THE MURDER OF MAE PRICE, 50, ON MAY 31, 1925, IN BOSTON
(Do not quote without attribution to Alvin Esau)
According to the New York Times, on Saturday, May 30, 1925, “The Brown Derby” show had completed a week’s engagement at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston. Apparently, the show had not been successful, and the various members of the company were told to pack their bags so as to return next day to New York for “reorganization.”[1] Mrs. Mae Price, 50 years of age, staying at the Hollis Hotel, was the wardrobe mistress for the company and she had been given her pay on Saturday afternoon before the last show. Several of the showgirls had also given their pay to her for safekeeping, since she acted as a surrogate mother to them. Mrs. Price, and a local assistant, Mrs. Mary Hughes, stayed late at the theatre after the show preparing the costumes for transport, and left the theatre at about midnight. Mrs. Mary Hughes stated that they had gone to a coffee shop for about half an hour across from the hotel, and that about 12:30 in the morning Mrs. Price went into the hotel, while Hughes departed for home by way of a taxi. Mrs. Hughes said that no one had followed Mrs. Price into the hotel and she had displayed no fear that someone was threatening her.[2]
On Sunday morning, May 31, Mrs. Price failed to answer her wakeup call which she had requested for 10 A.M. She was found dead in her room and the envelope containing the money for the showgirls had been torn open and the money taken. It was reported that:
The police found that the room had been entered with a false key after the room key had been turned and pushed out of the lock. The room key was on the floor inside the door… The supposition of the police is that the murderer got into the room without awakening Mrs. Price, seized her by the throat and prevented her from making outcry by choking her into insensibility. He then turned her face downward on the bed, tied her hands behind her back with strips of sheeting and forced her face so deeply into the pillows that she was suffocated. The body bore many bruises, as if the slayer had beaten his victim wantonly.[3]
The Boston Post for June 1, 1925, carried the headline, “Hotel Bandit Kills Woman,” and a picture of the “comely” Mrs. Mae Price; a picture of the rear of the hotel marking the fire escape route down from the fourth floor; and a picture of Herman Widman, the elevator “boy” who had discovered the body when he had been sent to the room because Price had not responded to her wake up call.[4] The newspaper noted that Mrs. Price must have been engaged in a terrific struggle with her assailant, "Mrs. Price’s face was battered almost beyond recognition. Her left eye was blackened. Her cheeks were bruised and pummeled. Her head had been battered. One of her teeth had been knocked out. A heavy blow or kick had injured one of her lungs. The woman’s abdomen also was injured by a blow. Her face and head was a mass of bruises and cuts…"[5] Later reports mentioned that two teeth had been knocked out and two ribs broken.[6] Various torn pay envelopes were found on the floor, and Price’s purse on the dresser bureau had been ransacked, but the police could find no fingerprints on these items or on the ledge to the fire escape.
The police were surprised that none of the other guests had heard any noises or seen any suspicious characters in the lobby area of the hotel. At first, the police believed that Mrs. Price was murdered by an “insider” who knew that she carried money with her. The Boston Globe reported that the fingerprints left on the throat of the victim were compared to the fingerprints held on file by the Boston police.[7] Then the fingerprints were compared to those of the Brown Derby cast members.[8] According to the Boston Herald, “Ordinarily, it is difficult to obtain finger prints from flesh, but in this case there was an oily substance on the neck, which furnished a basis for marks and the police were able to obtain prints therefrom.”[9]
Several days later press reports revealed that the murderer must have been wounded in the struggle. The blood on the bed was the murderer’s blood and there were scraps of skin found under Mrs. Price’s fingernails.[10] Furthermore, some of the other guests had indeed heard noises, and the singer in the room directly below had heard a woman’s screams, “but believed at the time it was probably done in fun,” but then it bothered him sufficiently to make a call and complain, but the noises stopped as he got up to make the call.[11] The famous Variety show business paper, added the information that it was known that Mrs. Price had at least $200 in her possession before the robbery, and also noted the brutality of the murder.[12]
The idea that an “insider” was to blame was reinforced when it was discovered that hours before the murder, a thief had entered the dressing room of actress Phebe Brune of the “Rose-Marie” company at the Shubert Theatre next door to the Hollis Hotel and stolen a pay envelope containing $200 when the actress was briefly called out of the room for a rehearsal.[13] Police focused their attention on finding “a theatrical man” and detectives were sent to New York to examine every male member of “The Brown Derby” cast.[14] The police also were reinforced in their belief that someone who knew Mrs. Price might have been the murderer, because she was a very careful woman, and yet the deadbolt to her hotel room was not engaged when she was murdered. Had she gone to the door and opened the bolt expecting to speak to someone she knew? Then the murderer had used a false key- a master key, “that every crook has,” to open the door?[15]
Having cleared all the theatre people back in New York, the investigation took another turn when vaudeville actress May Jensen staying at the Hollis Hotel reported that a tall man, of swarthy complexion, approached her in the sixth-floor hallway at 1:30 on Sunday morning as she was on her way to her room. She apparently ran from the stranger, locked her door, and called for help. When her friends came, the man on the sixth floor had disappeared.[16] The police, having exhausted “the theatre man” theory, now turned to the “the underworld” theory, because two well known drug users in the theatre district had apparently disappeared since the murder.[17] The Boston police were banking on a “squealer” coming forward from the underworld of “thugs, degenerates and stage door Johnnies” frequenting the Tenderloin district.[18] This would be aided by the fact that the husband of Mrs. Price had announced a reward of $500 to find the killer of his wife.
The report from a temporary bell boy that he had heard a loud, angry discussion between Mrs. Price and another woman at some stage during the week, was dismissed as unreliable, and perhaps motivated by a desire for the reward money by this ex-employee of the hotel.[19]
Mrs. Price was a much-loved figure in the theatre world and a great crowd came to the funeral at Campbell’s on Broadway in New York and to the grave service at Woodlawn.[20] Meanwhile back in Boston the police heard from a taxi driver who had picked up an intoxicated “scrawny faced individual” with bad scratches on his face. He was picked up by the taxi driver outside a nightclub at about 2 A.M. on the night of the murder and driven to the Back Bay area of Boston.[21] Nothing seems to have materialized with this report, and over the next while other individuals were investigated or suspected, without any success.[22]
Finally, the headlines of the Boston Post on June 23, 1925, announced, “Man Held for Hotel Murder.”[23] A Mr. Frank Corey had been arrested in Worcester and charged with the murder. The police alleged that Frank Corey, 34 years of age, born in Armenia, had stayed at the Hollis Hotel in a room on the fifth floor several days previous to the murder of Price on the fourth floor. He had registered under the name Frank Mulleono. This fact was established because eventually a letter arrived at the hotel addressed to Frank Mulleono, but the police noted that the letter inside the envelope came from Bessie Corey of Worcester and was addressed to her brother, Frank Corey. On Saturday night around 9:30 in the evening, this “Frank Mulleono” attempted to pay for his room with a cheque written in pencil which the room clerk rejected. That Frank Corey did not leave the hotel on the night of the murder was supposedly established by the vaudeville actress who was shown an old picture of Frank Corey, and asserted that this was indeed the picture of the strange man who “accosted” her on the sixth floor the night Mrs. Price was killed on the fourth floor.
