THE MURDER OF EMMA KIRK, 63, IN WASHINGTON D.C. ON JANUARY 22, 1926.
(Do not quote without attribution to Alvin Esau)
Was Earle Nelson still in the eastern parts of the United States after allegedly murdering three landladies in Philadelphia in the later months of 1925, and before returning to the West Coast where he strangled landlady Clara Newman on February 22, 1926? If he was still in the East, one of the murders that is worth investigating is that of Miss Emma Kirk. She ran an umbrella repair shop out of her house at 819 R Street Northwest in Washington D.C. According to the Washington Post, she had lived in this house all her life, inheriting it from her late father thirty years earlier. The reclusive spinster was well loved in the neighbourhood, especially by the children whom she frequently treated with candy and toys,[1] and stories about fairies that entertained them for hours.[2] Miss Kirk had a sister in the city who described Emma as, “independent, happy and contented alone in the little umbrella shop.”[3] The Post reported that Miss Kirk was 63 years old, but later the death notice listed her as being 70.[4] The Evening Star initially said she was 80,[5] but the paper subsequently revised the age to 68.[6] Official records confirm that she was 63 years old, born on Nov. 2, 1862, in Washington, D.C.[7] She was the middle of three girls in the family, and her father ran the umbrella repair shop at 819 R Street.[8] He died in 1891, while the mother of Emma died in 1906.[9] There was a picture of Emma in the Washington Post and our copy from the microfilm is very poor:[10]
On Saturday, January 23, 1926, the next door neighbour lady noticed that Miss Kirk’s cat was mewing and hungry. She informed the corner grocery man of her concerns about Miss Kirk, and the grocery man informed the police. After breaking through the locked door at the front of the little house, the police discovered the body of Miss Kirk lying on the parlour floor. According to the Post, “A shawl- her own- was drawn tightly around the head, the knot gaggling her mouth. Her toil-worn hands were bound behind her with twine. Finger marks showed on her throat.”[11] The Evening Star described the scene somewhat differently:
The hands were tied in front of her. On the floor about a foot from the head was found a set of upper false teeth... Miss Kirk was lying on her right side in a position which, because of the fact it was not relaxed, would indicate it was placed there. Her legs were drawn up so that her knees bent at an angle of 40 degrees. There was no sign of struggle to be found… all the papers, letters and books were in perfect order... Nearby there were three pocketbooks containing a considerable amount of money. As soon as he untied the tightly knotted shawl from around her throat and neck, Coroner Nevitt discovered imprints and marks, evidently made by fingers, on the right side of the neck, below and forward of the ear.[12] The house where Miss Kirk lived was clean and neat. Floors were nicely polished and she was dressed in a black dress over a white waist, at the time of the crime. The shop room in which Miss Kirk’s body was found was the repair room for umbrellas as well as the place where she met and dealt with customers.[13]
More than six years later, journalist, Daniel B. Maher, wrote an article on the Kirk case in the Post which differed to some degree from the original reports. According to Maher, the police had not broken through the door, but rather the discovery of the body was made by the grocer. Maher stated:
Georgia Pullen, the next-door neighbour of Emma Kirk, was about her early morning tasks. She did not see Emma feeding her black cats, which were her only companions. “Strange,” she thought, and went on with her household work. The weird meowing of the cats annoyed her, and Mrs. Pullen looked toward Emma’s kitchen. The back door was open. Leave the door open on a wintery day? Emma never did that before. Mrs. Pullen went to the front of Emma’s store. “Not open yet?” That’s strange too,” she said. “Emma was always open for business at this hour.” Mrs. Pullen talked with the corner grocer. He said a gas man had tried twice to enter the place, but there was no answer. Together they went to Emma’s door. Abraham Posen, that is the grocer’s name, entered and nearly stumbled over the aged spinster’s body, which lay on the floor of the front room of the shop.[14]
Maher also noted that before the police secured the scene of the murder, there were all sorts of people- children, neighbours, customers, reporters and detectives leaving their fingerprints everywhere.
The coroner later established that Miss Kirk had been strangled to death and had likely been murdered in the early hours of Friday morning, January 22.[15] Reports from neighbors suggested that the shop had been closed all day Friday. Nothing was said about the potential for sexual assault, and the Star had earlier reported on the finding of the body that “there was no sign of violence on the body.”[16]
If robbery was the motive, it was difficult to establish what was missing. Miss Kirk’s sister, a Mrs. Elizabeth Shaw, met with the police and pointed out various places in the dwelling where her sister hid valuables, and a Liberty bond and some money where discovered, undisturbed. Perhaps, surmised the police, the victim died because she refused to reveal the whereabouts of valuables. For several days the Evening Star promoted the theory that stories of hidden wealth had circulated in the community and that the killer, well acquainted with the daily life of Miss Kirk, had tied her up, seeking to know where the wealth was hidden, and then killed her, perhaps even without intent to kill, as he was chokingly threatening her to reveal the hiding place.[17] Given the lack of any evidence that the killer had engaged in any search of the house, this theory was rather weak. How could robbery be a motive, given that even a cursory search would have revealed some cash in a buffet drawer,[18] or in the pocketbooks of the victim, if the Star report was reliable?[19]
There were two clues that the police had. One was a thumbprint on the victim’s spectacles found lying on the floor beside the body, and the other was the twine used to tie her hands.[20] The Star reported that Captain Cornwell of the second police precinct thought the twine would soon lead to the killer:
Cornwell recognized the cord as a chalk line, the type of string used by mechanics for marking chalk guidelines on portions of work to be saved or cut. He made a search of the shop. Although much cord was found, none answering the description of the type binding the wrist and angles was found. Cornwell credited a man employed in a mechanical line with being instrumental in the murder.[21]
When we seek any suspicious circumstances that might point to Earle Nelson, we note that the Philadelphia landladies had also been bound and gagged, which was a circumstance that Earle Nelson subsequently abandoned when he returned to California, assuming that Nelson murdered the three landladies in Philadelphia. Here the victim was bound and gagged, and the chalk line could just as easily have been something used in the construction trade, which was often Earle Nelson’s line of employment, when he was employed.
