Harry Kirby, Part Two: His Other Crimes
A daring escape
They had timed it perfectly. As soon as the jailer left his post for supper, they sawed through the final threads of steel that were still holding them in their cells. They convened in the hallway and began their work on window bars. They knew there was no turning back—the damage to their cells was obvious and nothing that they could do with their rudimentary tools would fix the missing bars back in place. If they were caught, their tools would be taken, they would be separated, and any hope of escape would be extinguished. They worked with urgency, using bar soap to dampen the noise and lubricate the blades, as the teeth of the saws took bite after bite out of the window bar steel. They had worn blisters on their hands from working with the awkward little blades. Blood from the fingers made them hard to grasp. The minutes wore on, but their progress was swift, and inside of a half an hour, they had breached the window, poking their heads out over the jail yard in the summer sky.
They looked down—the height had seemed much shorter looking up—but they were prepared. The ringleader of the two, Harry Schroeder, had MacGyvered a rope out of his bed’s blanket, and he tied one end to a remaining bar. The other end he cast out the window and it dangled, limp—the next stop on their way to freedom. They shimmied down to the yard, dropping the final few to the ground, trying to land as quietly as possible. All that remained was to scale the perimeter wall. It was a sheer concrete face, and there were no handholds, but Schroeder had a plan. He grabbed a long pole from the rec yard, leaned it up in a nook in the foreboding fence, where a column created a 90 degree inside corner, and began to climb the pole. His pal, Joe, helped bear his weight, pushing him up as he climbed, sharing the burden. His knuckles scraped and tore against the rough face, but he pulled himself up and turned to help his friend. Schroeder laid flat on the top of the thick wall and extended his arm; Joe was just able to reach his hand, but once they were clasped, arm to arm, he knew they would top the wall.
Schroeder grinned and looked over at his accomplice. “So long, Joe.” He hung from the wall, dropped, and took off on foot, putting as much distance between him and the jail as possible—he knew they didn’t have long before they would be hunted by the warden.
Schroeder has some choice words, but Joe disappears
Harry Schroeder and Joseph Blunt were both thieves. They had been indicted on charges of grand larceny and were being held at the Queens jail in New York City awaiting trial. Schroeder, after his daring escape, returned to his home in Brooklyn, and was picked up by detectives one block from his house 6 days later, on September 4th, 1919. In the interviews that he gave detectives after his return, you could almost hear it in his voice—he planned to be caught. He liked the attention, though, and he wanted an incredible story to tell his kids and his grandkids.
Schroeder said,
“This guy Houdini ain’t the only one that can pull sumpin’ snappy when he’s on the inside lookin’ out. Guess I might give him a coupla new turns for that act of his.”
He explained how he and Joe made their break to the detectives:
“I’m not stuck on this Queens jail. [It] ain’t up-to-date like it ought to be, so I decides to blow. Young Joe Blunt says he’d like to get into a classier jail, too, and him and me fixed things up. I got a little queen that calls on me at Queens [jail], and I tell her just the kind of saws I’ll need if I’m gonna get to the Belmont [horse race]. She bring the proper saws—five of ‘em—and chucks ‘em over the garden wall into the rec yard of the jail. She also throws in a coupla cakes of soap, and that night Joe Blunt and me go to work on the bars.
They was the softest bars I ever leaned on. We used the soap to put the soft pedal on the noise and it didn’t take us long to lacerate the bars in our second-rate cells.
I wish that [you guys] had laid off me ‘til tomorrow ‘cause I had a coupla babies goin’ across at Belmont today.”
Schroeder didn’t get to watch his horses at the famous Long Island track, though, because he was booked again and had to continue his wait in the “second-rate” jail.
Joe Blunt, on the other hand, slipped away from authorities and was never apprehended.
Joe had been in jail for a few months—since early June 1919—for burglarizing a house in Staten Island. After being arrested, he was connected to another crime and further charged with robbing a home in Queens.
Joe’s new life at Letchworth Sanatorium
Free again, he left New York City, but not before collecting some valuables he had stashed, and soon found his way to Thiells, New York, a town north of the city on the west bank of the Hudson River, where he found work at the Letchworth Village Sanatorium.
Knowing that authorities were looking for a Joseph Blunt, he gave them a new name: James Joseph Crawford. Still, going casually by “Joe”, but with a new surname.
Authorities at the Sanatorium later said that he, quote, appeared “from nowhere, and seemed mentally so far above such a position that they suspected he was ‘hiding himself away.’”
He was an attendant to the nearly 1,400 psychiatric patients at Letchworth. It was a large institution and quite new, having just opened 8 years prior. It was pioneered to offer more humane institutional care for those who could not live on their own. It was a sprawling campus consisting of many buildings connected by walking trails and gardens. Patients grew their own crops and tended cows, pigs and chickens. At the time, it was a progressive and ambitious project to care for the mentally disabled.
