Authors: Harold Schechter
Killer Colt (18 page)
For the next two or three nights, John continued to apply liniment to his neck before coming to bed—not something he normally did. And there was something else Caroline noticed too. As a general rule, John slept with the neck of his nightshirt open. Now, however, as she would eventually testify, “he slept with his nightshirt pinned up.”
10
I
f the noise coming from John Colt’s room on Friday afternoon had struck Asa Wheeler as strange, the one he heard on Monday morning was, in its way, just as peculiar. Colt, arriving at his office at around 10:30, unlocked the door, stepped inside, and broke into song. Wheeler had never heard Colt sing before, certainly not so spiritedly. It was as though he were performing for Wheeler’s benefit—to demonstrate that he was a man without a care in the world.
Wheeler, who had come to work about an hour earlier, had been keeping an ear cocked for Colt’s arrival. Now, using a piece of bookkeeping business as a pretext, he rapped on the door separating their rooms and was instantly invited inside.
He found Colt seated at his desk, a long Havana clenched in his teeth and a phosphorus match in one hand. Would Wheeler care to join him? Colt asked, lighting the cigar.
Wheeler, who occasionally took a pinch of snuff but was not a smoker, declined.
Colt, as Wheeler would later recall, “observed that he had a very bad habit of smoking.” Indeed, he indulged to such “a great extent” that he had “begun to spit blood.” With a motion of the hand, he drew Wheeler’s attention to a spot on the wall where, Wheeler noted, “there were thirty or forty dark specks.”
After chatting for a few minutes about the matter that had ostensibly brought him there, Wheeler “referred again to the noise” he had heard the previous Friday.
“To tell you the truth, Wheeler,” Colt said somewhat sheepishly, “I upset my table, spilled my ink, and knocked down the books, making a deuced mess. I hope it didn’t disturb you.”
Wheeler made no reply, though he thought it odd that Colt—who originally claimed not to have been in the office at all that afternoon—had so completely changed his story. A few moments later, he returned to his own room.
1
Over the next few days, he and Colt encountered each other frequently in the hall and exchanged pleasantries as if everything were perfectly normal. Every morning, however, in the privacy of his office, Wheeler pored over the newspapers, looking for any item that might confirm his suspicions.
He found it on Wednesday.
• • •
In 1841 the New York
Sun—
now under the proprietorship of Moses Yale Beach, brother-in-law of the paper’s founder, Benjamin Day—consisted of four oversized pages, each seven columns wide and crammed with paid notices and advertisements: row after row of real estate offerings; announcements for steamboat and packet departures; reward postings for runaway apprentices, lost hogs, and stray cows; situation-wanted classifieds for dry-goods clerks, housemaids, and governesses; and ads for a vast assortment of goods and services.
On Wednesday morning, September 22, amid ads for Michaux’s Freckle Wash, Clirehugh’s Ventilating Wigs, Fisk’s Novelty Cook Stove, Glenn’s Indian Hair Oil, Levitt’s Artificial Teeth, and Dr. Quackenbush’s “fine Swedish leeches (sold wholesale or retail on favorable terms),” the following notice appeared on page two:
Any information respecting Mr. Samuel Adams, Printer, who left his place of business on Friday, September 17, about 3 o’clock, P.M. will be thankfully received by his relatives and friends at no. 23 Catherine St., or cor of Ann and Gold, who are unable to account for his sudden disappearance. From an investigation of his business, there does not appear to be an assignable cause for his absence; the
only conjecture is that he has met with some violence, but when or in what manner is still a mystery.
2
No sooner had Asa Wheeler spotted this notice than he threw on his coat, hurried from the building, and bent his steps toward Catherine Street. The foul weather that had arrived on Saturday morning still held the city in its grip, and heavy rain pelted from the sky.
No. 23 Catherine Street turned out to be the abode of Samuel Adams’s father-in-law, Joseph Lane, who was not at home when Wheeler got there. Leaving word that he had important information to convey, Wheeler returned to the Granite Building. He remained in his office until early evening, but Lane never showed up.
• • •
Seated in his office that same afternoon, the bookbinder Charles Wells was so immersed in his paperwork that he did not hear the front door open. A moment later, someone laid a hand on his desk. Looking up, he saw John Colt standing there, rain dripping from the brim of his tall beaver hat.
His face wrought into a look of deep concern, Colt explained that he had just seen the newspaper notice regarding Samuel Adams. “It’s very strange,” he said. “What could have become of him?”
“I don’t know,” said Wells. “The last I saw of him, he said he was going to see you.”
Colt made no direct reply to this observation. “I hope nothing’s happened to him. He’s a fine man. Always treated me well,” he said.
The two men spoke briefly about the impending Philadelphia trade sale. Then—repeating his “hope that nothing has happened”—Colt turned and hurried out into the rain.
3
• • •
The following day, the
Sun
carried another notice on its second page:
The Mysterious Disappearance of Mr. Samuel Adams, Printer, continues a mystery, as every pains have been taken by his friends to ascertain any cause, but hearing nothing, his friends and family would still wish that any
person who might have seen him after 3 o’clock, Friday the 17th, would give notice of the same at 23 Catherine St. as it is feared that he has met with some violence.