The first suspects to be arrested were two temporarily unemployed “colored” men, one of them living right next door to the murder victim, and a friend of the first suspect, also living in the same neighbourhood. The police had found some twine under the bed in the next door neighbour’s house and thought it looked like the kind of twine that was used to tie Kirk’s hands.[22] However, according the Star, the twine found in the suspect’s home was “new and clean” while the twine that bound Miss Kirk was “old and soiled.”[23] A third “negro” man, employed as a plasterer and living in the neighbourhood was soon arrested for investigation as well.[24] Implicit in the newspaper reports of “six hours of questioning,”[25] and “attempts to get a confession,”[26] and “grilled again,”[27] was the likelihood of the abusive “third degree” treatment that suspects commonly received from the police in that era. That the fingerprint found on the glasses did not match the suspects was irrelevant Captain Cornwall now asserted, because the fingerprint likely came from somebody who had entered the house after the murder was discovered.[28]
Meanwhile the cord in the neighbour’s house and the cord from the scene of the murder were handed to the United States Bureau of Standards for examination.[29] The results showed that the police had been barking up the wrong tree, because the neighbour’s twine was not used to tie up the victim.[30] Lawyers for the three “colored” men were preparing to make a court application to have the men released from custody.[31] Presumably they were released, but the Post did not even bother reporting on their freedom. On Friday, January 29th, the Evening Star, finally conceding that robbery by someone in the neighbourhood was a dumb theory, and reported that one of the men had been released, and that Henry Pratt, chief of detectives, had stated that the other two would be released before the end of the day. As the paper noted, the case was now “within the sight of the end of the trail which leads to the graveyard of unsolved mysteries.”[32]
The police went back to the “irrelevant” fingerprint, as Fred Sandberg, the resident police expert, laboriously spent weeks comparing the print with the more than 40,000 finger prints that the Washington police had on file.[33] Sandberg had discovered the glasses at the scene of the crime with a smeared thumbprint on the right lens. According to the later account of Maher, the print was not a complete print, but “just the bulb of the skin on the thumb.”[34] Sandberg had attempted to get fingerprints from the various individuals who had been at the scene of the crime, establishing that the print was not from an innocent onlooker, before he continued to work through all the prints on file, looking for a match.[35]
Meanwhile the police intensively grilled a woman and her husband. Apparently, the woman was a friend of the reclusive Miss Kirk and had seen her the day before the murder.[36] Nothing came of this, and clearly the police were left without a clue as to who had strangled Miss Kirk. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of death by suffocation, by a person or persons unknown.[37] There was no further press coverage, because there was nothing to report.
We have no evidence that the Washington police ever considered linking this murder to other strangulation cases in other cities. An editorial writer for the Washington Evening Star wrote a comment under the title, “The Gorilla Man” during a time that the strangler was still at large after the Winnipeg killings. The editorial writer noted the dangerous mobility of the fiend, but never mentioned the possibility that Washington itself might have been the scene of one of the killings. The point of the editorial was that when the gorilla was caught, “no consideration of insanity should bar his condemnation to death. Such a man should be slain as would be a wild beast at large and preying on humanity.”[38]
……………………………………………….
In March of 1931, more than five years after the Kirk murder, and long after Nelson was arrested and hung, a man was apparently walking down the streets of Los Angeles in a drunken stupor mumbling to himself that he was a murderer. The police arrested him. He gave his name as Harry Jones and said that he had murdered the umbrella lady in Washington in 1926. Such self confessions must be taken with copious amounts of salt, as indicated by the report in the Post:
Jones said that he had been in Washington in 1926; that he went to the home of “an old woman who sold umbrellas” and “strangled her to death.” “I don’t know why I killed her.” Jones is said to have told Los Angeles police. “I don’t know her name either, but newspapers told of the killing and said a fingerprint was found on the woman’s spectacles. I suppose it was mine.”[39]
Further questioning by the police indicated that the confessing man now called himself George Pearce Tucker, and he said he had worked as a cigar salesman in Washington at the time of the murder and lived in the Arlington Hotel. However, none of the cigar companies in Washington could remember his name, and most of the records of the Arlington Hotel had been destroyed in a fire. Tucker had also apparently asked the police officer who arrested him whether he could get half of the reward that was available for the capture of Kirk’s killer.[40]
The preliminary confession that he did not know the name of the victim he had confessed to killing was certainly put in doubt by the next series of confessions made by Tucker under questioning by Detective Filkas in Los Angeles, as reported in the Post:
“The night I killed the old lady I had been in a colored café and consumed considerable liquor. Now get me right, I am not blaming the liquor for the killing, however, and I want to get this thing settled now. After leaving this café shortly after midnight I walked through the streets of the colored district for about an hour. While passing a house I saw a light turned on. This attracted my attention. I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. The door was opened by a woman about 70 years of age. I grabbed her by the throat and strangled her."
How did you strangle her?” asked Detective Filkas.
“I just strangled her and when I get my thoughts together, I will tell you more. When I knew that she was dead I left the house and returned to my lodging. I followed a police investigation in the newspapers day by day and even returned to the house and stood among the morbid crowd that stood there after the body was discovered. I bought every edition of the newspapers and day by day was positive that suspicion would never be directed at me. Several suspects were picked up, questioned and released… It was an insane impulse, but I am not endeavouring to escape punishment by pleading insanity. I am sane.”
“Were you remorseful for your alleged deed?” detectives asked.
“No, that is the strange part of it. I cannot understand why I didn’t worry about being arrested, as I have traveled extensively around the country since the woman was slain.”
