Murder Plus: True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

Leslie Ford was really Mrs. Zenith Jones Brown, who also wrote under the pen name David Frome. Beginning in the early 1930s, Brown simultaneously juggled two impressive detective series. The first, using her Frome pseudonym, was set in London and the provincial United Kingdom, and it featured the little Welshman Mr. Pinkerton and his trusty friend Inspector Bull. Mystery historian Howard Haycraft named the first Mr. Pinkerton Book, The Hammersmith Murders (1930), to his list of “cornerstones” of the detective story, a major honor. Zenith Brown’s second series appeared under her Ford byline, and in this one her hero shuttled across the United States cracking cases. Here, it was Colonel John Primrose, “a straight-backed, courtly, bronze-skinned” amateur detective who took center stage. Despite their differences in setting, what the two series share in common is excellent research. Mrs. Brown loved to travel, and her books faithfully and painstakingly captured any given locale. Unfortunately, what they also have in common, to my ear at least, is heavy-handed, unwieldly prose which sometimes obscures her ingenious, well-thought-out narratives. One cannot register this complaint about this lively “lost” story as told to Ford by James L. Carrol, Former Assistant Detective Chief, Buffalo, N.Y.

The Scar-Faced Fugitive and the Murdered Maid

Eyes wide in growing horror, the young housewife approached the bed on which sprawled the limp form of her pretty maid, Pauline Sokolowska.

Even by the waning light of the March afternoon, she could see deadly, crimson stains that crept from beneath the girl’s dark, disheveled hair. One arm dangled loosely over the side of the bed. The fixed eyes stared in a look of astonishment. Her mouth was half-open as if death had stopped a scream.

Slowly, the woman pulled back a bloodstained quilt with trembling fingers. She saw that the girl’s dress was pulled up, exposing silk-stockinged thighs. But what her gaze fastened on was a scarlet ring darkening the garment over the right breast.

Scant seconds later, a telephone operator at Buffalo, N.Y., police headquarters heard the frightened plea:

“There’s been a murder! Please come quickly...”

It was 5:45 o’clock. Before 6 o’clock, a score of detectives and uniformed men led by Austin J. Roche, chief of detectives, had arrived at the two-family home on Sterling Avenue, Buffalo.

Hardly had we launched our search for clues when the first newspaper extras were shouting the news. A sex fiend had bludgeoned, then shot the attractive young girl, the headlines screamed.

Quickly, the girl’s employer told us what she could about her maid and the events of that afternoon. She had hired the East Side school girl just a week before, she said, to help with the housework and in caring for her four-year-old son.

When she arrived home that day from a downtown shopping trip, she found the youngster playing in the kitchen. He usually came home from kindergarten about 4 o’clock. There was no sign of the maid or any indication that dinner had been started.

A glance into the bedroom told her why.

The home was subjected to a minute examination. Flecks of blood were on the kitchen floor. A cabinet edge bore a few hairs and a bloodstain. The wash bowl in the bathroom was damp with crimsoned water globules. Someone with bloody hands had washed there, we decided. Probably the killer. Discarded in the tub was a blood-soaked wash cloth.

Medical examiner Earl G. Danser hurried in while detectives were examining the home. Sizing up the situation, he grunted as he observed the disarray of the victim’s dress.

“Sex case?” he asked.

“Looks like it,” admitted Chief Roche.

Dr. Danser pulled aside the garment, revealing a small dark wound an inch to the left and below the center of her right breast. He examined the head wound.

“Nasty rap. Offhand I’d say her skull was fractured,” he said. “But the bullet probably killed her. Find the gun?”

Roche shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Know who did it?” queried the doctor, looking up from the body.

Roche shook his head again.

“I’ll post the body immediately then. Call me in a couple of hours and I’ll let you know what I find.”

“Thanks,” Roche replied briefly.

Presently an undertaker’s hearse was bearing the body to the county morgue. Detectives resumed their examination of the house. Even the yard was subjected to close scrutiny but no weapon was found. Then the neighbors were questioned.

