s apartment. 

At that moment, Julie’s husband, Bob Fitzsimmons was on the phone, as he had been most of the day. This time, he was speaking with Special Agent McKee, who had called to ask about the time and place of Nelson’s funeral. According to Helen’s wishes, the body had been turned over to Sadowski’s funeral home, but no arrangements had been set. McKee urged Fitzsimmons to try and get Helen to turn herself in. Bob agreed to do his best to get the family to contact her. If they were successful, he asked that agents take her into custody in a quiet manner, avoiding publicity if possible.

Just minutes after Fitzsimmons hung up, the girl arrived with Helen’s note. Bob and Julie immediately left the house and when they were certain they were not being followed, they went to the school and found Helen sitting in the dark on the front steps. For the next hour, they drove around as Helen tearfully told them of everything that had taken place. She said that she would have surrendered sooner but she was afraid that she might be shot. She added that she was hopeful that a deal could be arranged with the FBI that would allow her to attend her husband’s funeral.

At 10:25 p.m., Fitzsimmons called the FBI and was put in touch with Special Agent Virgil Peterson. He passed on the wish that Helen wanted to surrender but also asked if she could be allowed to attend her husband’s funeral. Peterson was in no mood to bargain. He told Bob that no promises could be made and demanded that Helen immediately turn herself in. It would be in her best interests, he emphasized, if she surrendered. After Helen agreed, Fitzsimmons told him that they would meet the FBI agents at the southwest corner of Jackson Boulevard and Halsted Street.

A short time later, Helen was taken into custody. The press was not notified of the arrangement. At the Banker’s Building, Helen was surrounded by six agents and hurried into the building through a rear entrance. After checking to be sure that no newsmen were present, she was taken to the nineteenth floor, led along a little-used passage that cut through a storage room, and placed in the main office.

For the next five days, Helen’s presence in the building was kept secret while she was being interrogated by the federal men. Hoover stressed that she must be made to talk and that Earl Connelly, who had stepped into the role of head of the Chicago office after Hoover had moved out Melvin Purvis, should question her constantly so that she would be unable to sleep. But Connelly was not cruel. In fact, Helen later stated that he was very nice and treated her quite well.

Helen did talk, however. She reluctantly shared an abundance of information while carefully avoiding the mention of any crucial names. Many of Nelson’s associates were merely “friends of Les’,” whose names she claimed to not know or could not recall. Their companion at Barrington, Helen said, was “a fellow named George.”

On December 4, word finally leaked to the press that Helen Gillis had been in federal custody since Thanksgiving night. No details were given about her surrender, only that she had been “cooperating” under questioning. The Bureau wanted to hold her longer for further interrogation, but once word got out, they were forced to proceed with the only legal recourse that was available. 

On December 6, Helen was delivered to the Dane County Jail in Madison, Wisconsin, where she had been taken after the raid on Little Bohemia. The next morning she was brought to the judge’s chambers and he asked her why she had violated her probation. She could only tell him, “I knew Les didn’t have long to live, and I wanted to be with him as long as I could.”

More than 150 spectators jammed the courtroom for her hearing. Looking small and frail, Helen admitted that she had violated her probation. Her probation was revoked and she was taken immediately to serve her sentence of a year and a day at the Women’s Correctional Farm at Milan, Michigan. 

Chase was eventually captured and sent to Alcatraz. He was a model prisoner on the “Rock” and well-liked by the staff and other inmates. Over the years, he developed a passion for painting and was regarded by many as an accomplished artist. He also became close friends with the prison chaplain, who obtained painting materials for Chase by selling some of his work in San Francisco.

In 1955, Chase became eligible for parole and the chaplain became his strongest advocate, insisting that Chase was a changed man who could be a useful part of society. J. Edgar Hoover heard of the chaplain’s campaign on Chase’s behalf and immediately started to work against him, ensuring that Chase remained on Alcatraz. At the bottom of a memo, he wrote, “Watch closely and endeavor to thwart efforts of this priest who should be attending to his own business instead of trying to turn loose on society such mad dogs.” Hoover continued to try and ruin Chase’s chances for release for the next 11 years but in October 1966, he finally made parole. He moved to Palo Alto, California, where he lived a quiet life, working as a custodian and performing odd jobs until his death in October 1973 from colon cancer.