The police thought Frank Corey had traces of scratches on his face and they did not believe his story that the scratches were from a faulty attempt at shaving.[24] The police also had evidence that while he was penniless on the night before the murder, he later had money to pay a fee to a lawyer. Despite the earlier reports of having useable fingerprints from the neck of the victim, there were no reports during the trial that Corey’s fingerprints matched or not. Indeed, the prosecution admitted that the case against him was circumstantial.
Who was this man? According to the initial report, his real Armenian name was Mecorian, but he used a variety of names including Corey and Costello, and his father apparently ran a store in Worcester. Frank Corey had been sentenced to Leavenworth prison for eight years in 1915 on a charge of highway robbery. Prison records from 1915 described him as “27 years old, five feet 8 ¾ inches, 165 pounds, stocky build, black hair, dark brown eyes and dark complexion.”[25] It was also reported that, "In 1918 he escaped by crawling through the sewer and was recaptured three days later. He was released from the federal prison in 1923 and spent more than a year in New York City, then went to Worcester, where his father, Richard Corey, alias Mecorian, has a grocery store."[26] More recently he had been charged with passing a bad cheque for ten bucks. He was sentenced to four months in jail but appealed his conviction with the help of lawyer Charles Boyle. Four days after the murder of Mrs. Price, Frank Corey not only paid his lawyer but also made restitution for the ten dollars, and thus was spared a prison term, as his lawyer persuaded the court to put him on probation.[27] This supposedly supported the theory of the police that Corey was the murdering thief. He had no money before the murder, and then he had money after it. The Boston Herald reported that Corey, “was a drug addict and in need of money.”[28]
The theory of the case was outlined by Sergeant Thomas Harvey, the chief investigator, who surmised that Corey had been denied a room, so he hung about, attempted to confront the actress on the 6th floor, then had made his way into the Price room before she came home. He hid under the bed waiting for the victim to arrive. This was indicated by the newly revealed fact that a briefly smoked cigarette of the popular brand found on Corey when arrested was also found under the bed of the murdered woman. Corey had supposedly smoked while waiting for his victim, but then changed his mind thinking he might be discovered by the smell. He then stubbed the cigarette burning the carpet under the bed. Price than supposedly came into the room and went to bed and then Corey tried to steal money from her purse. He was just interested in the money but ended up killing her when she woke and resisted vigorously. For this story, the police claimed conclusive evidence.”[29] For his part, Frank Corey, wisely on the advice of his lawyer, said nothing.[30]
After Cory’s picture was already published in the newspaper, the actress on the sixth floor (who had also seen a previous photo of Cory presented to her by the police), and two night clerks, picked him out of a line up as the man they had seen at the hotel.[31] That Corey was denied a room and was at the hotel on the night of the murder, hardly amounts to much evidence that he committed the murder. Corey was held for several months in the Charles Street jail waiting trial. By August, he reportedly had a bout of “cell mania” as psychiatrists were called in to vouch for his continued sanity.[32]
The trial of Corey (officially named at trial as Frank Crecorian) started on Monday, August 17 in the Suffolk Superior Criminal Court before Judge Henry Lummus. Corey was defended by famous lawyer, William R. Scharton, who initially announced that the defence would prove that Corey was not at the hotel on the night the murder was committed.[33] The government was represented by District Attorney, Thomas O’Brien and Assistant D.A., George Alpert, who took the lead role. The first day was taken up with jury selection.[34] The issues of prejudicial pretrial publicity and objection to the death penalty were the main sources of debate during jury selection.[35] When selection was complete, the members of the jury included two identified as “colored”.[36]
During the next two days, the witness who had found the body, the medical doctor who had examined it, and various police officials gave evidence, as well as those who claimed that Corey was at the hotel. Nothing new seems to have been added to what earlier press reports revealed, except that the vaudeville actress, Miss Jensen, the key witness who asserted Corey was at the hotel on the night in question, revealed that she was having a lively gin party in her room, involving a number of men on the night that she saw the stranger on the sixth floor, wearing a straw hat and overcoat.[37] “He tried to grab my arm, and said, ‘Hey kid, wait a minute.’ I ran into my room,” Jensen testified. Also the defense established through cross examination of various witnesses that a wide assortment of men wandered the halls of the hotel at all hours of the night and furthermore that a variety of keys to other rooms also could unlock the door to the victim’s room.[38] Furthermore it was established by the clerk of the hotel that a key to a room on the sixth floor had gone missing, and also that a man described as “dark, swarthy and of heavy build” had occupied the adjoining room to Mrs. Price and the clerk could not establish whether or not the man had stayed over the Saturday night in question.[39]
New evidence that Corey was in the area was introduced at the trial. Now another wardrobe assistant testified that on Saturday, May 30, when leaving Spaulding’s Restaurant at about 7 in the evening, after having supper with Mrs. Price, she noticed a man standing in the alley near the Shubert Theatre. She now identified this man as Corey. Furthermore, Mrs. Hughes, who had assisted Mrs. Price, and had earlier mentioned that she saw no suspicious characters in the coffee shop after midnight, now asserted that she had seen Corey in the coffee shop earlier, standing by the lunch counter. A young cashier at the coffee shop gave evidence that the man identified as Corey had a cup of coffee at around 4 or 5 in the evening and then walked out without paying. She confronted him and he paid 5 cents.[40]
If the evidence that Corey might have been around the Hollis Hotel on the night in question was strengthened by the time of the trial, so what? The police knew that linking him to the crime required more effort. Thus new evidence was discovered (or manufactured) dealing with allegations that Corey had a scratched face. The police found some woman working at a drug store in Boston who claimed to be reading about the murder when a man with scratches on his face came into the store on Tuesday, June 2, and asked for some makeup paint for his face.[41] She later identified Corey as the man she had seen. Also, the police found a 12-year-old lad in Worcester who lived in the same neighborhood as Corey and this lad now stated that he saw Corey with a wad of money in his shirt and having scratches on his face.[42] Scharton for the defendant effectively discredited both witnesses.