This line of investigation soon proved valuable. A woman across the street said she had seen Pauline working at a sewing machine a few minutes before 3 o’clock. A window from the neighbor’s home gave her a view into that part of the house.

Another neighbor provided a lead. About mid-afternoon, she said, she had looked from a window when she heard the screech of brakes. She was in time to see a truck bearing the name of a large downtown hardware company grind to a halt several doors up the street.

The truck, narrated the neighbor, backed up and halted in front of the house. The driver jumped out bearing a small package. He disappeared up the driveway. At this juncture the neighbor had left the window. She heard the truck pull away later, she said, but did not know just how many minutes had elapsed.

Another neighbor told substantially the same story. Detectives hurried back across the street to check this information with the family.

Had they ordered anything from the hardware store? They said no. Occupants of the upper flat, who had not been home at the time of the murder, also were interrogated in like vein. They, too, said they had bought nothing from the hardware company.

Why then had the truck driver gone into the home, we asked ourselves. Had he discovered the girl home alone, made advances and then slain her in murderous passion? It would bear checking.

The line of interrogation so far had seemed to establish one thing fairly definitely — that the murder probably had taken place between 3 and 4 o’clock that afternoon of March 29, 1926. Fanning out, detectives asked countless questions of excited neighbors. Another lead developed. A silk stocking salesman had made a house-to-house canvass in the neighborhood that afternoon.

The salesman had visited the house, we discovered. A card bearing his name and a notation to the effect he would return at a later date had been left at the side door. He lived on Crescent Avenue not more than a mile from the murder scene and was located at dinner.

Any suspicions we had that he might have been the man we sought were dispelled after a few minutes’ conversation. He told a straightforward story. Yes, he had called at every home in the vicinity of the murder. He had left his card at the murder house when he had been unable to get any reply to the buzzer. That was approximately at 3:30 o’clock.

It seemed certain then that Pauline had been dead at that time. Perhaps the killer had been in the house when the hosiery salesman rang the buzzer. At any rate our time was narrowed down to 30 fateful minutes. What had gone on in them?

Another thing the salesman told us seemed important. While he was walking at Tacoma and Sterling avenues, he said, he had seen a man hurrying along with blood dripping from his face.

“Dripping?” he was asked.

“Well,” he replied, “there were several good sized drops. He really did have bad scratches on the right cheek. Anybody would have noticed it.”

From neighbors we also gleaned another clue. It was of the fantastic variety but it had to be checked. A peculiar incident had taken place near the house about the time of the murder. Three men, apparently of foreign birth, had been observed walking down the street. Two were delivering handbills. A third followed, carrying on one hand several razor strops. He was talking excitedly in his native tongue and the three paused occasionally to engage in heated verbal tiffs. But had they any connection with the murder? We began looking for the handbills.

In the interim we were checking the hardware company driver. Armed with the address given us by his superiors, we went to a modest Elm Street home. He was not known there! Thinking that perhaps we had the wrong address, we doubled back to the store, checked its employees’ list and made certain we had the right address. That was peculiar. Did it mean the driver was our man?

We looked over our files of wanted persons. The driver’s name did not appear in them. We checked our arrest lists. So far as we knew he had never been picked up. But he was going to be, if we had our way. But we had no clue as to his whereabouts. That meant we would have to wait until morning and see if he reported for work. If he did not know he was being sought, perhaps he would report as usual. Time enough to worry if he didn’t. There was other work to be done.

We turned to the investigation of the man with the blood-smeared face, the handbill distributors, and their strop-carrying acquaintance. With regard to the former, hours of work brought no results. But a check of the handbills left at North Park homes showed they were advertising a sale. We sped to the store, checked the list of distributors and later came up with two frightened men.

They had, they admitted, been in the vicinity of the murder house, but they protested they had no knowledge of the crime. And their assertions served also to clear their strop-carrying friend. He had been making a canvass of barbershops with his wares. They had been with him about the time of the killing and could establish an alibi for him. The distributors shook their heads in answer to our query as to whether they had seen a man with a scratched and blood-smeared face.