Despite being a model prisoner while behind bars, Helen Gillis served almost the entire year of her sentence. On December 6, 1935, federal agents escorted her to San Francisco, where she was arraigned on charges of harboring her late husband, and placed in a cell to await trial. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney R.B. McMillan, who was supposed to prosecute Helen, wrote a letter to the attorney general stating that the 22-year-old widow was clearly no threat to society and appeared so pathetic that further prosecution seemed pointless. Hoover received a copy of the letter and was enraged. He insisted that the wife of “Baby Face” Nelson belonged in prison.

Helen appeared in court on December 13. The young woman who had married Lester Gillis seven years earlier, and who had been the constant companion of “Baby Face” Nelson, quietly pleaded guilty and applied for probation. Her attorney stated that she was only guilty of being a faithful wife to a misguided husband, adding that she had been punished enough. Prosecutor McMillan (likely to Hoover’s chagrin) added his recommendation to her plea for probation, citing her record of excellent behavior over her past year in federal custody. Finally, the judge declared, “I believe you’ve been punished enough. I want you to lead a good life and be a good mother to your children.” Helen was ordered to serve one year’s probation and finally, she was free.

She gave very few interviews in the years that followed, but on one occasion, she summed up her life with Nelson. “I loved Les. When you love a guy, you love him. That’s all there is to it. If I had my life to live over again, I’d do just as I did. I’d stick to my husband any time, any place, no matter what he did.”

Helen grieved, and then she got on with her life. In 1937, she returned to Chicago with her children and spent the next fifty years staying away from publicity. Her children married and moved away, Ronald to LaFox, Illinois, and Darlene to southern Wisconsin. Helen visited them frequently and in her last years, she lived with Ronald.

She never remarried. One week after she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, she died on July 3, 1987, in a hospital in St. Charles. Her last wish was to be buried next to her husband in the Gillis family plot at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in River Grove. 

On that day, a chapter was closed on a piece of “Public Enemy” history as the final participant in the Battle of Barrington was forever laid to rest.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF D.B. COOPER

One of America's Great Lingering Mysteries..

On this date in 1971, one of the most famous disappearances in the annals of American crime took place in thin air between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington when a man since identified only as “D.B. Cooper” parachuted to an unknown fate. Despite an extensive manhunt and an ongoing FBI investigation, Cooper has never been found or even identified. The case remains the only unsolved air piracy in American aviation history. Hundreds of leads have been pursued over the years but no real evidence about Cooper’s whereabouts or identity have ever surfaced. In addition, the bulk of the ransom money that he received has never been found. Its whereabouts – like the true identity of D.B. Cooper – remains unknown. 

The skyjacking began mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving eve, November 24, 1971, at Portland International Airport in Portland, Oregon. A man carrying a black attaché case approached the flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines. He identified himself as "Dan Cooper" and purchased a one-way ticket on Flight 305, a 30-minute trip to Seattle, Washington. Cooper boarded the aircraft and took a seat. He then lit a cigarette and ordered a bourbon and soda. Onboard eyewitnesses recalled a man in his mid-forties, between 5 feet 10 inches and 6 feet tall. He wore a black lightweight raincoat, loafers, a dark suit, a neatly pressed white collared shirt, a black necktie, and a mother of pearl tie pin.

Flight 305, approximately one-third full, took off on schedule at 2:50 pm, local time. Cooper passed a note to Florence Schaffner, the flight attendant situated nearest to him in a jumpseat attached to the aft stair door. Schaffner, assuming the note contained a lonely businessman's phone number, dropped it unopened into her purse. Cooper leaned toward her and whispered very politely, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."

She looked at the note, printed in near, all-capital letters. It noted again that Cooper had a bomb and asked her to sit next to him. She asked to see the bomb. Cooper cracked open his briefcase long enough for her to glimpse eight red cylinders attached to wires, coated with red insulation, and a large cylindrical battery. After closing the briefcase, he dictated his demands: $200,000 in "negotiable American currency"; four parachutes (two primary and two reserve); and a fuel truck standing by in Seattle to refuel the aircraft upon arrival. Schaffner gave Cooper's instructions to the cockpit; when she returned he was wearing dark sunglasses.

Flight 305's pilot, William Scott, contacted Seattle-Tacoma Airport air traffic control, which informed local and Federal authorities. The 36 other passengers were informed that their arrival in Seattle would be delayed because of a "minor mechanical difficulty." Northwest Orient's president, Donald Nyrop, authorized payment of the ransom, and ordered all employees to cooperate fully with the hijacker. The aircraft circled Puget Sound for approximately two hours to allow Seattle police and the FBI time to collect Cooper’s parachutes and ransom money.