After the District Attorney had presented his case, Corey’s lawyer, William Scharton, stated that he would call no evidence and asked the judge for a directed verdict of not guilty because there was simply no direct evidence linking Corey to the murder and the circumstantial evidence was contradictory.[43] The judge promptly refused the directed verdict plea, and so the lawyers made their arguments in front of the jury. When evidence fails, pleas to emotion are made, as illustrated by Alpert, who was quoted as telling the jury:
Mrs. Mae Price’s body is mouldering in the grave but her spirit is in this courtroom directing by acts and words. Her spirit will be with you in the jury room. She cries for vindication. She pleads for justice. She points a trembling finger at that man, and she shrieks to you- ‘Go out and do your duty.’[44]
For his part, William Scharton pointed out the weakness of the evidence as to Corey even being at the hotel on the night of the murder, much less any connection to the murder itself. The judge charged the jury and after deliberating six hours the jury acquitted Corey, without any evidence being called by the defence.[45] It was reported that this was the first case in the history of Massachusetts where a person accused of capital murder was acquitted by a jury without ever taking the stand or offering evidence.
Perhaps anticipating the result, as soon as Corey was about to taste freedom, the police arrested him on a federal warrant charging him with desertion from the United States army at Camp Devens on August 24, 1924. “I suppose you will keep hounding me forever after this,” Corey told the police.[46] Sure enough, a few days later Boston officials had Corey arrested at Camp Devens and brought back to the Charles Street jail now charging him with the robbery of Mrs. Price.[47] Bail was set at $100,000 and so Corey sat in jail for many months until he underwent a second trial in March of 1926. By what additional evidence could Corey now be the thief, without a reasonable doubt, but not be the murderer, beyond a reasonable doubt? It would appear that the police authorities never agreed with the jury in the first place, and through an abuse of process bordering on double jeopardy were not going to give up.
The coverage of the robbery trial by the Boston Globe initially did not reveal any new evidence that was not dealt with at the first trial for murder.[48] Assistant D.A. Timothy Callahan conducted the case for the government while Mr. Scharton was the defence counsel again, and the same witnesses were examined and cross-examined. However, eventually the prosecution introduced new evidence not given at the first trial. This time employees of Crawford Chambers in Boston testified that a man had arrived at 3:30 A.M on May 31 and paid for a room with cash and signed the register as “Joe W. Brown” from New York.[49] This “Brown” also left a coat behind in the room when he left the next day. The clerk of this establishment now identified Corey as the man who had taken the room and left the coat. Of course, the coat was tan-colored, which matched the description given by the vaudeville actress as to what she saw the man wearing as he talked to her on the sixth floor on the night of the murder. Supposedly the coat also had spots of blood on it. On the advice of Mr. Scharton, Corey was asked to put the coat on in front of the jury, presumably because Scharton did not think it fit. Callahan, for the government, took the opportunity to ask Corey to show his hands to the jury. The Globe went on to report:
Wilbur Turner, a handwriting expert testified that in his opinion the signature of “Frank Mulloena” in the register of the Hotel Hollis, the signature of “Joe W. Brown” on the register of the Crawford Chambers and the signature “Frank Corey” on an application blank for employment at a Worcester factory were written by the same person.[50]
At the end of the prosecution’s case, Mr. Scharton again chose to call no evidence and the case was argued before the jury. The appeal to emotion was made again as:
Mr. Callahan called the attention of the jurors to Corey’s hands. He said he never expected to get an opportunity to have those hands shown to the jury, and that they were cruel and deadly hands, and that the jurors had looked upon two of the most powerful clawlike hands they had ever seen. He said they were the hands of a throttler, "the hands of a strangler,” and that the use of a weapon such as a club would have been an act of charity to the woman. [51]
When the jury returned a guilty verdict, Scharton was very agitated and banging his fists on the table in front of him he told the jury that their decision was perverse and not based on the evidence. He then suggested that their verdict was based on a false rumour that someone had spread to them that Corey had been willing to plead guilty to second degree murder in the first trial to avoid the possibility of the death penalty.[52] He stated that the jurors would live to regret the guilty verdict they had given. The judge rebuked Scharton and told the jury that he thought they had done a fine job and then he sentenced Corey to life but stayed the sentence for the time necessary for Corey to appeal. The next day the foreman of the jury, speaking for all 12 men, asked the judge to order Scharton to apologize for his remarks impugning the integrity of the jury.[53] The bold and capitalized headline in the Globe the next day read, “Scharton Makes Apology.”[54] After Scharton had expressed his regrets, Judge David Lourie again took the opportunity to express his own agreement with the jury verdict and expressed the view that Corey was the murderer of Mrs. Price and that if the new evidence at this trial had been available in the first trial, Corey would be sentenced to death instead of having a life sentence for robbery.[55]
The appeal was argued before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts on March 5, 1928, and was rendered on June 11, 1928.[56] The court upheld the conviction of Corey asserting that the indictment for robbery was not the same offence as the indictment for murder and an acquittal for murder did not bar a conviction for robbery.
How long did Corey spend in jail? Years after the event, the Price murder continued to attract journalistic accounts in the popular true crime genre. In 1930, Sgt. Thomas Harvey, who had a key role in investigating the case, wrote an account in True Detective.[57] The article is interesting only because of the picture of the bedroom where Price was murdered, which shows how high the bed was off the ground to conform to the police theory that the killer hid there. The pictures also show the pillow with the deep indentation made by the head of the victim. Several decades later, James Kelly wrote a chapter on the case in a book on Boston murders.[58] At the end of the article, he noted that Corey applied for parole in 1942 after spending 19 years in prison. At the parole hearing Corey said, “I neither robbed the wardrobe mistress nor murdered her… It was never proved that the coat was mine. I never saw it till that day in court. I was convicted on my record, on circumstantial evidence.”[59] Lewis Thompson then wrote, “The Case of the Tan Topcoat,” in 1950.[60] At this point, the author asserted that Corey was still in jail despite several applications for parole. “Ellery Queen” wrote an article called, “Double Jeopardy,” in 1958.[61] Nothing was said about Corey’s present whereabouts.
Today, of course, the evidence at the scene, particularly under the nails of the victim would easily establish whether Corey was the guilty party or not. But back then there was no direct evidence linking Corey to the events within the murder room. However, the circumstantial evidence, however weak, provided at least some hook to snare him.