Just where have you been since Miss Kirk was murdered?” Filkas asked.
“All over. When I gather my thoughts, I will tell you more of where I have been,” the suspect replied. “I married a wonderful little woman and have a 10-month-old baby” wintering in San Francisco with my parents. My only regret now is that this will disgrace them. “Of course,” he added, “I have committed a terrible crime and must pay the penalty.” “Say,” he asked suddenly, “how do they inflict the death penalty in Washington? …Well, it doesn’t make much difference to me whether they hang me or give me the chair, I want to return to Washington as soon as possible, face the music and get it all over with at once.”[41]
This confession contains nothing that Tucker could not have got from the newspapers, that he claimed to have read. As we will eventually demonstrate, the confession also contained lies as to his parents living in summer in San Francisco and that they were well-known and wealthy in Philadelphia and Washington.[42] Furthermore, George Pearce Tucker in this “confession” said nothing about strangling Miss Kirk with a shawl or tying up her hands with twine or about what day the murder took place. Several days later, the Post provided a summary of the further questioning by police:
The authorities again asked whether he had used string in the murder, to which he is alleged to have replied: “I had a piece of string, but whether I used it around her throat or hands I don’t know. But I did have a piece of string. I remember that…”
“Do you know whether the victim was wearing glasses?”
“The only way I have the impression she was wearing glasses was that the Washington papers carried an account of a fingerprint on her glasses- is the only way I know of.”
“Do you know of anything else that would show that you committed this crime?”
“The mere fact that I am telling you I did. They have those prints back there, which will verify I was there. The Washington Post offered $500 reward for the arrest of the murderer. I went into the place and talked with her about umbrellas, for that was her business, and I strangled the poor old dear and killed her right there, and left her right there in the room where she let me in.”[43]
This confession again revealed no information aside from what anybody could have read in the newspapers, and actually contained less information than found in the newspapers. I think Tucker was an insane man seeking some fame and perhaps even self-destruction through judicial suicide. One Los Angeles paper reported that Tucker’s motivation for coming forward with his murder story was that his wife in San Francisco proved to be unfaithful to him.[44] As is common in these false confession cases, George Pearce Tucker, the man who had confessed to the murder, recanted the whole thing the next morning.[45]
However, the Washington police discovered that in July of 1926, months after the murder of Kirk, a man by the name of George Pearce Tucker had indeed been living in Washington and had been arrested for public drunkenness. But his prints were not taken for that kind of offense. However, the Washington police also discovered that a man by that name had been arrested on suspicion in Denver in November 1926, and his fingerprints had been circulated to police forces across the country. We don’t know what the suspicion was about. In any case, at that point in time, the fingerprint expert, Fred Sandberg, was on leave to give evidence at a famous trial in New Jersey, and thus some underling had simply filed the fingerprints of Tucker without comparing them with the thumbprint taken from Kirk’s glasses. Now Fred Sandberg looked at the Tucker prints and declared that he thought he had a match. Tucker was indeed the murderer of Miss Kirk. Sandberg claimed that there were twelve points of comparison between Tucker’s left thumbprint and the print on the glasses.[46] So is this the end of the story? No longer should we have suspicion that this might have been another murder of Earle Nelson? Well, it depends on how reliable the fingerprint analysis was back in 1931.
On March 24, 1931 Assistant District Attorney William Collins presented the evidence of Tucker’s confessions and the supposedly matching fingerprint to a Grand Jury in Washington.[47] With an indictment for first degree murder in hand, Collins now went to court and got a bench warrant for the arrest of Tucker so that Washington authorities could expeditiously take Tucker from Los Angeles to Washington. A Federal Judge in Los Angeles eventually signed removal papers so that Washington detectives could escort Tucker to Washington.[48]
However, Tucker was never put on trial for the murder of the umbrella lady. Tucker had acted so peculiar that Washington authorities called in the district alienist, Dr. Percy Hickling, who soon concluded the man was insane. In June of 1931 a lunacy jury hearing was held in the courtroom of Justice Oscar Luhring and Kirk was found of unsound mind and shipped off to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.[49]
It is likely that Washington authorities ultimately were not convinced that Tucker had murdered Kirk, despite the fingerprint. When the medical men at the Hospital in early 1933 declared that Tucker was now restored to mental health and ready to stand trial, one would have thought that the legal men would have been pleased to proceed. Not so. The so called confessions had been made when Tucker was of unsound mind and the statements would have no legal standing. Furthermore, the fingerprint evidence that had been touted as so conclusive, now turned out to only correspond “to some degree with Tucker,”[50] Thus, in a rather bizarre proceeding, U.S. Attorney, Leo Rover hauled George Pearce Tucker into District Supreme Court where Tucker in effect raised his right hand and made a promise not to murder anybody in exchange for having his indictment for first degree murder held in abeyance. Tucker was released so as to go back to Hollywood California where he allegedly had a wife and two children.[51]
Maybe Tucker, under some drunken and insane spell, really did kill the “umbrella lady” for no reason whatever. But was she the victim of someone who actually hunted humans, especially elderly women? Probably Nelson was not involved given that the circumstances in this case do not involve a rooming house, nor do we have evidence of a sexual assault, and Nelson almost always went hunting during the day, mostly afternoons, while this murder was likely at night. Nevertheless, we cannot remove all suspicion.