Schaffner recalled that Cooper appeared to be familiar with the local terrain; at one point, he remarked, "Looks like Tacoma down there," as the aircraft flew above it. He also mentioned, correctly, that McChord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive from Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Schaffner described him as calm, polite, and well-spoken, not at all consistent with the stereotypes (enraged, hardened criminals or "take-me-to-Cuba" political dissidents) popularly associated with air piracy at the time. Tina Mucklow, another flight attendant, agreed. "He wasn't nervous," she told investigators later. "He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm all the time." He ordered a second bourbon and water, paid his drink tab (and insisted Schaffner keep the change), and offered to request meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle.

He was the most polite criminal since John Dillinger.

FBI agents assembled the ransom money from several Seattle-area banks—10,000 unmarked 20-dollar bills, many with serial numbers beginning with the letter "L" indicating issuance by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, most carrying a "Series 1969-C" designation —and made a microfilm photograph of each of them. Cooper rejected the military-issue parachutes initially offered by authorities, demanding instead civilian parachutes with manually operated ripcords. Seattle police obtained them from a local skydiving school.

At 5:24 pm, Cooper was informed that his demands had been met, and at 5:39 pm the aircraft landed at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. Cooper instructed Scott to taxi the jet to an isolated, brightly lit section of the tarmac and extinguish lights in the cabin to deter police snipers. Northwest Orient's Seattle operations manager, Al Lee, approached the aircraft in street clothes (to avoid the possibility that Cooper might mistake his airline uniform for that of a police officer) and delivered the cash-filled knapsack and parachutes via the aft stairs. Once the delivery was completed, Cooper permitted all passengers, Schaffner, and senior flight attendant Alice Hancock to leave the plane.

While the plane was being refueled, Cooper made plans with the cockpit crew about his escape. They would fly toward Mexico City at minimum airspeed with the landing gear down and at a low altitude so that the cabin remained unpressurized. The aircraft’s range was limited so they would have to take on more fuel before Mexico. Cooper and the crew decided that Reno, Nevada would be the perfect spot. 

At approximately 7:40 p.m. the plane took off again with only Cooper, pilot Scott, flight attendant Mucklow, copilot Rataczak, and flight engineer H. E. Anderson on board. After takeoff, Cooper told Mucklow to join the rest of the crew in the cockpit and remain there with the door closed. As she complied, Mucklow observed Cooper tying something around his waist. At approximately 8:00 p.m., a warning light flashed in the cockpit, indicating that the aft air stairs apparatus had been activated. The crew's offer of assistance via the aircraft's intercom system was curtly refused.The crew soon noticed a subjective change of air pressure, indicating that the aft door was open.

At approximately 8:13 p.m., the aircraft's tail section sustained a sudden upward movement, significant enough to require trimming to bring the plane back to level flight. At approximately 10:15, Scott and Rataczak landed the plane, with the aft air stairs still deployed, at Reno Airport. FBI agents, state troopers, sheriff's deputies, and Reno police surrounded the jet, as it had not yet been determined with certainty that Cooper was no longer aboard; but an armed search quickly confirmed that he was gone. Somewhere in flight, Cooper had vanished into history. 

Aboard the airliner, FBI agents recovered 66 unidentified latent fingerprints, Cooper's black clip-on tie and mother of pearl tie clip, and two of the four parachutes. Witnesses were interviewed, composite drawings were made and investigators began questioning possible suspects. One of the first was an Oregon man with a minor police record named D. B. Cooper, contacted by Portland police on the off-chance that the hijacker had used his real name, or the same alias in a previous crime. His involvement was quickly ruled out; but an inexperienced wire service reporter (Clyde Jabin of UPI by most accounts, rushing to meet an imminent deadline, confused the eliminated suspect's name with the pseudonym used by the hijacker. The mistake was picked up and repeated by numerous other media sources, and the moniker "D. B. Cooper" became lodged in the public's memory.