According to the tabloid London Daily Mail the first murder committed by Earle Nelson was on May 31, 1925, in Boston where he strangled to death Mrs. Mae Price of New York.[62] However, I do not think that Earle Nelson was the murderer in this case. We have no evidence whatsoever that Nelson was in Boston at this time, although it should be noted that Nelson may well have been the murderer of three landladies in Philadelphia later in 1925, suggesting that he moved from the West Coast to the East at some point in 1925. Since the police believed Corey was the responsible party, there is no evidence in the Winnipeg file that any Boston police officials corresponded with Winnipeg officials when Nelson was arrested. The theory that the prime motive in the Price case was robbery, and that the killing was a secondary consequence of escaping with the money, and perhaps also escaping identification, seems probable. Murders linked to Nelson would have the killing as the primary motive, along with post-mortem sexual contact in most cases, and then robbery would be a secondary matter. There is also at least ambiguity here as to whether Mrs. Price died of suffocation, as opposed to strangulation. Nor does there appear to be any sexual sadism element. In the end, Corey was a more likely suspect, given the circumstances, as compared to Earle Nelson.
We are never free of doubt. Earle Nelson killed landladies. Here is an interesting note in the Boston Globe on June 19, 1925, several weeks after the murder of Price:
Two cases where women were attacked, one of them being robbed a small amount of money, were reported to the police of the Back Bay station last night. Early in the evening Miss Bertha A Burke, proprietor of a lodging house at 142A Huntington Ave. was visited by a young man who said he wished to rent a room. She took him to the third floor of the house and showed him a vacant room. It is alleged the young man then attacked the woman. Her screams attracted the attention of lodgers in the house who went to her assistance. Before they arrived, the man fled. About an hour later, Mrs. Winifred Donovan was held up as she was about to enter her home at 28 Falmouth St. in the Back Bay and $19 in money was taken from her.[63]
................................................
[1] “Friend of Chorus Girls,” New York Times, June 1, 1925, at 17.
[2] “Robbery in Theatre is Fresh Clue,” Boston Post, June 2, 1925, at 1.
[3] Supra note 1.
[4] “Hotel Bandit Kills Woman,” Boston Post, June 1, 1925, at 1 and 10.
[5] Ibid. at 10.
[6] “Man Held for Hotel Murder,” Boston Post, June 23, 1925, at 1.
[7] “On Trial of Hotel Murderer,” Boston Globe, June 1, 1925, at 1.
[8] “Slayer Marked by His Victim,” Boston Globe, June 2, 1925, at 1.
[9] “Slayer Still Eludes Pursuit,” Boston Herald, June 3, 1925, at 15.
[10] “Drug Users Are Hunted,” Boston Post, June 3, 1925, at 1 and 12.
[11] Ibid.
[12] “Brutal Murder of Mrs. Price in Boston,” Variety, June 3, 1925, at 16.
[13] Supra note 2. The empty envelope was eventually found in a street. See, “Find Envelope,” Boston Post, June 4, 1925, at 6.
[14] Ibid.
[15] “Drug Users Are Hunted,” Boston Post, June 3, 1925, at 1 and 12.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] “Taxi Man’s Clue May Solve Death,” Boston Post, June 4, 1925, at 6.
[21] Ibid.
[22] “Two Held,” Boston Post, June 5, 1925, at 16; “Two Arrested,” Boston Globe, June 5 at 1; “New Suspect,” Boston Post, June 8, 1925, at 22; “Fresh Clue,” Boston Post, June 9, 1925, at 1; “Fail to Trace,” Boston Post, June 21,1925, at 5.
[23] “Man Held for Hotel Murder,” Boston Post, June 23, 1925, at 1.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] “Price Murder Mystery Solved,” Boston Herald, June 23, 1925, at 1.
[29] Supra note 23.
[30] “Weave Net About Man in Murder,” Boston Post, June 24, 1925, at 6.
[31] Ibid. See also, “Several Identify Frank Corey,” Boston Globe, June 23, 1925, at 1.
[32] “To Report on Sanity,” Boston Post, August 13, 1925, at 11.
[33] “Claims Alibi in Price Murder,” Boston Globe, August 17, 1925, at 1.
[34] “Cory Jury is Picked,” Boston Post, August 18, 1925, at 1 and 11.
[35] “Price Murder Trial Opens,” Boston Globe, August 17, 1925, at 1.
[36] “Jury is Chosen,” Boston Globe, August 18, 1925, at 1.
[37] “Claims Corey Bought Paint,” Boston Post, August 19, 1925, at 1.
[38] “Harvey Witness in Price,” Boston Globe, August 19, 1925, at 6.
[39] “Testimony Halts in Corey Trial,” Boston Globe, August 20, 1925, at 1.
[40] Supra note 37.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid.
[43] “Corey Offers No Testimony,” Boston Post, August 20, 1925, at 1 and 15.
[44] “Find Cory Not Guilty,” Boston Post, August 21, 1925, at 1.
[45] Ibid. See also, “Acquitted of Murder,” New York Times, August 21, 1925, at 7.
[46] Supra note 44.
[47] “Corey Held as Robber,” Boston Post, August 26, 1925, at 1 and 14.
[48] “Trial of Crecorian,” Boston Globe, March 9, 1926, at 1; “Saw Corry in Restaurant,” Boston Globe, March 10, 1926, at 10; “Cory in Hotel Actress Claims,” Boston Globe, March 11,1926, at 1; “Jury sees Cory Hands,” Boston Globe, March 11, 1926, at 25.
[49] “Jury sees Cory Hands,” Boston Globe, March 11, 1926, at 25.
[50] “Tells of Seeing Body of Woman,” Boston Globe, March 12, 1926, at 32.
[51] “Price Robbery Case,” Boston Globe, March 12, 1926, at 6.
[52] “Corey is Given Life,” Boston Globe, March 13, 1926, at 1.
[53] “Cory Jury Ask Apology,” Boston Globe, March 15, 1926, at 1.
[54] “Scharton Makes Apology,” Boston Gobe, March 15, 1926, at 1.
[55] Ibid.
[56] Commonwealth v. Crecorian (1928) 264 Mass 94; 162 N.E. 7 (Mass. S.C.).
[57] Thomas Harvey with Fred Thompson, “The Crime in Room 406” True Detective, Sept. 1930.
[58] James A. Kelley, “The Brown Derby Murder” in John Makris, ed., Boston Murders (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948) at 151-172.
[59] Ibid. at 172.
[60] Lewis Thompson, “The Case of the Tan Topcoat” The American Weekly, March ?, 1950. at
[61] Ellery Queen, “Double Jeopardy,” The American Weekly, Tampa Tribune, Nov. 30, 1958, at 19.
[62] Daily Mail, June 23, 1927, at 1.
[63] “Would-Be-Lodger Attacks Woman,” Boston Globe, June 19, 1925, at 12.