Not long after arriving there, he started to have feelings for one of the patients: Lillian White. She was about 24-years-old; he was 38-years-old, 14 years her senior. She was a good patient who had a number of privileges on campus, and her job was to work as a waitress. According to other patients, they had a, quote, “fiery love affair”. Lillian would slip love notes under his plate in the cafeteria and he would do the same with her. Authorities noticed, and confronted Joe about the affair, but he denied everything. They had a hard enough time staffing the facility, and they needed all of the capable help that they could get. Though against policy, they were willing to overlook staff-patient dalliances.
Joe continued to mingle with Lillian and other patients and lived up to his reputation as a ladies-man. Other staff at the institution gave him a nickname: Bluebeard. The term originated from a macabre fable about a man who killed five wives and kept their bodies in his home, but it was also used to describe a serial romanticizer and heartbreaker.
Joe’s roommate and friend later told reporters that he would get cards from all over the country from women he had once dated. A couple of 1920’s showgirls, “Jean and Alice” were the authors of many of the cards. “When are you coming to love us again?” one read. Another girl, named “Betty”, castigated him for his neglect and begged him not to desert her for other women.
Thiells, New York, was nestled at the foothills of the nearby mountain range, the Hudson Highlands. The nearest mountaintop to Letchworth Village is present-day Cheesecote Mountain. Joe went exploring around the peak and had discovered a large slab of rock that had been eroded below it, forming a small cave. He dug it out further and enclosed it, creating a crude shelter. He stole rugs from Letchworth, stones from a nearby home’s construction site, and other furnishings to make it a little more hospitable. He would wrap up tightly in blankets to ward off the cold, and make fires for warmth. He would invite patients out to his mountainside home for romantic rendezvous.
In with the new, out with the old
In the summer of 1921, a new nurse arrived in Joe’s ward named Ruby Howe, and he was smitten with the 23-year-old woman. He showered her with attention, and Lillian was enraged. One day, in a violent and angry outburst, Lillian bit Joe’s hand severely, and the infection that followed threatened his life. Staff recalled that he had kept his hand bandaged for a long time afterward before recovering. And though the infection had abated, the grudge that he held against Lillian had not.
Lillian continued to write love notes to him, and at the end of summer, on September 16th, 1921, he invited her out to his mountain retreat one last time. His cave was about a hundred feet from the precipice of the mountain, and he coaxed her to the top of the mountain, where, using a small stone as a bludgeon, he beat Lillian White to death. He stripped her of her clothes and burnt them and left her body to rot.
Who noticed Lillian’s absence?
Lillian’s absence was noticed right away, and she was marked as “missing” by Letchworth authorities. And though they made a cursory search for her, it didn’t cause alarm. With an average of 5-10 patients going missing each month, they simply didn’t have the resources to pursue each of them diligently. Also, the day before she disappeared, she was scolded by a matron at the institution for writing love letters, and they attributed her sudden disappearance to the reprimand.
Other than the institution, the only other people that would go looking for her was her family.
Lillian was one of 17 children, 14 of which were still alive at the time of her death. Both of her parents had died, and though she had a huge family, she wasn’t close to many of them. She had two older sisters that she would correspond with in Brooklyn.
In the last known letter of Lillian’s, dated September 11th, 1921, she wrote to her sister Catherine. She seemed lonely in it, asking for her help to get some of her other siblings to write her back, and asking for some money for things like a pair of shoes for the dance—brown high-top laced ones—and a pair of brown stockings. She asked Catherine to ask her brother John, quote, “if he thinks anything of me” to send her what she was looking for. She was envious of her nieces and nephews going to school and wished that she could someday return.
Although efforts may have been made by her family, there was no news about them.
Joe’s flight from Letchworth
As Lillian’s body was picked clean by the raptors on the mountaintop, Joe’s romance with Ruby blossomed. One day that winter, Joe brought Ruby out to Cheesecote Mountain, under a pine tree not far from where Lillian’s body lay, and proposed to her. She said yes, and on February 16th, 1922, they went to nearby Nyack, New York, to get married, but they kept the marriage a secret. On the marriage certificate, Joe listed his profession as “embalmer”—he claimed to Ruby that he had been trained in embalming and had worked in New York as an apprentice to an undertaker.
Three weeks after their marriage, Letchworth was investigating several thefts, and suspicions were pointing to Joe. He told Ruby that he feared that “a process of elimination would put the responsibility on him.” So he fled. Ruby later said, quote, “He didn’t send me any word or tell me where he was going, and I had no idea what had become of him; the people there were saying he had probably committed suicide, and I guess that’s what I thought, too.” Ruby was crushed: she was madly in love with Joe and he had deserted her.
After a month with no word from Joe, Ruby decided to return to Maine to be with her mom and her stepdad, who lived in Saco/Biddeford.