A precise search area where Cooper jumped from the plane was difficult – even impossible – to determine. When he jumped from the plane, the aircraft was flying through a heavy rainstorm over the Lewis River in southwestern Washington. The best guess put investigators on the southernmost outreach of Mount St. Helens, a few miles southeast of Ariel, Washington, near Lake Merwin, an artificial lake formed by a dam on the Lewis River. Search efforts focused on Clark and Cowlitz Counties, encompassing the terrain immediately south and north, respectively, of the Lewis River in southwest Washington. FBI agents and Sheriff's deputies from those counties searched large areas of the mountainous wilderness on foot and by helicopter. Door-to-door questioning and searches of local farmhouses were also carried out. Other search parties ran patrol boats along Lake Merwin and Yale Lake, the reservoir immediately to its east. No trace of Cooper, nor any of the equipment presumed to have left the aircraft with him, was found. Later, this area would be called into question and numerous others were later suggested. In the end, no one really knew where to look. 

In late 1971 the FBI distributed lists of the ransom serial numbers to financial institutions, casinos, race tracks, and other businesses routinely conducting significant cash transactions, and to law enforcement agencies around the world. Northwest Orient offered a reward of 15 percent of the recovered money, to a maximum of $25,000. In early 1972 U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell released the serial numbers to the general public. A number of other rewards were offered by newspapers and remained in effect until Thanksgiving 1974, and while there were several near-matches, no genuine bills were found.

In 1976 discussion arose over impending expiration of the statute of limitations on the hijacking. Most published legal analysis agreed that it would make little difference, as interpretation of the statute varies considerably from case to case and court to court, and a prosecutor could argue that Cooper had forfeited immunity on any of several valid technical grounds. The question was rendered moot in November when a Portland grand jury returned an indictment against "John Doe, aka Dan Cooper" for air piracy and violation of the Hobbs Act. In effect, the indictment formally initiated prosecution of the hijacker that can be continued, should he be apprehended, at any time in the future.

In February 1980, an eight-year-old boy named Brian Ingram, vacationing with his family on the Columbia River about 9 miles downstream from Vancouver, Washington and 20 miles southwest of Ariel, uncovered three packets of the ransom cash, significantly disintegrated but still bundled in rubber bands, as he raked the sandy riverbank to build a campfire. FBI technicians confirmed that the money was indeed a portion of the ransom, two packets of 100 bills each and a third packet of 90, all arranged in the same order as when given to Cooper.

The discovery launched multiple new rounds of conjecture, and ultimately raised many more questions than it answered. Initial statements by investigators and scientific consultants were founded on the assumption that the bundled bills washed freely into the Columbia River from one of its many connecting tributaries – which confirmed the idea that, despite many theories, no one still had any idea where Cooper landed. 

Multiple alternate theories were advanced. Some surmised that the money had been found at a distant location by someone (or possibly even a wild animal), carried to the river bank, and reburied there. There was also the possibility that the money had been found on the riverbank earlier, perhaps before the dredging, and buried in a superficial sand layer at a later time. The sheriff of Cowlitz County proposed that Cooper accidentally dropped a few of the bundles on the air stairs, which then blew off the aircraft after he jumped, and fell into the Columbia River. One local newspaper editor opined that Cooper, knowing he could never spend the money, dumped it in the river or buried it there (and possibly elsewhere) himself. No hypothesis offered to date satisfactorily explains all of the existing evidence; the means by which the money arrived on the river bank remains unknown.

The D.B. Cooper case has never been forgotten and technically, is still being worked on by the FBI. Over the years, the FBI has periodically made public some of its working hypotheses and tentative conclusions about the case, drawn from witness testimony and the scarce physical evidence.

The official physical description remains unchanged and is considered reliable. Agents believe that Cooper was familiar with the Seattle area and may have been an Air Force veteran, based on testimony that he recognized the city of Tacoma from the air as the jet circled Puget Sound, and his accurate comment to Mucklow that McChord Air Force Base was approximately 20 minutes' driving time from the Seattle-Tacoma Airport —a detail most civilians would not know, or comment upon. His financial situation was very likely desperate: Extortionists and other criminals who steal large amounts of money nearly always do so, according to experts, because they need it urgently; otherwise, the crime is not worth the considerable risk. A minority opinion is that Cooper was "a thrill seeker" who made the jump "just to prove it could be done."