What do we know about the mysterious George Pearce Tucker? Probably the best clue is that Tucker in his confessions claimed that he had graduated from high school in Roseburg, Oregon, and he had been a racing car driver and had been injured in a car crash on Labor Day in 1923 in Salem, Oregon and was unconscious for 15 days. The length of the unconsciousness was certainly a lie, but we do find that a George Tucker was indeed injured in a race in Salem in 1923, and had received a severe concussion and fractured right arm, but was recovering nicely in hospital a few days later.[52] This leads us to the earlier obituary in the local Roseburg press in 1914, announcing that Mary Jane Tucker was dead at the age of 58. The article stated that she was a native of Kentucky and had lived in Roseburg for three years where she had moved after the death of her husband, Edward. She had four children: Harry Pearce, George Tucker, Mrs. Mattie Robertson of Portland, and Cora Pearce of Galveston, Texas.[53] Although she would have been well into her forties at the time of his birth, we believe this Mary Jane Tucker was probably the mother of George Pearce Tucker. The middle name Pearce matches the name of various siblings, and we presume Mary Jane had an earlier husband named Pearce who died or was divorced, and then she married Edward Tucker and George was born. Records show that Mary Jane Tucker’s maiden name was Scott.[54]
Mary Jane Scott married Alfred William Pearce in 1873 in Illinois.[55] They eventually divorced, and Alfred Pearce, a locomotive engineer, remarried and had several children with his new wife. He died in 1904.[56] We have not found the records of marriage for any Edward Tucker and Mary Jane Pearce. However, in 1918, after his parents had died, a George Pearce Tucker filled out a draft registration card. He was living in Brooklyn New York and gave his date of birth as Sept. 14, 1897, and most importantly listed a Miss C. Pearce in Galveston, Texas, as his sibling.[57] Long after the murder of Miss Kirk, the same George Pearce Tucker was listed in a social security application in 1936 as having been born on Sept. 14, 1897, with his father being Edward Tucker and mother, Mary Scott.[58] Then in 1942 he filled out a draft register card for World War Two. He was born on Sept. 14, 1897, in Dallas, Texas, and in 1942 resided in Los Angeles with his wife Charlotte.[59] We have no information as to when he died.
[1] “Murder of Woman Recluse Mystery,” Washington Post, January 24, 1926, at 1.
[2] “Woman, 80, Found Slain,” Washington Evening Star, January 23, 1926, at 1.
[3] “Man Hunt Begun In Brutal Murder,” Washington Evening Star, January 24, 1926, at 1 and 4.
[4] Death Notice, Washington Post, January 27, 1926, at 8.
[5] Supra note 2.
[6] Supra note 3.
[7] Findagrave.com. Also, Washington D. C. Select Deaths and Burial Index, 1769-1960 and Census Records.
[8] As listed in the U. S. Census of 1880.
[9] findagrave.com.
[10] Supra note 1.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Supra note 2.
[13] Supra note 3.
[14] Daniel B. Maher, “Did This Man Autograph a Murder?” Washington Post, March 6, 1932, at SM 3.
[15] Supra note 1.
[16] Supra note 3.
[17] Ibid. Also, “Seek Second Man as Real Murderer,” Washington Evening Star, January 25, 1926, at 1.
[18] Supra note 14.
[19] Supra note 2.
[20] “Thumbprint Found,” Washington Post, January 25, 1926, at 1.
[21] Supra note 3.
[22] Supra note 20.
[23] “Seek Second Man as Real Murderer,” Washington Evening Star, January 25, 1926, at 1.
[24] “Science May Test Cord,” Washington Post, January 26, 1926, at 1.
[25] “Thumbprint Found,” Washington Post, January 25, 1926, at 1.
[26] Supra note 24.
[27] “Police Seek Missing Man,” Washington Post, January 27, 1926, at 5.
[28] Supra note 24.
[29] Supra note 27.
[30] “Cord Seized in Slaying of Miss Kirk No Clew,” Washington Post, January 28, 1926, at 14.
[31] Ibid.
[32] “Free Kirk Murder Suspects Today,” Washington Evening Star, January 29, 1926, at 5.
[33] Supra note 30.
[34] Supra note 14.
[35] Ibid.
[36] “Woman Questioned in Kirk Slaying,” Washington Evening Star, Jan. 31, 1926, at 1; “Woman and Husband Freed in Kirk Murder,” Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1926, at 2.
[37] “Woman Suffocated,” Washington Post, Feb. 16, 1926, at 22.
[38] “The Gorilla Man,” Washington Evening Star, June 14, 1927, at 8.
[39] “Arrest May Solve Murder Mystery,” Washington Post, March 19, 1931, at 1 and 3.
[40] “Prints in Kirk Case Matched by Detectives,” Washington Post, March 20, 1931, at 1 and 3.
[41] Ibid.
[42] As widely reported. For example, “Son of Rich Family,” Sarasota Herald, March 20, 1931, at 4; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 19, 1931, at 2; L. A. Express, March 20, 1931, at 3.
[43] “U.S. Will Request Indictment,” Washington Post, March 24, 1931, at 20.
[44] “Confesses to Strangling of Woman in the East,” L. A. Post-Record, March 19, 1931, at 1.
[45] “Tucker Repudiates Kirk Murder Story,” Washington Post, March 21, 1931, at 1.
[46] Supra note 14.
[47] “Prosecutor Acting to Return Alleged Slayer of Recluse,” Washington Post, March 25, 1931, at 20.
[48] “Prisoner in Emma Kirk Death to Start East,” Washington Post, April 3, 1931, at 18.
[49] “Man in Kirk Case is Called Insane,” Washington Post, June27, 1931, at 13.
[50] “Man Indicted in Emma Kirk Killing Freed,” Washington Post, Feb. 7, 1933, at 1.
[51] Ibid.
[52] “Race Victim Showing Some Improvement,” The Capital Journal, Sept. 6, 1923, at 5; and “George Tucker is Much Better,” Roseburg News-Review, Sept. 7, 1923, at 7.
[53] “Woman is Dead,” Roseburg News-Review, Feb. 13, 1914, at 1.
[54] Oregon State Deaths, 1864-1971.
[55] Illinois County Marriages, 1810-1934.
[56] Obit in Harrisburg Register, Nov. 25, 1904, at 1.
[57] W. W. I Draft Card Registrations.
[58] Social Security Applications.