Lillian’s remains discovered, a sculpture created
Just as Ruby was leaving, a discovery was made at Letchworth: a boy was picking early spring flowers on Cheesecote Mountain and had found Lillian’s decaying corpse. The boy was the son of the night watchman at Letchworth, and he ran down the mountain to fetch his dad. His father climbed the mountain with a sack and brought the remains down to the Sanatorium. It wasn’t the first body of a young woman discovered on the mountain—another had been found three years prior. The coroner studied the remains and estimated that they had been on the mountaintop for about a year. The woman’s skull had been crushed and the coroner ruled it a homicide.
Letchworth officials were quick to deny that it could have been any of their runaways, and the identity of the body remained a mystery.
This wasn’t the first scandal to happen near Letchworth, and some influential men in nearby New City wanted answers. They contacted the police commissioner of the NYPD, who assigned a special detective to the case: Mary Hamilton—the first female detective in the history of the NYPD. She recalled that one of her colleagues had assisted in a previous case with an identification from skeletal remains, and so she reached out to him for help.
Former police captain, Grant Williams, took the skull and made a sculpture from it. He described the process in detail to a reporter from the Washington Times, a DC paper. First, he sterilized the skull with formaldehyde, and then he crafted a crude neck, made from a wooden curtain rod. Then he mixed up a batch of plasteline, a non-hardening modeling clay, and coated the entire skull with about a 1/2” thick coating, carefully following the contours of the bones. From there, using geometry and anatomical proportions, he crafted the nose, the lips, and the eyes. Grant took a few liberties as an artist to try and bring harmony to the whole visage, but he endeavored to be as scientific as possible in his work.
As a stroke of good luck, her entire scalp, with the hair attached, was recovered from the mountaintop because of the unusual way it decomposed, and it was utilized in the recreation. Shoulders and a neck were approximated and tastefully clothed, and, in two days, the work was complete.
Mary Hamilton took the entire assembly in a large hat box to Letchworth Village and showed it to Dr. Little, the man in charge. He recognized it right away as a missing female patient: Lillian White. Mary took the sculpture to the cottage where Lillian had been living 8 months prior, and showed it to the staff there. Two of the attendants recognized the sculpture as Lillian as well. With the three positive identifications from the sanatorium, she then traveled back to New York City to visit with Lillian’s family.
Mary lived in the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, and she asked Lillian’s older sisters, Rose and Catherine, to come from Brooklyn over to her apartment to take a look at the sculpture. They arrived on Thursday, May 4th, 1922, and their recognition was instantaneous—they exclaimed, “My god, it is Lillian! I can tell by the face! It is the face of my dead sister!” Catherine, overcome with emotion, fainted on the spot. A reporter who was present, wrote, “her face, gray as death from the shock, bore a striking resemblance to the gruesome clay model.” When she revived, she swore vengeance upon whoever had murdered her baby sister.
According to contemporary newspaper journalists, this was the second time in, quote, “criminal history”, that a likeness was constructed from a skeleton and used for identification, and papers across the country reported on the achievement.
The hunt for Joe Crawford, and the revelation of a new identity
Mary, in concert with local law enforcement, began looking into Lillian’s past, and Joe Crawford’s name emerged right away. The coroner believed that the blows to Lillian’s skull were made by a left-handed man, and though Joe was right-handed, staff recalled that the recovery to his right hand would have forced him to use his left. Mary quickly discovered his cave, and even found amongst Lillian’s personal belongings (that were retained by Letchworth), a snapshot of Joe seated at the mouth of the cave looking out through a telescope. Mary was so interested in the case that she devoted, quote, “all her time to it for months without compensation.” She was convinced that Joe was responsible.
They tried to track him down, but he had vanished from Letchworth about 2 months prior as the investigation into the thefts was looming over him, and he had left little trace.
Once again, Joe was on the run, and started a new life. He shed his old identity, and donned a new one. But there was one piece of his old life that he could not live without…
After several weeks without contact, Joe called on his new bride, Ruby, in Saco, and explained to her that his name wasn’t really Joe Crawford at all. With profuse apologies and grand promises for the future, he persuaded her to take on his new name, and in April of 1922, she became Mrs. Harry Kirby.
The controversy over Lillian’s body
Despite the interest from the NYPD and from Lillian’s family, the district attorney overseeing the judicial system in Thiells, opposed the investigation at every turn. He was personal friends with Dr. Little at Letchworth, and though it wasn’t confirmed by the DA or by the doctor, others in their circle confirmed that there was a general desire to avoid the bad press of a murder investigation that was linked to their institution.
A Rockland County Grand Jury was convened to review the evidence about Lillian’s remains and to make a legal determination of their identity. A dentist testified during the hearing that his records of Lillian’s teeth did not match those recovered from the skeleton. What he didn’t reveal until later was that the charts that he was using were out of date, and that there were more current charts available in Letchworth’s records.