Agents theorize that he took his alias from a popular Belgian comic book series of the 1970s featuring the fictional hero Dan Cooper, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot who took part in numerous heroic adventures, including parachuting. Because the Dan Cooper comics were never translated into English nor imported to the US, they speculate that he may have encountered them during a tour of duty in Europe

The FBI task force believes that Cooper was a careful and shrewd planner: He asked for four parachutes to encourage the assumption that he might compel one or more hostages to jump with him, thus ensuring he would not be deliberately supplied with sabotaged equipment. The amount and form of the ransom appear also to have been carefully calculated in advance: 50- or 100-dollar bills would have drawn attention and been too difficult to pass, and a larger quantity of 20-dollar bills would have been too heavy and bulky for his jump.

Cooper was apparently quite familiar with the 727-100 aircraft: It was the ideal choice at the time, not only for its aft air stairs, but also the high, aftward placement of all three engines, allowing a reasonably safe jump without risk of immediate incineration by jet exhaust. In addition, Cooper knew that the aft air stairs could be lowered during flight—a fact never disclosed to civilian flight crews since there was no situation on a passenger flight that would make it necessary—and that its operation, by a single switch in the rear of the cabin, could not be overridden from the cockpit. He may even have known, particularly if he served in Vietnam or had friends who did, that the Central Intelligence Agency had been using 727s to drop agents and supplies behind enemy lines in Vietnam.

The Bureau feels strongly that he lacked crucial skydiving skills and experience and has argued that from the beginning that Cooper did not survive his jump. Even if he did land safely, agents contend, survival in the mountainous terrain would have been all but impossible without an accomplice at a predetermined landing point, which would have required a precisely timed jump, necessitating, in turn, cooperation from the flight crew. There is no evidence that Cooper had any such help from the crew, nor any clear idea where he was when he jumped into the overcast darkness.

Who was “Dan Cooper?” No one knows. Since 1971, the FBI has processed over a thousand "serious suspects" along with assorted publicity seekers and deathbed confessors, most of whom have been definitively ruled out. To this day, no serious contenders for the identity of D.B. Cooper have ever surfaced and it’s unlikely that he – and the rest of the ransom money – will ever be found. 

But like September 11, 2001… the D.B. Cooper skyjacking changed air travel forever. It marked the beginning of the end of unfettered and uninspected airline travel. Despite initiation of the federal Sky Marshal program the previous year, 31 hijackings were committed in U.S. airspace in 1972, 19 of them for the specific purpose of extorting money. (Most of the rest were attempts to reach Cuba) In 15 of the extortion cases the hijackers also demanded parachutes. In early 1973, the FAA began requiring airlines to search all passengers and their bags. Amid multiple lawsuits charging that such searches violated Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure, federal courts ruled that they were acceptable when applied universally, and when limited to searches for weapons and explosives. Our bags have been searched ever since and the Cooper skyjacking remained in the back of many minds until much more tragic events in 2001 changed things once again.

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. CRIPPEN

Was he Really a Murderer?

On this date in 1910, American-born homeopathic physician and salesman Hawley Harvey Crippen (usually known simply as Dr. Crippen in crime annals) was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London for the murder of his wife, Cora. He has the dubious distinction of being the first criminal to be captured with the aid of wireless communication. 

Crippen was born in Coldwater, Michigan in September 1862, He graduated from the Michigan School of Homeopathic Medicine in 1884. Crippen's first wife, Charlotte, died of a stroke in 1892, and Crippen entrusted his parents, living in California, with the care of his two-year-old son, Hawley Otto.

Having qualified as a homeopathic doctor, Crippen started to practice in New York, where in 1894 he married his second wife, Corrine "Cora" Turner, who used the stage name of “Belle Elmore.” She was a would-be music hall singer who openly had affairs with other men. Needless to say, their marriage was not a happy one. 

In 1894 Crippen started working for Dr. Munyon's, a homeopathic pharmaceutical company and three years later, he and his wife moved to England. His American medical credentials were not sufficient to allow him to practice medicine in the UK (and today, wouldn’t have allowed him to practice here either) so Crippen went to work as a distributor of patent medicines. Cora went back to work too and began socializing with a number of famous variety players of the time, including Lil Hawthorne of "The Hawthorne Sisters" and Lil's husband/manager John Nash.

In 1899, Crippen lost his job with Munyon’s for spending too much time managing his wife's stage career. He became manager of Drouet's Institution for the Deaf, where he met Ethel Le Neve, a young typist, around 1903. No one knows when their affair began but it is known that she was his mistress by 1905. In that year, the Crippens moved into a house on Camden Road and began taking in lodgers to supplement Crippen’s income. After Cora started an affair with one of the lodgers, Crippen began sleeping with Ethel. 