4
By then, other newspapers had picked up the story. That morning, both the
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
and the
New-York Weekly Tribune
ran identical items:
Mr. Samuel Adams, printer, at the corner of Ann and Gold Streets, left his office on Friday last to do some business at the Office of the Missionary Herald and has not since returned or been heard of by his friends. Great concern is felt for his fate. His pecuniary affairs were not embarrassed, he had some money with him and was a man of exemplary moral and religious character. It is hardly possible that he should have gone off voluntarily, if in his right mind. Any information of him directed to Mr. J. A. Lane, no. 23 Catherine Street, or to Mr. Adams’ printing office, corner of Ann and Gold Streets, will be gratefully received by his afflicted family.
James Gordon Bennett published a very similar item in the
Herald
, although—with his usual flair for the sensational—he printed it under the eye-catching heading “Supposed Murder!”
5
Later that day, Joseph Lane finally appeared at Asa Wheeler’s office. With him was one of the missing printer’s employees: a fellow by the name of Loud, who had brought along Samuel Adams’s most recent accounting ledger. The three men spent some time examining the records with particular attention to any transactions involving John Colt. They then went across the street to City Hall and proceeded directly to the office of the mayor, Robert Hunter Morris.
A popular and efficient administrator who was ultimately elected to three consecutive terms, Morris, by the charter and laws then in effect, was head of the city police. In the coming years, he would draft the law replacing the antiquated watchman system with a professional force. Now, after listening with mounting concern to the suspicions of Wheeler and his companions,
Morris accompanied the three men to the Granite Building, where he interviewed several witnesses, including Law Octon.
Early the next morning, Friday, September 24, a messenger arrived at the home of Police Magistrate Robert Taylor with a note from Morris, summoning Taylor to City Hall at once. As soon as he arrived, Morris filled him in on the situation. The two then made their way across Broadway to the Granite Building, accompanied by a pair of police officers, A.M.C. Smith and David Waldron.
A note was tacked to Colt’s door, saying that he was out but would return soon. Posting the two officers at the foot and the head of the staircase, Morris and Taylor waited inside Wheeler’s office. A short time later, Colt arrived. As he unlocked his door, Morris stepped into the hall, introduced himself and his companion, and said that they “wished to see him inside his room.”
“We all went in and closed the door,” Morris recalled at a later date. “I then told him he was arrested on suspicion of killing Mr. Adams.”
6
A
fter being read “the affidavits on which the arrest was founded,” John was searched for weapons by Officer Waldron. He cooperated willingly, emptying his pockets and stripping off his frock coat to demonstrate that he carried neither pistol nor knife.
1
In the meantime, Waldron’s fellow officer, A.M.C. Smith, was dispatched to the Broadway office of the distinguished New York chemist Dr. James R. Chilton.
2
By the time Chilton arrived, Colt’s hatchet-hammer had been found beneath some sheets of old newspaper on his desk.
While Colt and the others looked on, Chilton made a careful examination of the implement. Holding it up to the light, he “observed a red stain in the eye of the hatchet, apparently blood. There was also a similar spot on the hammer end.” In addition, there were fresh ink stains on the wooden handle that appeared to have “been put on intentionally.” Inspecting the handle closely, he could see “a reddish appearance through the ink.”
Chilton then turned his attention to the rest of the room, noting the many fresh stains and ink spots on the walls and floor. After scraping some reddish-brown particles from a wall and removing a small section of floorboard with Colt’s borrowed handsaw, Chilton carried his samples—including the hatchet-hammer—back to his laboratory for chemical analysis.
3
Not long after his departure, John was escorted across the street to the mayor’s office, where he asked to see his counsel—his cousin and former
employer, Dudley Selden. An officer was sent to the latter’s residence but returned a short while later to say that Selden wasn’t at home. John was then taken to the Halls of Justice and locked in a holding cell—the beginning of a lengthy incarceration in the recently completed edifice whose architectural resemblance to an ancient Egyptian mausoleum had earned it the nickname “the Tombs.”
• • •
That evening, Morris and Magistrate Taylor divided up their duties. The mayor assumed responsibility for tracking down the mysterious crate that John Delnous and others had seen carted away from the Granite Building under Colt’s supervision. To that end, Morris composed a brief notice and had it conveyed to the office of the
Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer
. The notice—which appeared on page two the following morning, wedged between a reward posting for the return of a lost Irish setter and the announcement of an upcoming concert by Signor John Nagel, “Composer and Violinist to the King of Sweden and Pupil of Paganini!”—read as follows:
The person who early on Saturday morning last, 18th, took a Box from the building on the north corner of Broadway and Chambers St. or any person who have seen a Box taken from said place at that time, will please call immediately at the Mayor’s office, in the City Hall.
—ROBT. H. MORRIS, Mayor
4
In the meantime, Magistrate Taylor undertook the task of locating Colt’s lodging place. By Saturday morning, he had ascertained the address. In the company of Officer Smith, he proceeded to the boardinghouse at no. 42 Monroe Street and, upon inquiring for Mrs. Colt, was introduced to the young woman who (as Taylor later put it) “was passing for his wife.”
At the request of the two lawmen, Caroline—who had sat up all night in an increasingly frantic state, wondering what had become of John—led them upstairs to her room, where, beneath the bed, Taylor found a well-worn carpetbag containing a few oddments of clothing, nothing of any apparent significance. When he demanded to know where John kept his other
possessions, Caroline “drew from a recess” a small locked trunk, which Taylor and Smith transported back to the Upper Police Office and opened in John’s presence.