[59] W. W. II Draft Card Registrations.
(Do not quote without attribution to Alvin Esau)
Was Earle Nelson still in the eastern parts of the United States after allegedly murdering three landladies in Philadelphia in the later months of 1925, and before returning to the West Coast where he strangled landlady Clara Newman on February 22, 1926? If he was still in the East, one of the murders that is worth investigating is that of Miss Emma Kirk. She ran an umbrella repair shop out of her house at 819 R Street Northwest in Washington D.C. According to the Washington Post, she had lived in this house all her life, inheriting it from her late father thirty years earlier. The reclusive spinster was well loved in the neighbourhood, especially by the children whom she frequently treated with candy and toys,[1] and stories about fairies that entertained them for hours.[2] Miss Kirk had a sister in the city who described Emma as, “independent, happy and contented alone in the little umbrella shop.”[3] The Post reported that Miss Kirk was 63 years old, but later the death notice listed her as being 70.[4] The Evening Star initially said she was 80,[5] but the paper subsequently revised the age to 68.[6] Official records confirm that she was 63 years old, born on Nov. 2, 1862, in Washington, D.C.[7] She was the middle of three girls in the family, and her father ran the umbrella repair shop at 819 R Street.[8] He died in 1891, while the mother of Emma died in 1906.[9] There was a picture of Emma in the Washington Post and our copy from the microfilm is very poor:[10]
On Saturday, January 23, 1926, the next door neighbour lady noticed that Miss Kirk’s cat was mewing and hungry. She informed the corner grocery man of her concerns about Miss Kirk, and the grocery man informed the police. After breaking through the locked door at the front of the little house, the police discovered the body of Miss Kirk lying on the parlour floor. According to the Post, “A shawl- her own- was drawn tightly around the head, the knot gaggling her mouth. Her toil-worn hands were bound behind her with twine. Finger marks showed on her throat.”[11] The Evening Star described the scene somewhat differently:
The hands were tied in front of her. On the floor about a foot from the head was found a set of upper false teeth... Miss Kirk was lying on her right side in a position which, because of the fact it was not relaxed, would indicate it was placed there. Her legs were drawn up so that her knees bent at an angle of 40 degrees. There was no sign of struggle to be found… all the papers, letters and books were in perfect order... Nearby there were three pocketbooks containing a considerable amount of money. As soon as he untied the tightly knotted shawl from around her throat and neck, Coroner Nevitt discovered imprints and marks, evidently made by fingers, on the right side of the neck, below and forward of the ear.[12] The house where Miss Kirk lived was clean and neat. Floors were nicely polished and she was dressed in a black dress over a white waist, at the time of the crime. The shop room in which Miss Kirk’s body was found was the repair room for umbrellas as well as the place where she met and dealt with customers.[13]
More than six years later, journalist, Daniel B. Maher, wrote an article on the Kirk case in the Post which differed to some degree from the original reports. According to Maher, the police had not broken through the door, but rather the discovery of the body was made by the grocer. Maher stated:
Georgia Pullen, the next-door neighbour of Emma Kirk, was about her early morning tasks. She did not see Emma feeding her black cats, which were her only companions. “Strange,” she thought, and went on with her household work. The weird meowing of the cats annoyed her, and Mrs. Pullen looked toward Emma’s kitchen. The back door was open. Leave the door open on a wintery day? Emma never did that before. Mrs. Pullen went to the front of Emma’s store. “Not open yet?” That’s strange too,” she said. “Emma was always open for business at this hour.” Mrs. Pullen talked with the corner grocer. He said a gas man had tried twice to enter the place, but there was no answer. Together they went to Emma’s door. Abraham Posen, that is the grocer’s name, entered and nearly stumbled over the aged spinster’s body, which lay on the floor of the front room of the shop.[14]
Maher also noted that before the police secured the scene of the murder, there were all sorts of people- children, neighbours, customers, reporters and detectives leaving their fingerprints everywhere.
The coroner later established that Miss Kirk had been strangled to death and had likely been murdered in the early hours of Friday morning, January 22.[15] Reports from neighbors suggested that the shop had been closed all day Friday. Nothing was said about the potential for sexual assault, and the Star had earlier reported on the finding of the body that “there was no sign of violence on the body.”[16]
If robbery was the motive, it was difficult to establish what was missing. Miss Kirk’s sister, a Mrs. Elizabeth Shaw, met with the police and pointed out various places in the dwelling where her sister hid valuables, and a Liberty bond and some money where discovered, undisturbed. Perhaps, surmised the police, the victim died because she refused to reveal the whereabouts of valuables. For several days the Evening Star promoted the theory that stories of hidden wealth had circulated in the community and that the killer, well acquainted with the daily life of Miss Kirk, had tied her up, seeking to know where the wealth was hidden, and then killed her, perhaps even without intent to kill, as he was chokingly threatening her to reveal the hiding place.[17] Given the lack of any evidence that the killer had engaged in any search of the house, this theory was rather weak. How could robbery be a motive, given that even a cursory search would have revealed some cash in a buffet drawer,[18] or in the pocketbooks of the victim, if the Star report was reliable?[19]
There were two clues that the police had. One was a thumbprint on the victim’s spectacles found lying on the floor beside the body, and the other was the twine used to tie her hands.[20] The Star reported that Captain Cornwell of the second police precinct thought the twine would soon lead to the killer:
Cornwell recognized the cord as a chalk line, the type of string used by mechanics for marking chalk guidelines on portions of work to be saved or cut. He made a search of the shop. Although much cord was found, none answering the description of the type binding the wrist and angles was found. Cornwell credited a man employed in a mechanical line with being instrumental in the murder.[21]
When we seek any suspicious circumstances that might point to Earle Nelson, we note that the Philadelphia landladies had also been bound and gagged, which was a circumstance that Earle Nelson subsequently abandoned when he returned to California, assuming that Nelson murdered the three landladies in Philadelphia. Here the victim was bound and gagged, and the chalk line could just as easily have been something used in the construction trade, which was often Earle Nelson’s line of employment, when he was employed.