After a party at their home on January 31, 1910, Cora disappeared. Hawley Crippen claimed that she had returned to America, and then later added that she had died, and had been cremated, in California. 

Meanwhile, his lover, Ethel moved into the house on Camden Road and began openly wearing Cora's clothes and jewelry. Police first heard of Cora's disappearance from her friend, sideshow strongwoman Kate Williams, better known as Vulcana, but began to take the matter more seriously when asked to investigate by personal friends of Scotland Yard Superintendent Frank Froest, John Nash and his entertainer wife, Lil Hawthorne.

The Crippen house was searched, but nothing was found. Crippen was interviewed by Chief Inspector Walter Dew and after the interview (and a quick search of the house), Dew was satisfied. However, Crippen and Le Neve didn’t know that police suspicions had been relieved and fled in panic to Brussels, where they spent the night at a hotel. The following day, they went to Antwerp and boarded the Canadian Pacific liner SS Montrose for Canada.

Their disappearance led the police at Scotland Yard to perform another three searches of the house. During the fourth and final search, they found the remains of a human body, buried under the brick floor of the basement. Sir Bernard Spilsbury found traces of the calming drug scopolamine in the remains. The corpse was identified by a piece of skin from its abdomen – however, the head, limbs, and skeleton were never recovered.

Meanwhile, Crippen and Le Neve were crossing the Atlantic on the Montrose, with Le Neve disguised as a boy. Captain Henry George Kendall recognized the fugitives and, just before steaming out of range of the land-based transmitters, had Telegraphist Lawrence Ernest Hughes send a wireless telegram to the British authorities: "Have strong suspicions that Crippen London cellar murderer and accomplice are among saloon passengers. Mustache taken off growing beard. Accomplice dressed as boy. Manner and build undoubtedly a girl." Had Crippen travelled 3rd class, he would have probably escaped Kendall's notice. Dew boarded a faster White Star liner, the SS Laurentic, arrived in Quebec, Canada, ahead of Crippen, and contacted the Canadian authorities.

As the Montrose entered the St. Lawrence River, Dew came aboard disguised as a pilot. Canada was then still a dominion within the British Empire. If Crippen, an American citizen, had sailed to the United States instead, even if he had been recognized, it would have taken extradition proceedings to bring him to trial. 

Kendall invited Crippen to meet the pilots as they came aboard. Dew removed his pilot's cap and said, "Good morning, Dr. Crippen. Do you know me? I'm Chief Inspector Dew from Scotland Yard." After a pause, Crippen replied, "Thank God it's over. The suspense has been too great. I couldn't stand it any longer." He then held out his wrists for the handcuffs. Crippen and Le Neve were arrested on board the Montrose on July 31, 1910. Crippen was returned to England on board the SS Megantic.

Crippen and Ethel were tried separately in London. Ethel was tried as an accessory and was later acquitted, but Crippen would not be so lucky – no matter how strange the trial turned out to be. 

The pathologists appearing for the prosecution, including Bernard Spilsbury, could not identify the remains or even discern whether they were male or female. However, Spilsbury found a piece of skin with what he claimed to be an abdominal scar consistent with Cora's medical history. Large quantities of the toxic compound hyoscine were found in the remains, and Crippen had bought the drug before the murder from a local chemist.

Crippen's defense maintained that Cora had fled to America with another man named Bruce Miller. They also said that Cora and Crippen had only been living in the house since 1905, suggesting a previous owner of the house was responsible for the placement of the remains. The defense also asserted that the abdominal scar identified by pathologist Spilsbury was really just folded tissue, for it among other things had hair follicles growing from it, something scar tissue could not have.

Other evidence presented by the prosecution included a piece of a man's pajama top supposedly from a pair Cora had given Crippen a year earlier. The pajama bottoms were found in Crippen's bedroom, but not the top. The fragment included the manufacturer's label Jones Bros. Curlers with bleached hair consistent with Cora's; both were found with the remains. 

Throughout the proceedings and at his sentencing, Crippen showed no remorse for his wife and concern for only his lover's reputation. After just 27 minutes of deliberations, the jury found Crippen guilty of murder. He was hanged at 9:00 a.m. on November 23, 1910. At his request, a photograph of Ethel Le Neve was placed in his coffin with him. 

