Buzz
New York City, globally celebrated for its iconic status, is often associated with a violent history, whether warranted or not. The Big Apple has undeniably been home to notorious criminals and shocking crimes (including the egregious offense against aesthetics that is Donald Trump’s hairstyle). Below are ten of the most horrifying murders in New York, dating back to before 1905.
10. Brutally Slaughtered September 29, 1892
Picture this: Distressed screams and the noise of a scuffle echo from a top-floor room in a Hester Street tenement. A man wearing a soft felt hat is spotted fleeing the scene. Concerned neighbors investigate and discover Frank Paulsen brutally slain.
The sixty-year-old victim had been brutally assaulted with a meat cleaver or axe, suffering severe head injuries that revealed bone. The room was drenched in blood, yet astonishingly, Paulson was still clinging to life. By the time police called for an ambulance, he had tragically passed away from his wounds. Unlike a scene from Colombo, he didn’t manage to whisper a final clue. Investigators discovered a defensive wound on his right hand, likely caused by the murder weapon, and he held a blood-soaked lock of hair, its original color impossible to discern. This lone piece of evidence ultimately proved futile.
A man matching the description of the individual seen fleeing the scene was apprehended by police in the Bowery. However, as his clothing showed no traces of blood, he was released. Further inquiries led to Frank Roehl, who confessed to killing Paulsen but claimed it was in self-defense after being attacked by the victim with a hatchet. The jury disagreed, convicting him of murder.
BONUS FACT: During the trial, the district attorney narrowly escaped harm when Roehl lunged at him during cross-examination.
9. The Nurse Girl Murder December 7, 1900
Imagine this: A cozy middle-class residence on Palmetto Court in Brooklyn. Mr. and Mrs. Jones are leisurely finishing their meal, while their hired nurse tends to their eighteen-month-old baby boy. Later, a horrified Mrs. Jones stumbles upon a gruesome scene in the kitchen.
As the Jones family enjoyed post-dinner piano music in the parlor, Alice O’Donnell—a twenty-eight-year-old nurse recently employed to care for their infant—calmly retrieved a straight razor from the husband’s dresser, slit the baby’s throat from ear to ear, changed her clothes, and walked out. At eleven o’clock, Mrs. Jones entered the kitchen and discovered her son’s lifeless body on the floor, pale and rigid in a pool of blood. The police were called immediately.
Alice O’Donnell was apprehended at her residence on North Portland Avenue. When questioned by the police, she confessed to the murder without showing any remorse. Her motive? It remains a mystery. She claimed the act was impulsive. While her final fate is unclear, detectives at the time speculated she was mentally unstable, though the child’s parents maintained she was fully lucid and sane during the crime.
BONUS FACT: Mrs. Jones believed Alice, who had been compelled to give up her own newborn eight months prior, murdered her baby out of sheer jealousy.
8. Terror in the Tenderloin September 27, 1902
Picture this: A foul odor begins to emanate from the sub-cellar of the Hotel Empire, located in the notorious Tenderloin red-light district, unsettling the guests. Police trace the source of the stench to a human head burning in the furnace.
A witness initially alerted the police, claiming to have seen ex-convict Thomas Tobin dragging an unconscious James “Captain Jim” Craft downstairs. The overpowering smell of burning flesh led investigators to force their way into the basement. After extinguishing the furnace fire with water, they retrieved a charred, round object resembling a burnt soccer ball from the ashes. It was a human head, with most of its hair and flesh burned away. Nearby lay the bloody murder weapon—a meat cleaver—and the rest of the victim’s body, nearly severed in half by a deep, gruesome gash across the chest.
Tobin was swiftly arrested, his clothing still stained with blood. He had murdered Craft to steal $50. Despite attempting an insanity defense (he had previously been confined to Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane), he was deemed sane, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to death.
BONUS FACT: Realizing how challenging it was to dismember and dispose of the body, Tobin chose to decapitate Craft and burn the head to hinder identification. Unbeknownst to him, a witness had observed the entire gruesome act.
7. The Silver Lake Horror July 19, 1878
Imagine this: Three boys are wandering through the woods near the scenic Silver Lake on Staten Island. One of them stumbles over a barrel stave sticking out of the ground. Curious, they dig up the carpet-wrapped barrel and pry it open, only to be horrified by the sight of a young woman’s decomposing, foul-smelling remains instead of treasure.
The victim’s face was obliterated, as the killer had covered her body with quicklime after crushing her skull with a blunt object and cramming her into the barrel. The coroner determined she had been pregnant at the time of her death. After nearly a month of investigation, authorities identified the likely suspect as Edward Reinhardt, whose wife, Mary Ann Degnan, had vanished. The couple had a history of arguments, and Reinhardt was notorious for his violent outbursts. Shortly after Mary Ann’s disappearance, Reinhardt informed neighbors she had moved to Newark. Soon after, he remarried.