(Do not quote without attribution to Alvin Esau)
According to the New York Times, on Saturday, May 30, 1925, “The Brown Derby” show had completed a week’s engagement at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston. Apparently, the show had not been successful, and the various members of the company were told to pack their bags so as to return next day to New York for “reorganization.”[1] Mrs. Mae Price, 50 years of age, staying at the Hollis Hotel, was the wardrobe mistress for the company and she had been given her pay on Saturday afternoon before the last show. Several of the showgirls had also given their pay to her for safekeeping, since she acted as a surrogate mother to them. Mrs. Price, and a local assistant, Mrs. Mary Hughes, stayed late at the theatre after the show preparing the costumes for transport, and left the theatre at about midnight. Mrs. Mary Hughes stated that they had gone to a coffee shop for about half an hour across from the hotel, and that about 12:30 in the morning Mrs. Price went into the hotel, while Hughes departed for home by way of a taxi. Mrs. Hughes said that no one had followed Mrs. Price into the hotel and she had displayed no fear that someone was threatening her.[2]
On Sunday morning, May 31, Mrs. Price failed to answer her wakeup call which she had requested for 10 A.M. She was found dead in her room and the envelope containing the money for the showgirls had been torn open and the money taken. It was reported that:
The police found that the room had been entered with a false key after the room key had been turned and pushed out of the lock. The room key was on the floor inside the door… The supposition of the police is that the murderer got into the room without awakening Mrs. Price, seized her by the throat and prevented her from making outcry by choking her into insensibility. He then turned her face downward on the bed, tied her hands behind her back with strips of sheeting and forced her face so deeply into the pillows that she was suffocated. The body bore many bruises, as if the slayer had beaten his victim wantonly.[3]
The Boston Post for June 1, 1925, carried the headline, “Hotel Bandit Kills Woman,” and a picture of the “comely” Mrs. Mae Price; a picture of the rear of the hotel marking the fire escape route down from the fourth floor; and a picture of Herman Widman, the elevator “boy” who had discovered the body when he had been sent to the room because Price had not responded to her wake up call.[4] The newspaper noted that Mrs. Price must have been engaged in a terrific struggle with her assailant, "Mrs. Price’s face was battered almost beyond recognition. Her left eye was blackened. Her cheeks were bruised and pummeled. Her head had been battered. One of her teeth had been knocked out. A heavy blow or kick had injured one of her lungs. The woman’s abdomen also was injured by a blow. Her face and head was a mass of bruises and cuts…"[5] Later reports mentioned that two teeth had been knocked out and two ribs broken.[6] Various torn pay envelopes were found on the floor, and Price’s purse on the dresser bureau had been ransacked, but the police could find no fingerprints on these items or on the ledge to the fire escape.
The police were surprised that none of the other guests had heard any noises or seen any suspicious characters in the lobby area of the hotel. At first, the police believed that Mrs. Price was murdered by an “insider” who knew that she carried money with her. The Boston Globe reported that the fingerprints left on the throat of the victim were compared to the fingerprints held on file by the Boston police.[7] Then the fingerprints were compared to those of the Brown Derby cast members.[8] According to the Boston Herald, “Ordinarily, it is difficult to obtain finger prints from flesh, but in this case there was an oily substance on the neck, which furnished a basis for marks and the police were able to obtain prints therefrom.”[9]
Several days later press reports revealed that the murderer must have been wounded in the struggle. The blood on the bed was the murderer’s blood and there were scraps of skin found under Mrs. Price’s fingernails.[10] Furthermore, some of the other guests had indeed heard noises, and the singer in the room directly below had heard a woman’s screams, “but believed at the time it was probably done in fun,” but then it bothered him sufficiently to make a call and complain, but the noises stopped as he got up to make the call.[11] The famous Variety show business paper, added the information that it was known that Mrs. Price had at least $200 in her possession before the robbery, and also noted the brutality of the murder.[12]
The idea that an “insider” was to blame was reinforced when it was discovered that hours before the murder, a thief had entered the dressing room of actress Phebe Brune of the “Rose-Marie” company at the Shubert Theatre next door to the Hollis Hotel and stolen a pay envelope containing $200 when the actress was briefly called out of the room for a rehearsal.[13] Police focused their attention on finding “a theatrical man” and detectives were sent to New York to examine every male member of “The Brown Derby” cast.[14] The police also were reinforced in their belief that someone who knew Mrs. Price might have been the murderer, because she was a very careful woman, and yet the deadbolt to her hotel room was not engaged when she was murdered. Had she gone to the door and opened the bolt expecting to speak to someone she knew? Then the murderer had used a false key- a master key, “that every crook has,” to open the door?[15]
Having cleared all the theatre people back in New York, the investigation took another turn when vaudeville actress May Jensen staying at the Hollis Hotel reported that a tall man, of swarthy complexion, approached her in the sixth-floor hallway at 1:30 on Sunday morning as she was on her way to her room. She apparently ran from the stranger, locked her door, and called for help. When her friends came, the man on the sixth floor had disappeared.[16] The police, having exhausted “the theatre man” theory, now turned to the “the underworld” theory, because two well known drug users in the theatre district had apparently disappeared since the murder.[17] The Boston police were banking on a “squealer” coming forward from the underworld of “thugs, degenerates and stage door Johnnies” frequenting the Tenderloin district.[18] This would be aided by the fact that the husband of Mrs. Price had announced a reward of $500 to find the killer of his wife.
The report from a temporary bell boy that he had heard a loud, angry discussion between Mrs. Price and another woman at some stage during the week, was dismissed as unreliable, and perhaps motivated by a desire for the reward money by this ex-employee of the hotel.[19]
Mrs. Price was a much-loved figure in the theatre world and a great crowd came to the funeral at Campbell’s on Broadway in New York and to the grave service at Woodlawn.[20] Meanwhile back in Boston the police heard from a taxi driver who had picked up an intoxicated “scrawny faced individual” with bad scratches on his face. He was picked up by the taxi driver outside a nightclub at about 2 A.M. on the night of the murder and driven to the Back Bay area of Boston.[21] Nothing seems to have materialized with this report, and over the next while other individuals were investigated or suspected, without any success.[22]
Finally, the headlines of the Boston Post on June 23, 1925, announced, “Man Held for Hotel Murder.”[23] A Mr. Frank Corey had been arrested in Worcester and charged with the murder. The police alleged that Frank Corey, 34 years of age, born in Armenia, had stayed at the Hollis Hotel in a room on the fifth floor several days previous to the murder of Price on the fourth floor. He had registered under the name Frank Mulleono. This fact was established because eventually a letter arrived at the hotel addressed to Frank Mulleono, but the police noted that the letter inside the envelope came from Bessie Corey of Worcester and was addressed to her brother, Frank Corey. On Saturday night around 9:30 in the evening, this “Frank Mulleono” attempted to pay for his room with a cheque written in pencil which the room clerk rejected. That Frank Corey did not leave the hotel on the night of the murder was supposedly established by the vaudeville actress who was shown an old picture of Frank Corey, and asserted that this was indeed the picture of the strange man who “accosted” her on the sixth floor the night Mrs. Price was killed on the fourth floor.