Crippen was dead – but the story doesn’t end there. 

Many doubts remain as to whether or not Crippen truly murdered his wife. The novelist Raymond Chandler commented that it seemed unbelievable that Crippen would successfully dispose of his wife's limbs and head, and then, rather stupidly, bury her torso under the cellar floor of his home.

In October 2007, Michigan State University forensic scientist David Foran claimed that mitochondrial DNA evidence showed that the remains found beneath the cellar floor in Crippen's home were not those of Cora Crippen. This research was based on genealogical identification of three matrilineal relatives of Cora Crippen (great-nieces, located by US genealogist Beth Wills), whose mitochondrial DNA haplotype was compared with DNA extracted from a slide with flesh taken from the torso in Crippen's cellar, carefully preserved in a London hospital museum. This has raised new questions about the actual identity of the remains found in the cellar, and — by extension — over Crippen's guilt.

One theory is that Crippen may have been carrying out illegal abortions; it may be that one of his patients died and that he disposed of the body in the way he was accused of disposing of his wife. However, the remains were also tested for sex at Michigan State, using a highly sensitive assay of the Y chromosome. On this basis, the researchers found that the body parts were those of a man.

The research team also argued that a scar on the abdomen of the body, which the Crown Prosecution interpreted as a scar consistent with one Mrs. Crippen was known to have, convincing the jury that the remains were Mrs. Crippen’s, was incorrectly identified, due to the tissue's having hair follicles, whereas scars do not (a point which Dr. Crippen's defense argued at the time).

These recent arguments for Crippen's innocence have been disputed by some commentators, although in no instance has it been disputed by actual scientists. It has been argued that the DNA sample could have been tainted or mislabeled, or alternatively that the alleged relatives were not actually blood relatives of Mrs. Crippen. However, the research has since been published in the January 2011 issue of the premiere Journal of Forensic Sciences, following careful peer-review by highly qualified forensic scientists.

Numerous requests have been made for samples of the blond hair found at the scene (and now preserved in New Scotland Yard's museum) to conduct DNA testing to see if they are Cora's. Obtaining a DNA sample from these sources would greatly lessen any questions of contamination. New Scotland Yard has repeatedly denied his request. However, New Scotland Yard was willing to test a hair from the crime scene for a fee, which in turn was rejected by the investigators as "over the top," making this an option which is still open if New Scotland Yard continues to extend the offer.

Some have suggested that the police planted the body parts and particularly the fragment of the pajama top at the scene to incriminate Crippen. Others suggested motive is that Scotland Yard was under tremendous public pressure to find and bring to trial a suspect for this heinous crime – but it should be noted that the case did not become public until after the remains were found.

Was Dr. Crippen guilty? It may not matter. In December 2009, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, having reviewed the case, declared that the court of appeal will not hear the case to pardon Crippen posthumously.

THE "CHRISTMAS TREE SHIP" TRAGEDY

Chicago's Year Without the Christmas Trees

While the holidays are usually a time of cheer and happiness, the people of Chicago learned of a Christmas-related tragedy on November 22, 1912 when the Rouse Simmons -- the famed "Christmas Tree Ship" -- went down in a storm on Lake Michigan. The tragedy changed the face of the holidays for the people of Chicago in an unexpected way. 

For many years, one of the great traditions of Chicago was the arrival of the famous "Christmas Tree Ship." Starting in 1887, Captain Herman Schuenemann and his brother, August, began returning with bundles of their fragrant cargo. Schuenemann sold Christmas trees and hand-made wreaths from his mooring on the Chicago River near the Clark Street Bridge. 

The tallest trees drawn from the shipment were presented to the grateful owners of downtown theaters and in return, the brothers received complimentary season passes. The rest were sold to celebrating citizens, many of whom spoke of their fond memories of the Schuenemanns and the Rouse Simmons, their "Christmas Tree Ship" for generations. By 1912, Chicagoans anxiously looked forward to the ship's arrival and anticipated searching for the perfect tree among the wares, which ranged in price from seventy-five cents to a dollar. Herman affixed a hand-painted sign to the dock each year, reminding his customers that he had ventured into the deep snows of the Upper Peninsula to hand-pick just the right trees for his fine friends back in Chicago.

Herman Schuenemann, the master of the Rouse Simmons, his wife, and three young daughters lived in a small apartment at 1638 North Clark Street, just a little over a mile north of the river. His oldest daughter, Elsie, was devoted to her father and had recently become active in the family's seasonal business. 