Lillian’s family was unhappy with the outcome for several reasons, not least of which was because they would not be allowed to take possession of the body and give her a proper burial.
They filed a writ of habeus corpus with the New York Supreme Court, asking a judge to give them possession of the body. Justice Tompkins ruled that the body was, in fact, Lillian White, and gave them legal authority to claim the body. Despite the ruling, the DA still refused to investigate the murder, and even opposed releasing the body to the family. Ultimately the DA buried the body in a pauper’s field in Mt. Repose Cemetery, despite the many requests of the family.
Harry’s life in Maine (leading up to Aida’s death)
Joe had left a swath of destruction in his wake and had managed to escape again and start a new life with his wife, Ruby, as Harry Kirby.
By the end of the year, they were greeted with a baby—young Maxine Anderson Kirby. They were living in Lewiston at the time, and Harry saw an advertisement in the paper by the Winslow Farm looking for help. He applied and got a job, and by spring of the next year (May of 1923), they had settled in Winthrop. A local merchant later recalled that Harry was “in a bad way financially and lived in the poorest part of town.” Harry had a variety of jobs over the next two years: the oil cloth factory, tending and selling their own vegetables to town residents, as a farm hand in Rome and Monmouth, at a woolen mill, as a woodsman, and as a caretaker of summer cottages.
The farm owner in Monmouth later recalled that Harry had told him, “Don’t get me mad because I’m a bad man.” The farm owner, Mr. Moseley, responded “You might kill me, but you don’t scare me.” He also remembered that Harry would buy aspirin pills in bottles of 300, raising suspicions about whether Harry was abusing the drugs.
One time Harry left town, saying he was going back to Massachusetts to settle an estate. When he reappeared he said that he had gotten an inheritance of $7,000 and wasn’t planning to work for awhile.
For long stints of time, Maxine would stay with Ruby’s family in Saco to be cared for by her mother and stepfather.
In the summer of 1924, Harry met Ruby’s good friend from school, Jane Gray, who was a schoolteacher that lived in Watertown, Massachusetts, and had a family camp on Lake Maranacook. She gave Harry and Ruby permission to use their cottage when their family wasn’t using it. And it was during this same summer that Harry became acquainted with Aida—he grew vegetables at his home in town, and sold them to residents.
Over that winter, they lived in the city of Winthrop for one final season. Ruby moved back to Saco to be with her daughter and her family, and in May of 1925, Harry moved into Jane Gray’s family cottage.
And it was then, two weeks later, that he would hideout in Emma and Aida’s cottage and ambush them after their return from town, killing Aida and setting fire to her cottage.
Harry’s arrest in Newburyport
Harry willingly went with the officers in Newburyport. He knew there was no use of a struggle. They later recalled that he was a perfect gentleman.
He quickly denied any involvement with the killing of Aida. He said, “I have no blood on my hands. I found the body and took it to the Gray cottage to protect someone.” There were conflicting accounts of where he found her body: it was reported that he told officers that he found her body in the woods, and other reports that he found her body in a cottage. He said “I did this to protect someone else. The reason I came away was because I wanted to protect somebody, but I won’t tell who that person is yet. I will make a full statement later.” He bragged, “I invited several people to enter the cottage after the body was brought there, but nobody took the offer.” One of the first things that he said to investigators was that Ruby wasn’t involved. He said, “She has nothing to do with this case. She knows nothing about it.” He didn’t want her “persecuted” by authorities. He confessed “I’m a crook but not a murderer.”
As he was being taken into the Newburyport jail, he made a passing comment that he had “nothing particular to live for,” concerning the jailers that he might try and take his own life. There was a guard posted outside of his cell on suicide watch.
Harry was searched for evidence and nothing was found showing any connection to the case. They found some photos of Ruby and his daughter, Maxine, and he was allowed to keep them. He consoled himself in his cell, gazing at the photos and talking to them.
William Coffin, a reporter for the Boston Globe, wrote, “Harry ate a breakfast of ham sandwiches, doughnuts, a piece of pie and coffee with a relish and zest which in no way indicated a disturbed conscience was affecting his appetite.”
The reporter was given access to Harry for an interview, and Harry reiterated what he had told police earlier:
“I thought nobody would find the body. I realize I am up against a serious situation. I’ve got nothing to live for now; all I wanted was two more days. My wife is in no manner implicated. She is a good woman and I hope she will not be persecuted for she has absolutely no knowledge of the facts in this case.”
He then described his journey on the run, throwing some soft jabs at the police:
“I then started away and made my journey openly and made no attempts to hide or keep out of sight. I passed close by many policemen and not one of them even looked at me. No one interfered with me or even spoke with me, except when I first spoke to them. I arrived in Newburyport Saturday night and walked about a thousand feet across to 34 Market St and asked for lodgings over the weekend. I said my name was James Johnson. It was a comfortable room, and I retired early and slept well.”