The defense attempted to have the murder case dismissed, arguing that the body couldn’t be definitively identified. This reasoning, however, was as effective as offering a ham sandwich at a vegan gathering. During the trial, Reinhardt confessed to striking Mary Ann on the head with a hammer during a heated argument. He later retracted his confession, claiming she had died from medication she took for dropsy (edema) and that he buried her body to avoid police scrutiny. The jury rejected his explanation, and he was ultimately executed.
BONUS FACT: Initially, police considered the possibility that the victim was Annie Hommel, another missing girl who had fractured her wrist as a child. To verify this, the body was exhumed from a pauper’s grave. The coroner removed both arms and boiled the flesh off in a cauldron right in the cemetery to inspect the bones. It turned out the remains were not hers.
6. The Eighth Ward Mystery May 18, 1873
Picture this: A bartender working at a dance saloon on Thompson Street, in the notorious area dubbed Satan’s Circus, steps into the rear yard. Inside the outdoor toilet, or “water closet,” he finds a shocking sight—a large pool of congealed blood and an open straight razor on the floor. However, the victim’s body is nowhere to be found.
Shortly after the bartender alerted the police, more officers were called to a nearby room on Broome Street. There, they discovered the body of Mary Jane Sullivan, a prostitute, wrapped in blankets on a bed. She had been brutally beaten to death with a hickory walking cane, which shattered from the force of the blows (hickory being an exceptionally hard wood). The only visible injury was a small cut above her left eye.
Initially, police were uncertain if the murder was connected to the blood discovered at the dance saloon, but Mary Jane was known to frequent the establishment. How could such a small wound cause such significant bleeding? While this might not have puzzled Jessica Fletcher, it left NYC detectives baffled. The situation soon became clearer. Mary Jane had shared a residence with two other women, also prostitutes, under the “protection” of James Jackson, a whitewash painter, part-time pimp, and notorious troublemaker. Witnesses reported seeing Jackson assaulting Mary Jane on a street corner in the early hours of the morning before her body was discovered.
Police theorized that a drunken Jackson had caught Mary Jane soliciting clients in the dance saloon’s outdoor toilet. He slashed her customer with his razor—explaining the blood—and then dragged her home to kill her. Within days of the murder, Jackson withdrew $200 from his bank account and fled to Philadelphia. His ultimate fate remains a mystery.
5. The Fiend of Second Avenue August 26, 1871
Imagine this: A bustling Manhattan railroad depot. A porter is loading luggage onto a train bound for Chicago when he notices a trunk emitting a foul, deathly odor. The station master orders it opened, revealing the decomposing body of a young woman, her once-pretty, blonde appearance now unrecognizable.
The discovery sparked what became known as the “Great Trunk Mystery.” Further police investigation revealed the victim had succumbed to an infection resulting from a poorly performed abortion. Even more horrifying, it appeared she had been placed in the trunk while still alive. When the delivery man identified a specific Second Avenue address as the pickup location, police arrested the resident, Jacob Rosenzweig, an abortionist who had obtained his medical degree from a fraudulent institution.
The unidentified, heavily decomposed body was put on public display, akin to the most disturbing performance art imaginable. Hundreds of curious onlookers gathered to see the gruesome remains. Alice Augusta Bowlsby, a young woman from New Jersey, was eventually identified by her family’s doctor and dentist, leading to Rosenzweig’s trial and conviction.
BONUS FACT: Alice’s lover, Walter Conklin, believed to be the father of her unborn child, shot himself upon learning of her death.
4. The Witch of Staten Island December 25, 1843
Imagine this: Christmas night. A wooden house in a Staten Island neighborhood is engulfed in flames. Neighbors and nearby relatives manage to extinguish the fire. Among the ashes, they find two bodies—a mother and her baby—not burned, but savagely murdered.
This sets the stage for one of America’s most notorious murder cases, which at the time overshadowed even Lizzie Borden’s axe-related exploits. Emeline Van Pelt Houseman, wife of George Houseman (who was absent that night), and her twenty-month-old daughter were found with crushed skulls, broken bones, and, in Emeline’s case, a slit throat. The house had been intentionally set ablaze by the killer.
Police zeroed in on Polly Houseman Bodine, Emeline’s sister-in-law. Polly was far from saintly—a married woman with teenage children, she had abandoned her husband to live with an apothecary named George Waite. She drank heavily, lived across the street from her brother’s home, and, according to witnesses, lied about Emeline’s whereabouts and her own activities on the day of the murder.