It was a business that was not without risk. The month of November, when the shipment of trees had to be sailed across the Great Lakes, was a particularly treacherous one for Lake Michigan. High winds and deadly gales had sent many ships to the bottom of Lake Michigan and in 1898, Captain Schuenemann's brother, August, went down with all hands while manning the schooner S. Thal in the waters off north suburban Glencoe. 

But his brother's death, and the threat of more dangerous weather, failed to deter Herman Schuenemann. He knew the Rouse Simmons was a sturdy ship. Built in 1868, the wooden schooner was fitted with three masts and had been intended for use in the lumber industry. Its large hold made it perfect for storing hundreds of Christmas trees each season.

On November 22, 1912, Captain Schuenemann, with a crew and passenger list of 16 and between 27,000 and 50,000 trees tied and bundled below decks, set sail from Manistique, Mich., bound for Chicago. The skies were overcast and high winds were predicted but the Rouse Simmons headed straight into the open waters of the lake. When a storm broke, the wooden ship was hopelessly trapped, far from shore. The ship foundered in the rough water and eventually, the sails blew out and the ice-covered masts collapsed. A short time later, the Rouse Simmons disappeared. 

Captain Herman Schuenemann was never heard from again, although many of his trees were found washed ashore in Wisconsin a few days after the ship vanished. The people of Chicago, and the family of Captain Schuenemann, were grief-stricken and stunned. 

Newspaper reporters found Elsie Schuenemann and her mother weaving Christmas garlands that came from the splintered trees recovered by Wisconsin residents on the lake's shoreline. Facing destitution, they sold the garlands to the public. Every dollar the family possessed had been tied up in the Rouse Simmons and its ill-fated cargo. The Chicago Inter-Ocean newspaper, with help from the Lake Seaman's Union, organized an emergency relief fund for the family. 

Elsie told the newspaper reporters, "I am going to attempt to carry on father's Christmas tree business. I will get friends to help me and send trees by rail to Chicago and sell them from the foot of Clark Street. Ever since I was a little girl, Papa has sold them there, and lots and lots of people never think of going anywhere else for their trees."

As a sales location for the trees, W.C. Holmes Shipping, for whom Schuenemann had operated a vessel in his younger days, offered the family the use of a schooner, the Oneida. It was moored at the Clark Street Bridge where the Rouse Simmons had rested for years and after the Rouse Simmons disaster, the new ship was filled with trees each year and the cherished Christmas tradition was unbroken.

Meanwhile, in 1912, the search for clues and survivors from the Rouse Simmons continued. The U.S. Treasury Department offered the use of one of their cutters to search the small islands of Lake Michigan for any sign of the small ship. The hopes and prayers of the families of the crew and passengers went with the cutter, but those hopes quickly faded. 

No sign of the men were found, but two bottle messages were reportedly recovered. The first was found on a beach at Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on December 13, 1912. It read, "Friday. Everybody goodbye. I guess we are all through. Sea washed over our deck load Tuesday. During the night, the small boat washed over. Ingvald and Steve fell overboard on Thursday. God help us. Herman Schuenemann." Ingvald Newhouse was a deck hand taken on board just before sailing and Stephen Nelson was the first mate and son of Captain Charles Nelson, who was also lost. 

The second bottle note, this one written by Captain Nelson, was found years later, in 1927. It read, "These lines were written at 10:30 p.m. Schooner R.S. ready to go down about 20 miles southeast of Two Rivers Point, between 15 and 20 miles off shore. All hands lashed to one line. Goodbye."

From time to time, other curious artifacts, including a human skull believed to have come from the "Christmas Tree Ship," were washed up along beaches or snagged in fishermen's nets. On April 23, 1924, Captain Schuenemann's wallet, containing business cards and newspapers clippings, was recovered at Two Rivers Point. But the final location of the Rouse Simmons remained a mystery until October 1971. A diver named G. Kent Bellrichard of Milwaukee found the remarkably preserved wreck under 180 feet of water off the coast of Two Rivers. 

As to the fate of the rest of the Schuenemann family, Elsie made good on her promise to continue the tradition of the "Christmas Tree Ship." They maintained the tree lot at the Clark Street Bridge every holiday season until 1933, bringing happiness to thousands of Chicago families every year.