Governor of Maine Brewster called the Newburyport police, skeptical that they had apprehended Harry, chastened by the thought that despite their herculean efforts, Harry had managed to escape the state. His doubts were extinguished when Newburyport police checked to see if Harry’s upper teeth were false (which they were). A Newburyport resident who had a camp on Lake Maranacook who was familiar with Harry also ID’d him, removing any doubt.
Harry continued with William, indignantly:
“I don’t see why they are making all this fuss about me. I am the man they are after. I am going back. What is the matter with those Maine folks? What’s wrong with Governor Brewster? I’m his man alright and I am going back.”
Harry credited the picture of him published in the Boston Globe for bringing his capture. William wrote, “He laughed and remarked that it was a good likeness and that a person might easily recognize him after seeing it.”
Harry was watched closely and a city physician was called to administer lithium bromide (a sedative) when he showed, quote, “signs of nervousness.”
A string of visitors come to see Harry
Harry had more visitors. Other than personal calls from the governor of Maine, and a feature reporter from the Boston Globe, the mayor of Newburyport came by to see him. Reporters watched their interaction from the hallway outside his cell. At one point, Harry insisted that his hands were clean, and he held them up, showing that there were no blood stains.
The parade of visitors continued.
The Ponds, who were responsible for his capture, came by to bid Harry a tearful farewell. Harry told them, “The happiest moments of my life I spent in your house. I am very sorry for the trouble I have caused you. I want you to get the $1,000 reward. I shall always be glad that I went to church with you, and I hold no anger.” Frank Pond said, “I should have felt it my duty, even if it had been my own son.”
Even the reverend who the Ponds introduced to Harry came by to see him. He brought him a handwritten letter and a book about the Bible, and admonished him to “come clean if he were guilty”.
Aida’s brother, Guy Hayward, and her brother-in-law (and business magnate), Fred Moulton, visited Harry as well. After the chief of police had them searched, he allowed them to see their star prisoner. Fred got close to the bars, and raged at Harry, “So this is the dirty rat! I came here to get a good look at you—I’ll get you someday!” The chief pulled the visitors away from the bars and sent them back to the waiting room.
Reporters wanted a photo of Harry, and he had refused it several times in his cell. Finally, he acquiesced and asked to be allowed to make himself presentable. He changed clothes, putting on his collar and a tie, and he brushed his hair.
He complained that his decorative stickpin had been lost, something that he would wear on his lapel or his tie. He had the photo taken without it, but the police found it after some searching. After it was returned to him, he presented it to one of the officers as a gift and said, “I won’t be needing it anymore.” He wore it in the corridors of the police station for the rest of the day and was one of the last to go to Harry’s cell and shake his hand before he was taken away.
A photo from the Lewiston Sun Journal captured an image of 160 people waiting outside the jail in Newburyport, hoping for a glimpse of Harry.
Harry said he was willing to return to Maine for a hearing, and he waived his legal rights to contest extradition.
Harry taken to Maine
Around 2:00PM that afternoon, officers from Maine arrived to take Harry, and he walked with them from the jail, covering his face with his hat. There were mobs of people in Augusta and Winthrop promising vigilante justice, full of piss and vinegar—reports of up to 5,000 people—and so authorities decided to hold Harry temporarily in Portland. Reporters said that “never in the history of Augusta had there been such a threatening attitude against any individual.” Authorities believed that there were dozens of concealed weapons carried by the crowd, and there was even talk of bringing the National Guard to ensure peace.
That morning, as Harry was being arrested as a fugitive in Newburyport, Ruby was being transported from Saco to Augusta to be questioned. Ruby told authorities that Harry had told her that he had discovered Aida’s body and taken it to his cottage. She also revealed one of his aliases, explaining that she had married Harry as “James Joe Crawford of New York”. After her interview, she was on the verge of hysteria and was given medical attention and a constant guard. Harry, meanwhile, expressed concern to his jailers about his wife, that he feared she might be at risk of suicide.
As Harry was having dinner in Portland in the county jail, Ruby was giving another interview with authorities in Augusta. She said, quote, “she never wanted to see Harry again.” She was questioned about other crimes that might be Harry’s work. One was about a 29-year-old man named Sandy Buchanan who had been discovered in a suburb of Boston, strangled, in strange circumstances. There was a noose around his neck and his face was covered with a gas mask, and a gag was in his mouth. His hands were tied together, his pockets were turned inside out, and it was believed that he had been chloroformed.
In the middle of the night (technically the morning of Tuesday, May 26th), authorities took Harry from Portland to Augusta, to avoid the crowds of that day. They posted a guard in front of his cell, again out of concern of suicide, and they took his shoes from him, for fear that he might make a noose from the laces. He slept that night just two doors down from where he spent the night at the YMCA as a free man just a few nights prior.