It was at this juncture that Dr. Danser called with his report. It made us forget our previous failures for it placed an entirely different light on the situation. The girl, said the medical examiner, had died, as he thought from the first, from the bullet wound. Entering her right breast, the bullet hit a rib, veered and pierced her heart.

The medical examiner’s next statement startled us. Pauline Sokolowska was not criminally assaulted. She died a virgin!

That placed an entirely different complexion on the case. At a stroke it ruled out the whole foundation of our original investigation. We were seeking a sex criminal but there had been no sex crime. Dr. Danser said there was no evidence on the body of any attempt at a criminal assault. Obviously it was not a case of death during an attempted rape.

We sat down to consider what the news of the medical examiner meant. Here we were in the midst of an intensive check, trying to form a list of sex criminals who either might know the Sokolowska girl, or who might live in the neighborhood. Now that was out.

We went to interview the dead girl’s grief-stricken mother. She was a widow and, sobbing, told us how happy she had been when Pauline found work. Her wages, though small, meant much to the family. We tried to glean from our conversation whether she knew of anyone who might have wanted to harm the girl. But she did not.

Still we pressed on. What about an incipient romance? Was there a chance a jealous boy friend might have been the killer? After more questions, we at last located the girl who apparently had been Pauline’s closest confidante.

She blushed when we asked if Pauline had ever had any trouble with boys. Had any ever got fresh? Well, she answered, Pauline had slapped a boy’s face a week or two before. That incident had taken place on an automobile ride. The boy had tried to steal a kiss and received a resounding slap on the face. After that he had been ultra penitent and decorous.

Just on a chance we hunted him out. But it was evident from the start that he was not our quarry. A ruddy-faced youth, he seemed genuinely shaken at the girl’s death. Questioned about the face-slapping incident, he shamefacedly admitted it was true.

“Sure, she slapped my face and I guess I deserved it,” he said. “But I wouldn’t have harmed a hair on her head. She was swell.”

Next morning we raced to the hardware company on receiving a call that the driver we wanted had reported for work. He was a lanky, raw-boned fellow.

After telling him we were policemen, we questioned him about the erroneous address. But he was not perturbed.

“Oh, that,” he said. “Well, I used to board with some people there. But when they moved I did, too. Been bunking with a friend and never thought to tell the company.”

That blasted the theory that he might have been a criminal seeking to get by on a phony address. But it did not clear him of suspicion of murder. As to his presence at the house around the time Pauline was killed, he had a ready explanation.

“I had a package for that street number but it was not for Sterling Avenue,” he said, explaining that he had made a wrong turn and got into the wrong street. Not until he visited the house and saw the name on the door did he realize he was on the wrong street, he said.

It took only a few minutes to verify his story. After a bit more questioning we returned empty-handed to headquarters. We were thoroughly irritated. Twenty of us were working on the case and we knew exactly nothing about the killer. It was at this juncture that Police Commissioner James W. Higgins called me into his office.

“Jim,” he said, “this is a tough nut to crack, and it appears to me as though two or three men will get farther than a mob.”

I nodded, waiting for him to go on. He continued:

“I’m assigning you, Detective Sergeant George Maloney and Sergeant Charles Sheehan to the job. You’ve got carte blanche. Get to it, and good luck.”

That put the three of us squarely in the middle. From our past experience with Commissioner Higgins, we knew that he was a good boss. And he expected results!

We went back into a huddle over a cup of coffee. Methodically, Maloney, Sheehan and I went back over every known angle of the case, debating each point in hopes of shedding new light on the mystery.

One, two, three hours sped by. Reluctantly, we came to the conclusion that the entire investigation thus far had been off the correct track.

It was not until then that light began to dawn. If the killer had not been a sadist or a revenge murderer, then he must had some other reason for going to the house. And that reason might very well not have been murder!

In an instant my mind had grasped the significance of the thought. That was it. The murder was not paramount. It was a side issue! Why then had the killer gone to the house?

