shadowangel
Black cats consider me unlucky.
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Fans of Edgar Allen Poe know his story "The Mystery of Marie Roget" as the sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and the second appearance of detective C. Auguste Dupin. It is also recognized as one of the first detective novels. What many don't know is that the story is based on a real case, and was Poe's way of attempting to solve what is one of New York City's oldest and most puzzling cold cases.
On July 28th of 1841, men walking along the Hudson River near an area known as Sybil's Cave in the city of Hoboken spotted what appeared to be a bundle of clothing floating in the water. They grabbed a boat from a nearby dock and rowed to the floating objects. What they found was a murder mystery that endures to this day.
The men pulled the body of a young woman from the water. Her dress was torn, and as one reporter put it, "her features were barely visible as so much violence had been done to her".
A coroner's inquest discovered finger-marks on her throat, evidence that her wrists had been bound, and that a strip had been torn from her dress and wrapped tightly around her mouth. The coroner stated that he believed she had been killed by "more than two or three persons". He stated she had "brutally violated".
The story of the murder took on a life of its own when a young man, Alfred Crommelin, came forward to indentify the girl as his former fiance, Mary Cecilia Rogers.
Mary had last been seen on July 25th when she left her mother's home. She met her present fiance, Daniel Payne, and told him she was going to visit a relative. She never came home.
Mary's murder sparked a sensation with all the New York papers. She had worked as a sales clerk at John Anderson's tobacco store, a popular haunt of prominent writers James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and also Edgar Allen Poe. Not only did these well-known writers frequent the shop, so did most of the writers and editors of the New York papers. Mary, "the beautiful cigar girl", had waited on many of them. Every detail of the investigation made headlines, pushing national and international news off the front page. Her story sold countless papers. Not only was every lurid detail published, some clues and suspects were invented to keep the publics' interest and sell more papers. Each paper competed to push a new theory, a new suspect.
However, by mid-August, with no new concrete leads, interest in the case began to wane. Then in late August, Frederica Loss, proprietor of a tavern near where Mary's body had been found, reported to authorities that her sons had found clothing in a thicket along the river. Among the items was a handkerchief with the monagram MR. This new find revived interest in the case, and certainly didn't hurt business at Frederica's establishment. Reporters and the public flocked to the scene. Her recollection of the night of Mary's murder increased in proportion to her newly-increased revenue. Though many papers used the finding of the clothing to bolster their various claims, others proclaimed the find a hoax.
Following the death of Mary, her fiance Daniel Payne fell into a deepening depression. Already considered an alcoholic, he began drinking even more heavily. On the morning of October 7th, Payne began drinking in the various bars he often visited. He also stopped into a store and purchased a small bottle of the poison laudanum.
Payne then travelled across the Hudson to Hoboken, stopping at Loss's tavern to drink some more. He then proceeded to the thicket where the clothing had been found, wrote a short note, then poisoned himself.
The note read, "To the World, here I am on the spot. May God forgive me my misspent life".
Payne was considered to have an air-tight alibi for the day Mary was murdered, so his note was seen by many as not an admission of guilt but simply the writing of love-struck romantic who could not live without Mary.
A year later, Frederica was shot by one of her own sons. On her death-bed, she made the confession that Mary had died as the result of a botched abortion in the tavern. Her sons had disposed of the clothing and the body.
Many theories as to who had killed Mary circulated for years to come. Crommelin, the former fiance, was a suspect, as was Payne. Some blamed a gang of thugs; some even blamed the sons of Frederica Loss. In 1838, Mary had disappeared for a few days. Some thought she had plans to elope with a sailor, and that he may have been the murderer. As the result of the popularity of Poe's serialized story "The Murder of Marie Roget", there has even been speculation that he was the killer.
Poe stated at the time that his fictionalized account of the murder (he changed the victim's name and moved the location to France) was his attempt to solve the crime. It's been noted, however, that as he published the chapters of his crime story, his theories changed with each new revelation. The final chapter includes the abortion twist added by Loss's deathbed "confession".