Crowds continued to swarm Augusta on Tuesday, and it was decided that they would wait to arraign Harry until Wednesday in Winthrop.
Ruby’s change of heart
Ruby continued to talk, implicating Harry in three burglaries: one in East Monmouth of jewelry and gold in 1924, and two separate break-ins at the same home (of Mary Nichols) in Winthrop, nabbing her jewelry. She said that she, quote, “despised him” and that “he was yellow, clear-through.”
Harry got word that Ruby “had turned against him,” and he demanded to see her.
Ruby was at the home of Chief Sanborn of the State Highway Police, and she agreed.
They met in a dimly lit corridor of the jail. A reporter for the Lewiston Sun Journal observed them from down the hall. When she appeared, Harry grasped the bars of his cell door tightly, and his skin turned pale. “Hello, Ruby,” he said.
She was calm and cold and replied, “Hello, Harry. I came because you asked it. I felt I had to come.” Harry grabbed her hand, drew it between the bars, and showered it with kisses. Ruby showed no emotion at the demonstration. “You know, Ruby, I am not yellow. You know I have no yellow streak. Hasn’t our love always been a true one?” It appeared as though Harry feared he might not see his wife again. He gripped her hand tightly, and his voice trembling, cried out, “By the sacred memory of that love, I charge you, Ruby, that I did not kill, nor attack Miss Hayward, nor any woman!”
Ruby said, “Well Harry, I’d tell the truth. And all of it. And you’ll want to pray for yourself, as we’re all praying for you.”
Harry recoiled—tears welled in his eyes and then his shoulders slumped in dejection. Harry held onto his memory of his devoted wife—she had previously professed that she loved him dearly despite the suspicion that was attached to him in New York. She said that he was a perfect lover and, in every way, a devoted husband.
He suddenly pulled from his pocket a silk handkerchief with a flowered border and gave it to her. “I want you to have this as a memory of our happy days.” She rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want it. Keep it.” He stowed it in her purse over her objection. Ruby later explained to reporters that the handkerchief was a gift to Harry from their courtship.
As Ruby left, Harry asked the jailor to turn over to her any valuables that he had with him at the time he was arrested, which amounted to about $40.
Harry’s Arraignment
An advance guard of motorcycle police were sent from Augusta to Winthrop. They readied the way. When Harry stepped back on Winthrop soil from the safety of his police escort, he placed his cap in front of his face to foil photographers and hustled inside. The Town Hall building, the largest building in the town, where dances and meetings were often held, was fashioned into a court, and Judge Foster read the charges against Harry. He pled not guilty, and he was held without the opportunity for bail until the next grand jury session which wasn’t scheduled until September. Immediately after the hearing he was returned to Augusta where he would be held in jail awaiting the next hearing.
A surprise awaits him in Augusta
When he returned to Augusta, he found Captain Grant Williams, the sculptor and police captain, waiting for him. He asked him about Lillian White. Although the details of their discussion weren’t revealed, Harry maintained his innocence and denied knowing anything about her disappearance or death.
Harry goes on a walk with investigators
He was brought back to Winthrop again in late afternoon to walk investigators through his movements the night of Aida’s death. They went on the same train that had carried Emma and Aida from town to a stop near a cottage, the “Edgewood Cottage” which had not been known to have been previously involved in the incident. When he arrived with investigators, he went to the ice box on the porch, found a key to the back door, and let them in. In the living room, he pointed out a couch where he said that he had found Aida’s body. He said her clothing was stuffed under a living room table. He walked the route from the Edgewood cottage to the Gray cottage, where he was living. He was unflappable—"a cigarette dangled carelessly from the left corner of his mouth as he pointed out the route over which he carried the body. He pointed out the place where he threw the revolver into the lake.” Men were stationed offshore in boats searching for the weapon. Harry tried to indicate how hard he had thrown it to help them better position themselves (a diver was scheduled to arrive from Boston later to assist in the hunt for the gun). When they arrived at the Gray cottage, he became anxious and he refused to enter.
Emma told of Aida’s death
Meanwhile at Winthrop Hospital, Emma Towns continued to make gains—it had been a week since she was shot—and it was decided that since she was likely to live, it was time for her to know the truth about her niece. Her family broke the news that her best friend, Aida Hayward, was dead, and that the likely killer, Harry Kirby was in custody. Emma was familiar with Harry. All she said was, “I wonder why he did it… If he did it.”
Day 4 of Harry’s arrest
The next morning, Harry was examined by two doctors, so-called “alienists”, a term for psychologists from the 1920’s. They wanted to confirm that Harry was competent to stand trial, and they wanted to do an examination (on behalf of the state) of his mental state to determine if an insanity plea would be appropriate. Reporters observed that any intimation that “Harry was crazy stung him out of his calm and collected pose; he would angrily declare that he was not insane and never was feeble-minded, though he admitted to working with those ‘so-afflicted’”.