The first suspects to be arrested were two temporarily unemployed “colored” men, one of them living right next door to the murder victim, and a friend of the first suspect, also living in the same neighbourhood. The police had found some twine under the bed in the next door neighbour’s house and thought it looked like the kind of twine that was used to tie Kirk’s hands.[22] However, according the Star, the twine found in the suspect’s home was “new and clean” while the twine that bound Miss Kirk was “old and soiled.”[23] A third “negro” man, employed as a plasterer and living in the neighbourhood was soon arrested for investigation as well.[24] Implicit in the newspaper reports of “six hours of questioning,”[25] and “attempts to get a confession,”[26] and “grilled again,”[27] was the likelihood of the abusive “third degree” treatment that suspects commonly received from the police in that era. That the fingerprint found on the glasses did not match the suspects was irrelevant Captain Cornwall now asserted, because the fingerprint likely came from somebody who had entered the house after the murder was discovered.[28]
Meanwhile the cord in the neighbour’s house and the cord from the scene of the murder were handed to the United States Bureau of Standards for examination.[29] The results showed that the police had been barking up the wrong tree, because the neighbour’s twine was not used to tie up the victim.[30] Lawyers for the three “colored” men were preparing to make a court application to have the men released from custody.[31] Presumably they were released, but the Post did not even bother reporting on their freedom. On Friday, January 29th, the Evening Star, finally conceding that robbery by someone in the neighbourhood was a dumb theory, and reported that one of the men had been released, and that Henry Pratt, chief of detectives, had stated that the other two would be released before the end of the day. As the paper noted, the case was now “within the sight of the end of the trail which leads to the graveyard of unsolved mysteries.”[32]
The police went back to the “irrelevant” fingerprint, as Fred Sandberg, the resident police expert, laboriously spent weeks comparing the print with the more than 40,000 finger prints that the Washington police had on file.[33] Sandberg had discovered the glasses at the scene of the crime with a smeared thumbprint on the right lens. According to the later account of Maher, the print was not a complete print, but “just the bulb of the skin on the thumb.”[34] Sandberg had attempted to get fingerprints from the various individuals who had been at the scene of the crime, establishing that the print was not from an innocent onlooker, before he continued to work through all the prints on file, looking for a match.[35]
Meanwhile the police intensively grilled a woman and her husband. Apparently, the woman was a friend of the reclusive Miss Kirk and had seen her the day before the murder.[36] Nothing came of this, and clearly the police were left without a clue as to who had strangled Miss Kirk. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of death by suffocation, by a person or persons unknown.[37] There was no further press coverage, because there was nothing to report.
We have no evidence that the Washington police ever considered linking this murder to other strangulation cases in other cities. An editorial writer for the Washington Evening Star wrote a comment under the title, “The Gorilla Man” during a time that the strangler was still at large after the Winnipeg killings. The editorial writer noted the dangerous mobility of the fiend, but never mentioned the possibility that Washington itself might have been the scene of one of the killings. The point of the editorial was that when the gorilla was caught, “no consideration of insanity should bar his condemnation to death. Such a man should be slain as would be a wild beast at large and preying on humanity.”[38]
……………………………………………….
In March of 1931, more than five years after the Kirk murder, and long after Nelson was arrested and hung, a man was apparently walking down the streets of Los Angeles in a drunken stupor mumbling to himself that he was a murderer. The police arrested him. He gave his name as Harry Jones and said that he had murdered the umbrella lady in Washington in 1926. Such self confessions must be taken with copious amounts of salt, as indicated by the report in the Post:
Jones said that he had been in Washington in 1926; that he went to the home of “an old woman who sold umbrellas” and “strangled her to death.” “I don’t know why I killed her.” Jones is said to have told Los Angeles police. “I don’t know her name either, but newspapers told of the killing and said a fingerprint was found on the woman’s spectacles. I suppose it was mine.”[39]
Further questioning by the police indicated that the confessing man now called himself George Pearce Tucker, and he said he had worked as a cigar salesman in Washington at the time of the murder and lived in the Arlington Hotel. However, none of the cigar companies in Washington could remember his name, and most of the records of the Arlington Hotel had been destroyed in a fire. Tucker had also apparently asked the police officer who arrested him whether he could get half of the reward that was available for the capture of Kirk’s killer.[40]
The preliminary confession that he did not know the name of the victim he had confessed to killing was certainly put in doubt by the next series of confessions made by Tucker under questioning by Detective Filkas in Los Angeles, as reported in the Post:
“The night I killed the old lady I had been in a colored café and consumed considerable liquor. Now get me right, I am not blaming the liquor for the killing, however, and I want to get this thing settled now. After leaving this café shortly after midnight I walked through the streets of the colored district for about an hour. While passing a house I saw a light turned on. This attracted my attention. I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. The door was opened by a woman about 70 years of age. I grabbed her by the throat and strangled her."
How did you strangle her?” asked Detective Filkas.
“I just strangled her and when I get my thoughts together, I will tell you more. When I knew that she was dead I left the house and returned to my lodging. I followed a police investigation in the newspapers day by day and even returned to the house and stood among the morbid crowd that stood there after the body was discovered. I bought every edition of the newspapers and day by day was positive that suspicion would never be directed at me. Several suspects were picked up, questioned and released… It was an insane impulse, but I am not endeavouring to escape punishment by pleading insanity. I am sane.”
“Were you remorseful for your alleged deed?” detectives asked.
“No, that is the strange part of it. I cannot understand why I didn’t worry about being arrested, as I have traveled extensively around the country since the woman was slain.”
Just where have you been since Miss Kirk was murdered?” Filkas asked.