Whatever the truth may be, Mary's death is immortalized in the work of one the greatest American authors in history and remains an intriguing unsolved crime.
(sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mystery_of_Marie_Roget
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/classics/mary_rogers/index.html )
On July 28th of 1841, men walking along the Hudson River near an area known as Sybil's Cave in the city of Hoboken spotted what appeared to be a bundle of clothing floating in the water. They grabbed a boat from a nearby dock and rowed to the floating objects. What they found was a murder mystery that endures to this day.
The men pulled the body of a young woman from the water. Her dress was torn, and as one reporter put it, "her features were barely visible as so much violence had been done to her".
A coroner's inquest discovered finger-marks on her throat, evidence that her wrists had been bound, and that a strip had been torn from her dress and wrapped tightly around her mouth. The coroner stated that he believed she had been killed by "more than two or three persons". He stated she had "brutally violated".
The story of the murder took on a life of its own when a young man, Alfred Crommelin, came forward to indentify the girl as his former fiance, Mary Cecilia Rogers.
Mary had last been seen on July 25th when she left her mother's home. She met her present fiance, Daniel Payne, and told him she was going to visit a relative. She never came home.
Mary's murder sparked a sensation with all the New York papers. She had worked as a sales clerk at John Anderson's tobacco store, a popular haunt of prominent writers James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and also Edgar Allen Poe. Not only did these well-known writers frequent the shop, so did most of the writers and editors of the New York papers. Mary, "the beautiful cigar girl", had waited on many of them. Every detail of the investigation made headlines, pushing national and international news off the front page. Her story sold countless papers. Not only was every lurid detail published, some clues and suspects were invented to keep the publics' interest and sell more papers. Each paper competed to push a new theory, a new suspect.
However, by mid-August, with no new concrete leads, interest in the case began to wane. Then in late August, Frederica Loss, proprietor of a tavern near where Mary's body had been found, reported to authorities that her sons had found clothing in a thicket along the river. Among the items was a handkerchief with the monagram MR. This new find revived interest in the case, and certainly didn't hurt business at Frederica's establishment. Reporters and the public flocked to the scene. Her recollection of the night of Mary's murder increased in proportion to her newly-increased revenue. Though many papers used the finding of the clothing to bolster their various claims, others proclaimed the find a hoax.
Following the death of Mary, her fiance Daniel Payne fell into a deepening depression. Already considered an alcoholic, he began drinking even more heavily. On the morning of October 7th, Payne began drinking in the various bars he often visited. He also stopped into a store and purchased a small bottle of the poison laudanum.
Payne then travelled across the Hudson to Hoboken, stopping at Loss's tavern to drink some more. He then proceeded to the thicket where the clothing had been found, wrote a short note, then poisoned himself.
The note read, "To the World, here I am on the spot. May God forgive me my misspent life".
Payne was considered to have an air-tight alibi for the day Mary was murdered, so his note was seen by many as not an admission of guilt but simply the writing of love-struck romantic who could not live without Mary.
A year later, Frederica was shot by one of her own sons. On her death-bed, she made the confession that Mary had died as the result of a botched abortion in the tavern. Her sons had disposed of the clothing and the body.
Many theories as to who had killed Mary circulated for years to come. Crommelin, the former fiance, was a suspect, as was Payne. Some blamed a gang of thugs; some even blamed the sons of Frederica Loss. In 1838, Mary had disappeared for a few days. Some thought she had plans to elope with a sailor, and that he may have been the murderer. As the result of the popularity of Poe's serialized story "The Murder of Marie Roget", there has even been speculation that he was the killer.
Poe stated at the time that his fictionalized account of the murder (he changed the victim's name and moved the location to France) was his attempt to solve the crime. It's been noted, however, that as he published the chapters of his crime story, his theories changed with each new revelation. The final chapter includes the abortion twist added by Loss's deathbed "confession".
Whatever the truth may be, Mary's death is immortalized in the work of one the greatest American authors in history and remains an intriguing unsolved crime.
(sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mystery_of_Marie_Roget
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/classics/mary_rogers/index.html )