The police thought Frank Corey had traces of scratches on his face and they did not believe his story that the scratches were from a faulty attempt at shaving.[24] The police also had evidence that while he was penniless on the night before the murder, he later had money to pay a fee to a lawyer. Despite the earlier reports of having useable fingerprints from the neck of the victim, there were no reports during the trial that Corey’s fingerprints matched or not. Indeed, the prosecution admitted that the case against him was circumstantial.
Who was this man? According to the initial report, his real Armenian name was Mecorian, but he used a variety of names including Corey and Costello, and his father apparently ran a store in Worcester. Frank Corey had been sentenced to Leavenworth prison for eight years in 1915 on a charge of highway robbery. Prison records from 1915 described him as “27 years old, five feet 8 ¾ inches, 165 pounds, stocky build, black hair, dark brown eyes and dark complexion.”[25] It was also reported that, "In 1918 he escaped by crawling through the sewer and was recaptured three days later. He was released from the federal prison in 1923 and spent more than a year in New York City, then went to Worcester, where his father, Richard Corey, alias Mecorian, has a grocery store."[26] More recently he had been charged with passing a bad cheque for ten bucks. He was sentenced to four months in jail but appealed his conviction with the help of lawyer Charles Boyle. Four days after the murder of Mrs. Price, Frank Corey not only paid his lawyer but also made restitution for the ten dollars, and thus was spared a prison term, as his lawyer persuaded the court to put him on probation.[27] This supposedly supported the theory of the police that Corey was the murdering thief. He had no money before the murder, and then he had money after it. The Boston Herald reported that Corey, “was a drug addict and in need of money.”[28]
The theory of the case was outlined by Sergeant Thomas Harvey, the chief investigator, who surmised that Corey had been denied a room, so he hung about, attempted to confront the actress on the 6th floor, then had made his way into the Price room before she came home. He hid under the bed waiting for the victim to arrive. This was indicated by the newly revealed fact that a briefly smoked cigarette of the popular brand found on Corey when arrested was also found under the bed of the murdered woman. Corey had supposedly smoked while waiting for his victim, but then changed his mind thinking he might be discovered by the smell. He then stubbed the cigarette burning the carpet under the bed. Price than supposedly came into the room and went to bed and then Corey tried to steal money from her purse. He was just interested in the money but ended up killing her when she woke and resisted vigorously. For this story, the police claimed conclusive evidence.”[29] For his part, Frank Corey, wisely on the advice of his lawyer, said nothing.[30]
After Cory’s picture was already published in the newspaper, the actress on the sixth floor (who had also seen a previous photo of Cory presented to her by the police), and two night clerks, picked him out of a line up as the man they had seen at the hotel.[31] That Corey was denied a room and was at the hotel on the night of the murder, hardly amounts to much evidence that he committed the murder. Corey was held for several months in the Charles Street jail waiting trial. By August, he reportedly had a bout of “cell mania” as psychiatrists were called in to vouch for his continued sanity.[32]
The trial of Corey (officially named at trial as Frank Crecorian) started on Monday, August 17 in the Suffolk Superior Criminal Court before Judge Henry Lummus. Corey was defended by famous lawyer, William R. Scharton, who initially announced that the defence would prove that Corey was not at the hotel on the night the murder was committed.[33] The government was represented by District Attorney, Thomas O’Brien and Assistant D.A., George Alpert, who took the lead role. The first day was taken up with jury selection.[34] The issues of prejudicial pretrial publicity and objection to the death penalty were the main sources of debate during jury selection.[35] When selection was complete, the members of the jury included two identified as “colored”.[36]
During the next two days, the witness who had found the body, the medical doctor who had examined it, and various police officials gave evidence, as well as those who claimed that Corey was at the hotel. Nothing new seems to have been added to what earlier press reports revealed, except that the vaudeville actress, Miss Jensen, the key witness who asserted Corey was at the hotel on the night in question, revealed that she was having a lively gin party in her room, involving a number of men on the night that she saw the stranger on the sixth floor, wearing a straw hat and overcoat.[37] “He tried to grab my arm, and said, ‘Hey kid, wait a minute.’ I ran into my room,” Jensen testified. Also the defense established through cross examination of various witnesses that a wide assortment of men wandered the halls of the hotel at all hours of the night and furthermore that a variety of keys to other rooms also could unlock the door to the victim’s room.[38] Furthermore it was established by the clerk of the hotel that a key to a room on the sixth floor had gone missing, and also that a man described as “dark, swarthy and of heavy build” had occupied the adjoining room to Mrs. Price and the clerk could not establish whether or not the man had stayed over the Saturday night in question.[39]
New evidence that Corey was in the area was introduced at the trial. Now another wardrobe assistant testified that on Saturday, May 30, when leaving Spaulding’s Restaurant at about 7 in the evening, after having supper with Mrs. Price, she noticed a man standing in the alley near the Shubert Theatre. She now identified this man as Corey. Furthermore, Mrs. Hughes, who had assisted Mrs. Price, and had earlier mentioned that she saw no suspicious characters in the coffee shop after midnight, now asserted that she had seen Corey in the coffee shop earlier, standing by the lunch counter. A young cashier at the coffee shop gave evidence that the man identified as Corey had a cup of coffee at around 4 or 5 in the evening and then walked out without paying. She confronted him and he paid 5 cents.[40]
If the evidence that Corey might have been around the Hollis Hotel on the night in question was strengthened by the time of the trial, so what? The police knew that linking him to the crime required more effort. Thus new evidence was discovered (or manufactured) dealing with allegations that Corey had a scratched face. The police found some woman working at a drug store in Boston who claimed to be reading about the murder when a man with scratches on his face came into the store on Tuesday, June 2, and asked for some makeup paint for his face.[41] She later identified Corey as the man she had seen. Also, the police found a 12-year-old lad in Worcester who lived in the same neighborhood as Corey and this lad now stated that he saw Corey with a wad of money in his shirt and having scratches on his face.[42] Scharton for the defendant effectively discredited both witnesses.