This same day, authorities discovered that he was the same Joseph Blunt who had escaped from the Queens jail 6 years prior in 1919. The chickens were coming home to roost.
Officials asked him to accompany them again to Winthrop to walk through events again. They hoped that through the pressure of their repeated questioning he would slip up.
Ruby was interrogated again, for four hours, and was exhausted. She had no energy left to be angry with Harry. When she went to visit him again, they focused their conversation on care for their daughter, Maxine, and they were affectionate with one another.
Back in Winthrop, one of Jane Gray’s relatives came up to board up their camp; no one from their family wanted to stay in it that season, considering the atrocity that had happened there.
Loot from Harry’s many heists was being assembled. Ruby told investigators everything she could remember about the various pawn shops that Harry had frequented. Divers pulled some valuables out of Lake Maranacook (Aida’s father’s watch, some jewelry that belonged to a Winthrop resident, and a pedometer that belonged to Aida’s brother). Many pawn shops had to cough up the stolen goods. From lists of valuables produced by Harry’s many victims, thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry and goods were collected as evidence.
A Portland Press Reporter was sleuthing around the Gray cottage and discovered under the steps, a revolver that matched exactly the description of the gun that Harry had given—the one that was supposedly at the bottom of Lake Maranacook. The gun was presented to Harry and he said that he doubted it was the one he had purchased. It’s history was tracked to the store where it was purchased and according to the store’s logs, it was bought by a man who called himself Frank Gilman of Kents Hill, Maine. Could it be another one of Harry’s aliases?
Day 10 - Harry comes clean
On the tenth day of his detention, after repeated interrogations, Harry’s condition had deteriorated. There was some speculation that he was suffering from withdrawal from recreational drug use and was particularly vulnerable.
Harry called County Attorney Frank Southard to his cell and with a deep breath, said, “I’m guilty of all the crimes you charged me with.” He told Frank that he had shot Emma, murdered Aida, and set fire to their cottage. He said that he was drunk from a pint of liquor that he had bought from an Augusta bootlegger and shot Emma in a ‘drunken frenzy’. He marched Aida down the train tracks back to his cottage and bound her, after which he returned to her cottage and torched it. When he returned to his cottage, he went straight upstairs and choked Aida to death. He said he covered her body with the feather tick because he couldn’t stand the glare of her eyes.
He considered how to get rid of the body. His first idea was to dump it in the lake, but then he heard about the men dragging it with a grappling hook. His second idea was to bury it in the woods, but then he heard that Deeka, the scent dog, would be searching the woods. As the body decomposed, and the smell intensified, he decided to flee.
There was speculation that the motivation for Harry’s confession was to avoid the possibility of facing murder charges for Lillian White in New York, where it was possible to be put to death by electric chair. Maine’s maximum sentence was life in prison.
In addition to the murder, attempted murder, and arson charges, he also confessed to additional various robberies and explained where they might be able to find the loot. Harry had a habit of burying things.
In speaking to motive, Harry said that he knew that Aida was worth “about $30,000,” and he knew that she had access to the safes of certain businesses in town and he planned to force her to open the safes. He said he prowled at night and stole what he could from cottages around the lake, and he made plans to kidnap Aida and extort her for her family’s wealth.
After his confession, Harry spent 8 hours with a Boston newspaperman and told him the story of his life from his earliest recollections. They paid him $500 for it. A Boston Globe writer who witnessed the telling, said, “Harry is egocentric. He gloried in the yarn he told, and his cunning little eyes glittered as he gave the details one by one. At times he laughed and joked. He knew he was going to get into the newspapers (as he eagerly sought since his arrest). The fact that he practically dropped out of the newspapers for days spurred him on.” He believed that his real name was Louis Blunt and that he was born in Bangor.
On the same day, Wednesday, June 3rd, a forensic ballistics test revealed that the bullets fired into Emma came from the revolver that was discovered under the steps of the Gray cottage (that were earlier discovered by the Press Herald reporter).
Day 11 – Harry makes confession “official”
The following day, Harry made his confession “official”, repeating every word for a court stenographer who would produce a transcript for trial.
Up to this point, Harry had refused legal counsel, content to speak for himself.
In Newburyport, the officer who had proudly sported the stickpin that Harry had given him was ordered to return it to Maine authorities. As it turned out, it was yet another of Harry’s stolen goods.
The next day, Bert Fowler (the same officer who went up in the Jenny plane) discovered sixteen .32 caliber bullets in a paper bag under the walk that connected Harry’s cottage to the outhouse. Along with bullets, he found a wristwatch, a small diamond ring, a string of pearls, a locket, and a broken chain, all of which were identified by Aida’s brother-in-law, Fred Moulton, as having belonged to Aida. Fred told reporters, “I’d give $100,000 to have 15 minutes with that man.”