“All over. When I gather my thoughts, I will tell you more of where I have been,” the suspect replied. “I married a wonderful little woman and have a 10-month-old baby” wintering in San Francisco with my parents. My only regret now is that this will disgrace them. “Of course,” he added, “I have committed a terrible crime and must pay the penalty.” “Say,” he asked suddenly, “how do they inflict the death penalty in Washington? …Well, it doesn’t make much difference to me whether they hang me or give me the chair, I want to return to Washington as soon as possible, face the music and get it all over with at once.”[41]
This confession contains nothing that Tucker could not have got from the newspapers, that he claimed to have read. As we will eventually demonstrate, the confession also contained lies as to his parents living in summer in San Francisco and that they were well-known and wealthy in Philadelphia and Washington.[42] Furthermore, George Pearce Tucker in this “confession” said nothing about strangling Miss Kirk with a shawl or tying up her hands with twine or about what day the murder took place. Several days later, the Post provided a summary of the further questioning by police:
The authorities again asked whether he had used string in the murder, to which he is alleged to have replied: “I had a piece of string, but whether I used it around her throat or hands I don’t know. But I did have a piece of string. I remember that…”
“Do you know whether the victim was wearing glasses?”
“The only way I have the impression she was wearing glasses was that the Washington papers carried an account of a fingerprint on her glasses- is the only way I know of.”
“Do you know of anything else that would show that you committed this crime?”
“The mere fact that I am telling you I did. They have those prints back there, which will verify I was there. The Washington Post offered $500 reward for the arrest of the murderer. I went into the place and talked with her about umbrellas, for that was her business, and I strangled the poor old dear and killed her right there, and left her right there in the room where she let me in.”[43]
This confession again revealed no information aside from what anybody could have read in the newspapers, and actually contained less information than found in the newspapers. I think Tucker was an insane man seeking some fame and perhaps even self-destruction through judicial suicide. One Los Angeles paper reported that Tucker’s motivation for coming forward with his murder story was that his wife in San Francisco proved to be unfaithful to him.[44] As is common in these false confession cases, George Pearce Tucker, the man who had confessed to the murder, recanted the whole thing the next morning.[45]
However, the Washington police discovered that in July of 1926, months after the murder of Kirk, a man by the name of George Pearce Tucker had indeed been living in Washington and had been arrested for public drunkenness. But his prints were not taken for that kind of offense. However, the Washington police also discovered that a man by that name had been arrested on suspicion in Denver in November 1926, and his fingerprints had been circulated to police forces across the country. We don’t know what the suspicion was about. In any case, at that point in time, the fingerprint expert, Fred Sandberg, was on leave to give evidence at a famous trial in New Jersey, and thus some underling had simply filed the fingerprints of Tucker without comparing them with the thumbprint taken from Kirk’s glasses. Now Fred Sandberg looked at the Tucker prints and declared that he thought he had a match. Tucker was indeed the murderer of Miss Kirk. Sandberg claimed that there were twelve points of comparison between Tucker’s left thumbprint and the print on the glasses.[46] So is this the end of the story? No longer should we have suspicion that this might have been another murder of Earle Nelson? Well, it depends on how reliable the fingerprint analysis was back in 1931.
On March 24, 1931 Assistant District Attorney William Collins presented the evidence of Tucker’s confessions and the supposedly matching fingerprint to a Grand Jury in Washington.[47] With an indictment for first degree murder in hand, Collins now went to court and got a bench warrant for the arrest of Tucker so that Washington authorities could expeditiously take Tucker from Los Angeles to Washington. A Federal Judge in Los Angeles eventually signed removal papers so that Washington detectives could escort Tucker to Washington.[48]
However, Tucker was never put on trial for the murder of the umbrella lady. Tucker had acted so peculiar that Washington authorities called in the district alienist, Dr. Percy Hickling, who soon concluded the man was insane. In June of 1931 a lunacy jury hearing was held in the courtroom of Justice Oscar Luhring and Kirk was found of unsound mind and shipped off to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.[49]
It is likely that Washington authorities ultimately were not convinced that Tucker had murdered Kirk, despite the fingerprint. When the medical men at the Hospital in early 1933 declared that Tucker was now restored to mental health and ready to stand trial, one would have thought that the legal men would have been pleased to proceed. Not so. The so called confessions had been made when Tucker was of unsound mind and the statements would have no legal standing. Furthermore, the fingerprint evidence that had been touted as so conclusive, now turned out to only correspond “to some degree with Tucker,”[50] Thus, in a rather bizarre proceeding, U.S. Attorney, Leo Rover hauled George Pearce Tucker into District Supreme Court where Tucker in effect raised his right hand and made a promise not to murder anybody in exchange for having his indictment for first degree murder held in abeyance. Tucker was released so as to go back to Hollywood California where he allegedly had a wife and two children.[51]
Maybe Tucker, under some drunken and insane spell, really did kill the “umbrella lady” for no reason whatever. But was she the victim of someone who actually hunted humans, especially elderly women? Probably Nelson was not involved given that the circumstances in this case do not involve a rooming house, nor do we have evidence of a sexual assault, and Nelson almost always went hunting during the day, mostly afternoons, while this murder was likely at night. Nevertheless, we cannot remove all suspicion.