However, the prosecution faced challenges. Polly appeared to have no motive for such a brutal crime, which could rival something out of a Jason Voorhees film. Witnesses altered their testimonies or were discredited by the defense. The first trial resulted in a hung jury, the second in a conviction that was later overturned by the State Supreme Court, and the third trial finally acquitted Polly. The murders of Emeline Houseman and her baby remain unsolved.
BONUS FACT: Emeline’s husband, George Houseman, reportedly said, “I can get another wife. I can get another child. I can never get another sister.” Quite the charmer, wasn’t he?
3. The Dutchman Divided June 27, 1897
Picture this: Two boys swimming in the East River stumble upon a package containing half a human torso. Soon after, a parcel with two adult male legs is found floating in the Navy Yard. Over the following days, horrified residents discover a severed thigh wrapped in burlap, more of the torso, a foot, and a pelvis in the woods at 176th Street, along with other dismembered body parts scattered across Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx. The only missing piece? The head.
The victim was identified as William Guldensuppe, a masseur (referred to as a “rubber” in old-fashioned slang). He had been murdered and dismembered. In a twist too coincidental for even a subpar crime drama, a New York Journal reporter assigned to cover the story recognized the victim. He also traced a uniquely patterned oilcloth used to wrap some body parts to Augusta Nack, Guldensuppe’s former lover.
After ending her relationship with Guldensuppe, Augusta quickly took up with a new lover, Martin Thorn. Thorn, consumed by jealousy, confessed to a friend that he had killed Guldensuppe in the Queens home he shared with Augusta because the victim wouldn’t stop pursuing her. The friend informed the police. Thorn was convicted and executed in Sing-Sing’s electric chair on August 1, 1898. Augusta cooperated with the prosecution and served ten years in prison.
BONUS FACT: Although some newspapers at the time referred to him as a Dutchman—likely a mispronunciation of “Deutsch”—Guldensuppe was actually born in Germany.
New York’s streets are said to be safer today, with crime rates declining steadily over the past decade. However, I suspect that as long as people inhabit NYC, acts of dismemberment, defenestration, disembowelment, and other violent crimes will persist. It’s the city that never sleeps… probably due to all the screaming.
2. The Bloody Sixth Ward July 18, 1856
Imagine this: Early one morning, a tailor’s clerk arrives to open the shop at 378 Broadway. He notices blood on the door handle. A policeman is called to break down the door, revealing the naked body of Bartholomew Burke and a scene drenched in blood.
Burke, a single porter who had worked at the shop for years and slept there at night, was found brutally murdered in a manner so gruesome that even Tarantino might recoil. Investigators noted signs of a fierce struggle, with bloodied oversized shears and other gory objects nearby. A peculiar, blood-caked short sword had been used to slash Burke’s throat and mutilate his body in a frenzied assault. A bloodstained hammer had also left a noticeable dent in his forehead.
Police concluded that the killer had stabbed Burke to death, calmly washed his hands (though not thoroughly), locked the shop door, and pocketed the key. A trail of blood led nowhere, and there were no witnesses or clues. Nothing from the shop or Burke’s belongings had been stolen, though his personal items had been rummaged through by unknown individuals.
Investigators were stumped. Efforts to trace the origin of the sword proved futile. With no suspect or motive identified, the murder of Bartholomew Burke remains an unsolved mystery.
BONUS FACT: Despite clear evidence of a violent struggle between Burke and his killer, the family sleeping upstairs heard nothing.
1. Jack the Ripper in America April 24, 1891
Picture this: Manhattan’s waterfront, the East River Hotel. Room 31 is drenched in blood—walls, floor, and furniture. The body of Carrie “Old Shakespeare” Brown, a known prostitute, is found strangled, stabbed, and brutally mutilated. The killer had tried to disembowel her with a knife left at the scene.
This gruesome murder occurred just a few years after the notorious Jack the Ripper killings in London. New York’s sensationalist newspapers quickly drew parallels, with headlines proclaiming, “Jack the Ripper in America!”
Police, however, disagreed. They arrested Ameer Bin Ali, an Algerian man staying in Room 33, directly across from the crime scene. Although witnesses couldn’t confirm he was the man seen with Brown earlier that night, investigators claimed to have found blood on his door and doorknob.
With no eyewitnesses, the prosecution’s case relied heavily on the blood evidence. At the time, however, it was impossible to definitively determine if the blood was Brown’s or even if it was human. Despite this, the jury convicted Ameer of second-degree murder, likely influenced by his status as a French-speaking foreigner. He served eleven years in Sing-Sing before his conviction was overturned, as it was revealed that police had tampered with—you guessed it—the blood evidence. Carrie Brown’s murder remains unsolved.
BONUS FACT: In more recent years, the horrific murder of Carrie Brown has been connected to several Jack the Ripper suspects, such as George Chapman and Francis Tumblety.