After the District Attorney had presented his case, Corey’s lawyer, William Scharton, stated that he would call no evidence and asked the judge for a directed verdict of not guilty because there was simply no direct evidence linking Corey to the murder and the circumstantial evidence was contradictory.[43] The judge promptly refused the directed verdict plea, and so the lawyers made their arguments in front of the jury. When evidence fails, pleas to emotion are made, as illustrated by Alpert, who was quoted as telling the jury:
Mrs. Mae Price’s body is mouldering in the grave but her spirit is in this courtroom directing by acts and words. Her spirit will be with you in the jury room. She cries for vindication. She pleads for justice. She points a trembling finger at that man, and she shrieks to you- ‘Go out and do your duty.’[44]
For his part, William Scharton pointed out the weakness of the evidence as to Corey even being at the hotel on the night of the murder, much less any connection to the murder itself. The judge charged the jury and after deliberating six hours the jury acquitted Corey, without any evidence being called by the defence.[45] It was reported that this was the first case in the history of Massachusetts where a person accused of capital murder was acquitted by a jury without ever taking the stand or offering evidence.
Perhaps anticipating the result, as soon as Corey was about to taste freedom, the police arrested him on a federal warrant charging him with desertion from the United States army at Camp Devens on August 24, 1924. “I suppose you will keep hounding me forever after this,” Corey told the police.[46] Sure enough, a few days later Boston officials had Corey arrested at Camp Devens and brought back to the Charles Street jail now charging him with the robbery of Mrs. Price.[47] Bail was set at $100,000 and so Corey sat in jail for many months until he underwent a second trial in March of 1926. By what additional evidence could Corey now be the thief, without a reasonable doubt, but not be the murderer, beyond a reasonable doubt? It would appear that the police authorities never agreed with the jury in the first place, and through an abuse of process bordering on double jeopardy were not going to give up.
The coverage of the robbery trial by the Boston Globe initially did not reveal any new evidence that was not dealt with at the first trial for murder.[48] Assistant D.A. Timothy Callahan conducted the case for the government while Mr. Scharton was the defence counsel again, and the same witnesses were examined and cross-examined. However, eventually the prosecution introduced new evidence not given at the first trial. This time employees of Crawford Chambers in Boston testified that a man had arrived at 3:30 A.M on May 31 and paid for a room with cash and signed the register as “Joe W. Brown” from New York.[49] This “Brown” also left a coat behind in the room when he left the next day. The clerk of this establishment now identified Corey as the man who had taken the room and left the coat. Of course, the coat was tan-colored, which matched the description given by the vaudeville actress as to what she saw the man wearing as he talked to her on the sixth floor on the night of the murder. Supposedly the coat also had spots of blood on it. On the advice of Mr. Scharton, Corey was asked to put the coat on in front of the jury, presumably because Scharton did not think it fit. Callahan, for the government, took the opportunity to ask Corey to show his hands to the jury. The Globe went on to report:
Wilbur Turner, a handwriting expert testified that in his opinion the signature of “Frank Mulloena” in the register of the Hotel Hollis, the signature of “Joe W. Brown” on the register of the Crawford Chambers and the signature “Frank Corey” on an application blank for employment at a Worcester factory were written by the same person.[50]
At the end of the prosecution’s case, Mr. Scharton again chose to call no evidence and the case was argued before the jury. The appeal to emotion was made again as:
Mr. Callahan called the attention of the jurors to Corey’s hands. He said he never expected to get an opportunity to have those hands shown to the jury, and that they were cruel and deadly hands, and that the jurors had looked upon two of the most powerful clawlike hands they had ever seen. He said they were the hands of a throttler, "the hands of a strangler,” and that the use of a weapon such as a club would have been an act of charity to the woman. [51]
When the jury returned a guilty verdict, Scharton was very agitated and banging his fists on the table in front of him he told the jury that their decision was perverse and not based on the evidence. He then suggested that their verdict was based on a false rumour that someone had spread to them that Corey had been willing to plead guilty to second degree murder in the first trial to avoid the possibility of the death penalty.[52] He stated that the jurors would live to regret the guilty verdict they had given. The judge rebuked Scharton and told the jury that he thought they had done a fine job and then he sentenced Corey to life but stayed the sentence for the time necessary for Corey to appeal. The next day the foreman of the jury, speaking for all 12 men, asked the judge to order Scharton to apologize for his remarks impugning the integrity of the jury.[53] The bold and capitalized headline in the Globe the next day read, “Scharton Makes Apology.”[54] After Scharton had expressed his regrets, Judge David Lourie again took the opportunity to express his own agreement with the jury verdict and expressed the view that Corey was the murderer of Mrs. Price and that if the new evidence at this trial had been available in the first trial, Corey would be sentenced to death instead of having a life sentence for robbery.[55]
The appeal was argued before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts on March 5, 1928, and was rendered on June 11, 1928.[56] The court upheld the conviction of Corey asserting that the indictment for robbery was not the same offence as the indictment for murder and an acquittal for murder did not bar a conviction for robbery.
How long did Corey spend in jail? Years after the event, the Price murder continued to attract journalistic accounts in the popular true crime genre. In 1930, Sgt. Thomas Harvey, who had a key role in investigating the case, wrote an account in True Detective.[57] The article is interesting only because of the picture of the bedroom where Price was murdered, which shows how high the bed was off the ground to conform to the police theory that the killer hid there. The pictures also show the pillow with the deep indentation made by the head of the victim. Several decades later, James Kelly wrote a chapter on the case in a book on Boston murders.[58] At the end of the article, he noted that Corey applied for parole in 1942 after spending 19 years in prison. At the parole hearing Corey said, “I neither robbed the wardrobe mistress nor murdered her… It was never proved that the coat was mine. I never saw it till that day in court. I was convicted on my record, on circumstantial evidence.”[59] Lewis Thompson then wrote, “The Case of the Tan Topcoat,” in 1950.[60] At this point, the author asserted that Corey was still in jail despite several applications for parole. “Ellery Queen” wrote an article called, “Double Jeopardy,” in 1958.[61] Nothing was said about Corey’s present whereabouts.
Today, of course, the evidence at the scene, particularly under the nails of the victim would easily establish whether Corey was the guilty party or not. But back then there was no direct evidence linking Corey to the events within the murder room. However, the circumstantial evidence, however weak, provided at least some hook to snare him.