What do we know about the mysterious George Pearce Tucker? Probably the best clue is that Tucker in his confessions claimed that he had graduated from high school in Roseburg, Oregon, and he had been a racing car driver and had been injured in a car crash on Labor Day in 1923 in Salem, Oregon and was unconscious for 15 days. The length of the unconsciousness was certainly a lie, but we do find that a George Tucker was indeed injured in a race in Salem in 1923, and had received a severe concussion and fractured right arm, but was recovering nicely in hospital a few days later.[52] This leads us to the earlier obituary in the local Roseburg press in 1914, announcing that Mary Jane Tucker was dead at the age of 58. The article stated that she was a native of Kentucky and had lived in Roseburg for three years where she had moved after the death of her husband, Edward. She had four children: Harry Pearce, George Tucker, Mrs. Mattie Robertson of Portland, and Cora Pearce of Galveston, Texas.[53] Although she would have been well into her forties at the time of his birth, we believe this Mary Jane Tucker was probably the mother of George Pearce Tucker. The middle name Pearce matches the name of various siblings, and we presume Mary Jane had an earlier husband named Pearce who died or was divorced, and then she married Edward Tucker and George was born. Records show that Mary Jane Tucker’s maiden name was Scott.[54]
Mary Jane Scott married Alfred William Pearce in 1873 in Illinois.[55] They eventually divorced, and Alfred Pearce, a locomotive engineer, remarried and had several children with his new wife. He died in 1904.[56] We have not found the records of marriage for any Edward Tucker and Mary Jane Pearce. However, in 1918, after his parents had died, a George Pearce Tucker filled out a draft registration card. He was living in Brooklyn New York and gave his date of birth as Sept. 14, 1897, and most importantly listed a Miss C. Pearce in Galveston, Texas, as his sibling.[57] Long after the murder of Miss Kirk, the same George Pearce Tucker was listed in a social security application in 1936 as having been born on Sept. 14, 1897, with his father being Edward Tucker and mother, Mary Scott.[58] Then in 1942 he filled out a draft register card for World War Two. He was born on Sept. 14, 1897, in Dallas, Texas, and in 1942 resided in Los Angeles with his wife Charlotte.[59] We have no information as to when he died.
[1] “Murder of Woman Recluse Mystery,” Washington Post, January 24, 1926, at 1.
[2] “Woman, 80, Found Slain,” Washington Evening Star, January 23, 1926, at 1.
[3] “Man Hunt Begun In Brutal Murder,” Washington Evening Star, January 24, 1926, at 1 and 4.
[4] Death Notice, Washington Post, January 27, 1926, at 8.
[5] Supra note 2.
[6] Supra note 3.
[7] Findagrave.com. Also, Washington D. C. Select Deaths and Burial Index, 1769-1960 and Census Records.
[8] As listed in the U. S. Census of 1880.
[9] findagrave.com.
[10] Supra note 1.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Supra note 2.
[13] Supra note 3.
[14] Daniel B. Maher, “Did This Man Autograph a Murder?” Washington Post, March 6, 1932, at SM 3.
[15] Supra note 1.
[16] Supra note 3.
[17] Ibid. Also, “Seek Second Man as Real Murderer,” Washington Evening Star, January 25, 1926, at 1.
[18] Supra note 14.
[19] Supra note 2.
[20] “Thumbprint Found,” Washington Post, January 25, 1926, at 1.
[21] Supra note 3.
[22] Supra note 20.
[23] “Seek Second Man as Real Murderer,” Washington Evening Star, January 25, 1926, at 1.
[24] “Science May Test Cord,” Washington Post, January 26, 1926, at 1.
[25] “Thumbprint Found,” Washington Post, January 25, 1926, at 1.
[26] Supra note 24.
[27] “Police Seek Missing Man,” Washington Post, January 27, 1926, at 5.
[28] Supra note 24.
[29] Supra note 27.
[30] “Cord Seized in Slaying of Miss Kirk No Clew,” Washington Post, January 28, 1926, at 14.
[31] Ibid.
[32] “Free Kirk Murder Suspects Today,” Washington Evening Star, January 29, 1926, at 5.
[33] Supra note 30.
[34] Supra note 14.
[35] Ibid.
[36] “Woman Questioned in Kirk Slaying,” Washington Evening Star, Jan. 31, 1926, at 1; “Woman and Husband Freed in Kirk Murder,” Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1926, at 2.
[37] “Woman Suffocated,” Washington Post, Feb. 16, 1926, at 22.
[38] “The Gorilla Man,” Washington Evening Star, June 14, 1927, at 8.
[39] “Arrest May Solve Murder Mystery,” Washington Post, March 19, 1931, at 1 and 3.
[40] “Prints in Kirk Case Matched by Detectives,” Washington Post, March 20, 1931, at 1 and 3.
[41] Ibid.
[42] As widely reported. For example, “Son of Rich Family,” Sarasota Herald, March 20, 1931, at 4; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 19, 1931, at 2; L. A. Express, March 20, 1931, at 3.
[43] “U.S. Will Request Indictment,” Washington Post, March 24, 1931, at 20.
[44] “Confesses to Strangling of Woman in the East,” L. A. Post-Record, March 19, 1931, at 1.
[45] “Tucker Repudiates Kirk Murder Story,” Washington Post, March 21, 1931, at 1.
[46] Supra note 14.
[47] “Prosecutor Acting to Return Alleged Slayer of Recluse,” Washington Post, March 25, 1931, at 20.
[48] “Prisoner in Emma Kirk Death to Start East,” Washington Post, April 3, 1931, at 18.
[49] “Man in Kirk Case is Called Insane,” Washington Post, June27, 1931, at 13.
[50] “Man Indicted in Emma Kirk Killing Freed,” Washington Post, Feb. 7, 1933, at 1.
[51] Ibid.
[52] “Race Victim Showing Some Improvement,” The Capital Journal, Sept. 6, 1923, at 5; and “George Tucker is Much Better,” Roseburg News-Review, Sept. 7, 1923, at 7.
[53] “Woman is Dead,” Roseburg News-Review, Feb. 13, 1914, at 1.
[54] Oregon State Deaths, 1864-1971.
[55] Illinois County Marriages, 1810-1934.
[56] Obit in Harrisburg Register, Nov. 25, 1904, at 1.
[57] W. W. I Draft Card Registrations.
[58] Social Security Applications.
[59] W. W. II Draft Card Registrations.