The case against Harry was air-tight.
Request to transfer Harry
Several weeks later, the Sheriff of Kennebec County petitioned the governor’s office to transfer him to Thomaston prison because he believed that he would be safer there. Governor Brewster responded and claimed that there was no legal mechanism to do so, and that he must remain in Augusta until trial.
On September 3rd, 1925, an Augusta grand jury indicted Harry on the three charges, and the next day he was assigned a pinch-hitter public defender: Ransford Shaw of Houlton, Maine, the former attorney general of the entire state.
A few days later, Harry was arraigned again in superior court, and he pled guilty to arson, but not guilty to the charges of murder and attempted murder.
Suicide
A week later, on September 14th, 1925, Harry carefully positioned a blanket on the floor of his cell and laid in the cot in such a way that only his back was visible to a casual observer. He had cleverly hidden a razor blade in his cell and he used it to slash his wrists, the blood pooling quietly below the blanket. Sheriff Cummings discovered what he had done perhaps 20 minutes after the cut was made and found that Harry was nearly unconscious. Only a trickle of blood flowed. On-call doctors responded immediately and moved him to the hospital. Despite their efforts, Harry Kirby died at 1:30PM that afternoon in his hospital bed.
Harry was to appear at court the next day for his trial, and according to his lawyer, he was expected to reverse his plea on the 2 serious counts to avoid the need for a full trial.
He left a note:
“Dear Sir,
I have thought the matter over and have decided that I would be far better sacrifice my life to the State of Maine rather than plead guilty to a brutal and vicious crime I am not wholly guilty of. If my wife does not claim my remains, I’d like to have you surrender them to the Bowdoin College Medical School for purposes of study (if they care to claim them).”
Bowdoin Medical School ceased to exist several years prior unbeknownst to Harry.
The Sheriff couldn’t account for the presence of the razor. There was some speculation that a visitor might have brought it for him, but he hadn’t had any visitors lately—not even Ruby. Perhaps he had it hidden away for months.
Ruby was contacted, and she declined to collect his remains. She was off somewhere in Aroostook County, and her mother and stepfather were caring for her daughter. There were no other known relatives of Harry’s, and so it was left to the state to dispose of his remains.
Harry’s funeral
The next day, an announcement in the newspaper was made that Harry’s funeral would be held in Augusta. Winthrop refused to bury his body.
At 1:00PM in Augusta, on September 17th, a few cemetery workmen laid Harry to rest in a pauper’s grave in a local cemetery. The ceremony, if you could call it that, was conducted by Lawrence Greenwood, an evangelist, but no one—not even Ruby—was present.
Tying up loose ends
After Harry’s death, the governor issued an order authorizing the payment of the $1,000 reward to the Ponds for Harry’s apprehension. What finally had caught up to Harry was his notoriety. His face appeared in the papers, and he couldn’t hide from his own photograph.
When he fled Winthrop, he hoped to become someone new again. He had tried to save his relationship with Ruby, meeting with her in Old Orchard the day of the murder, feeling her out, hoping that she would flee with him.
The name he gave to the Ponds in Newburyport when he was on the lam was “James Johnson”. Perhaps this would become his new identity. The names he used were common—familiar—names. Joe Blunt, James “Joe” Crawford, Harry Kirby.
According to his wife, Harry was born on October 14th, 1883, making him 41 years old at the time of his death. He had been a drifter for his entire adult life, charming people with his (supposed) education, his polite manners, and his way with words. He won people’s confidence and then abused them, and after 20 or more years of adult life, the chickens had come home to roost.
Emma’s miraculous recovery
Emma Towns was scheduled to go into surgery the next day. She sat nervously on the bed, wondering whether she would awaken from the general anesthesia that would render her unconscious. She had made a miraculous recovery in the months since she was at death’s door.
She was reflecting on the tragedy that had stolen her best friend and her home when she had a tickle in her throat.
She coughed a few times and the tickle became worse. She coughed more vigorously, hurling something from her throat into her mouth. She spit it out and looked in her hand. The surgery the next day was no longer necessary. Her body had miraculously cast out the poisonous intruder. She looked at the lead lump with awe and disgust.
It was the bullet that had nearly killed her.
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Sources For This Episode
Newspaper articles
Various articles primarily from Bangor Daily News, Daily News, Lewiston Daily Sun, Lewiston Evening Journal, Lewiston Evening Journal, The Boston Globe, and the Times Herald, here.
Written by various authors including Akilah Johnson, Annmarie Timmins, Bernice MacWilliams, Nancy West, Richard C. Duncan, Roger Small, and Roger Talbot.
Photos
Photos from various newspapers and from MaineMemoryNetwork.
Credits
Created, researched, written, told, and edited by Kristen Seavey
Writing, research, and photo editing support by Byron Willis
Research support by Bridget Fowley