According to the tabloid London Daily Mail the first murder committed by Earle Nelson was on May 31, 1925, in Boston where he strangled to death Mrs. Mae Price of New York.[62] However, I do not think that Earle Nelson was the murderer in this case. We have no evidence whatsoever that Nelson was in Boston at this time, although it should be noted that Nelson may well have been the murderer of three landladies in Philadelphia later in 1925, suggesting that he moved from the West Coast to the East at some point in 1925. Since the police believed Corey was the responsible party, there is no evidence in the Winnipeg file that any Boston police officials corresponded with Winnipeg officials when Nelson was arrested. The theory that the prime motive in the Price case was robbery, and that the killing was a secondary consequence of escaping with the money, and perhaps also escaping identification, seems probable. Murders linked to Nelson would have the killing as the primary motive, along with post-mortem sexual contact in most cases, and then robbery would be a secondary matter. There is also at least ambiguity here as to whether Mrs. Price died of suffocation, as opposed to strangulation. Nor does there appear to be any sexual sadism element. In the end, Corey was a more likely suspect, given the circumstances, as compared to Earle Nelson.
We are never free of doubt. Earle Nelson killed landladies. Here is an interesting note in the Boston Globe on June 19, 1925, several weeks after the murder of Price:
Two cases where women were attacked, one of them being robbed a small amount of money, were reported to the police of the Back Bay station last night. Early in the evening Miss Bertha A Burke, proprietor of a lodging house at 142A Huntington Ave. was visited by a young man who said he wished to rent a room. She took him to the third floor of the house and showed him a vacant room. It is alleged the young man then attacked the woman. Her screams attracted the attention of lodgers in the house who went to her assistance. Before they arrived, the man fled. About an hour later, Mrs. Winifred Donovan was held up as she was about to enter her home at 28 Falmouth St. in the Back Bay and $19 in money was taken from her.[63]
................................................
[1] “Friend of Chorus Girls,” New York Times, June 1, 1925, at 17.
[2] “Robbery in Theatre is Fresh Clue,” Boston Post, June 2, 1925, at 1.
[3] Supra note 1.
[4] “Hotel Bandit Kills Woman,” Boston Post, June 1, 1925, at 1 and 10.
[5] Ibid. at 10.
[6] “Man Held for Hotel Murder,” Boston Post, June 23, 1925, at 1.
[7] “On Trial of Hotel Murderer,” Boston Globe, June 1, 1925, at 1.
[8] “Slayer Marked by His Victim,” Boston Globe, June 2, 1925, at 1.
[9] “Slayer Still Eludes Pursuit,” Boston Herald, June 3, 1925, at 15.
[10] “Drug Users Are Hunted,” Boston Post, June 3, 1925, at 1 and 12.
[11] Ibid.
[12] “Brutal Murder of Mrs. Price in Boston,” Variety, June 3, 1925, at 16.
[13] Supra note 2. The empty envelope was eventually found in a street. See, “Find Envelope,” Boston Post, June 4, 1925, at 6.
[14] Ibid.
[15] “Drug Users Are Hunted,” Boston Post, June 3, 1925, at 1 and 12.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] “Taxi Man’s Clue May Solve Death,” Boston Post, June 4, 1925, at 6.
[21] Ibid.
[22] “Two Held,” Boston Post, June 5, 1925, at 16; “Two Arrested,” Boston Globe, June 5 at 1; “New Suspect,” Boston Post, June 8, 1925, at 22; “Fresh Clue,” Boston Post, June 9, 1925, at 1; “Fail to Trace,” Boston Post, June 21,1925, at 5.
[23] “Man Held for Hotel Murder,” Boston Post, June 23, 1925, at 1.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] “Price Murder Mystery Solved,” Boston Herald, June 23, 1925, at 1.
[29] Supra note 23.
[30] “Weave Net About Man in Murder,” Boston Post, June 24, 1925, at 6.
[31] Ibid. See also, “Several Identify Frank Corey,” Boston Globe, June 23, 1925, at 1.
[32] “To Report on Sanity,” Boston Post, August 13, 1925, at 11.
[33] “Claims Alibi in Price Murder,” Boston Globe, August 17, 1925, at 1.
[34] “Cory Jury is Picked,” Boston Post, August 18, 1925, at 1 and 11.
[35] “Price Murder Trial Opens,” Boston Globe, August 17, 1925, at 1.
[36] “Jury is Chosen,” Boston Globe, August 18, 1925, at 1.
[37] “Claims Corey Bought Paint,” Boston Post, August 19, 1925, at 1.
[38] “Harvey Witness in Price,” Boston Globe, August 19, 1925, at 6.
[39] “Testimony Halts in Corey Trial,” Boston Globe, August 20, 1925, at 1.
[40] Supra note 37.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid.
[43] “Corey Offers No Testimony,” Boston Post, August 20, 1925, at 1 and 15.
[44] “Find Cory Not Guilty,” Boston Post, August 21, 1925, at 1.
[45] Ibid. See also, “Acquitted of Murder,” New York Times, August 21, 1925, at 7.
[46] Supra note 44.
[47] “Corey Held as Robber,” Boston Post, August 26, 1925, at 1 and 14.
[48] “Trial of Crecorian,” Boston Globe, March 9, 1926, at 1; “Saw Corry in Restaurant,” Boston Globe, March 10, 1926, at 10; “Cory in Hotel Actress Claims,” Boston Globe, March 11,1926, at 1; “Jury sees Cory Hands,” Boston Globe, March 11, 1926, at 25.
[49] “Jury sees Cory Hands,” Boston Globe, March 11, 1926, at 25.
[50] “Tells of Seeing Body of Woman,” Boston Globe, March 12, 1926, at 32.
[51] “Price Robbery Case,” Boston Globe, March 12, 1926, at 6.
[52] “Corey is Given Life,” Boston Globe, March 13, 1926, at 1.
[53] “Cory Jury Ask Apology,” Boston Globe, March 15, 1926, at 1.
[54] “Scharton Makes Apology,” Boston Gobe, March 15, 1926, at 1.
[55] Ibid.
[56] Commonwealth v. Crecorian (1928) 264 Mass 94; 162 N.E. 7 (Mass. S.C.).
[57] Thomas Harvey with Fred Thompson, “The Crime in Room 406” True Detective, Sept. 1930.
[58] James A. Kelley, “The Brown Derby Murder” in John Makris, ed., Boston Murders (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948) at 151-172.
[59] Ibid. at 172.
[60] Lewis Thompson, “The Case of the Tan Topcoat” The American Weekly, March ?, 1950. at
[61] Ellery Queen, “Double Jeopardy,” The American Weekly, Tampa Tribune, Nov. 30, 1958, at 19.
[62] Daily Mail, June 23, 1927, at 1.
[63] “Would-Be-Lodger Attacks Woman,” Boston Globe, June 19, 1925, at 12.