It was at this point that an incident which had occurred a few weeks previously correlated itself with the problem at hand. The wife of a well known Buffalo attorney had returned to her home in North Buffalo one afternoon and surprised a husky, good-looking young man in the act of ransacking the place. He threatened her with a pearl-handled revolver and fled.

A daylight burglar! It clicked. Maloney, I knew, had been checking on such a criminal. There had been a wave of daylight lootings and all were in the general vicinity of the murder house. How foolish not to have thought of that before! But was it the right answer? The burglar only entered homes where no one was present, and Pauline had not left the place. That seemed a flaw.

Maloney wrinkled his brow when the matter was put up to him.

“I have been trying to get a line on a daylight burglar all right, Jim,” he said, “but he always works in places where everyone’s out.”

I told him that had occurred to me, that I could not shake off the conviction that this was the right trail. Sheehan listened and made notes.

“You may be right,” he agreed, “at least we should check it.”

Maloney brought out his notebook and recounted to us his investigation into the depredations of the daylight marauder. He had visited the home of every victimized householder. The attorney’s wife was the only one who had seen the man. She had described him as rugged and good looking. From her story we knew the thief carried a revolver. And Pauline Sokolowska had been killed by a revolver bullet.

The thief, Maloney continued, stole money exclusively. Valuable gems he disregarded, even if the cash totaled only a few cents. One of his most recent jobs he had been in a Colvin Avenue home not a dozen blocks from the murder house. There the burglar had entered, either by means of a duplicate key, or through an unlocked door. He had extracted $17.50 from an envelope addressed to a missionary society and departed leaving everything else unmolested.

But where was the connection between the daylight burglary and the Sokolowska murder? The thing preyed on my mind. I dragged the other two back to the murder house again. Once again we went over the place. It was then that I noticed a thing that had been mentioned in our description of the place at the time of the killing but which otherwise had gone unheeded.

A book Pauline had been reading had been found beside a couch in the parlor. It lay open, pages facedown on the rug as though someone lying on the sofa might have dropped it there when overcome by drowsiness. Was this part of the answer?

My mind raced and we argued the matter excitedly. Suppose Pauline had been lying down reading when the burglar had entered. Maybe the girl was dozing and did not hear him come in but then awoke. A tussle followed. She had fought desperately, we knew, for in his report the medical examiner said there was skin under her nails. She must have scratched her attacker.

We were more hopeful. Our job now was to find a burglar with a revolver and probably a scratched face.

“What about it, George?” I asked Maloney. “Have you any ideas as to who the daylight burglar might be?”

He rubbed his chin reflectively. “I’ll tell you, boys,” he answered. “I haven’t been able to shake off the thought it’s somebody from the neighborhood. Else how would he know when the people would be out?”

“The attorney’s wife didn’t recognize him,” Sheehan pointed out.

“True,” admitted Maloney, “but the chances are he knows more about the people in the neighborhood than the people in the neighborhood know about him. He cases his jobs mighty well. There’s never been anybody home — before.”

“Well,” observed Sheehan, “what do we do now, make a house-to-house canvass?”

I shook my head. That sounded too much like an impossible task. “Why not check our burglar file?”

The suggestion met with approval and the next hour found us in the bureau of identification deep in photos and records of burglars who had exhibited efficiency in casing their jobs, who worked by day, and who lived in the general vicinity of the murder house.

It was a tedious job and one that we were often tempted to drop. Only the conviction that we were on the right track kept us at it. We learned that day that patience truly has its rewards. In the midst of our checking we suddenly came upon one name that stuck out from the rest like a sore thumb.

“James Lewis Venneman,” I read.

We exchanged glances. In that instant each of us knew what was revolving in the other’s mind. Venneman was known to us. He lived on Colvin Avenue not a great distance from the murder house, and right smack in the neighborhood where the daylight burglar had been working.

We needed no folder to remind us of Venneman’s reputation. At seventeen he had been sent to the Elmira reformatory after an altercation in a West Side poolroom. Surrounded by a gang of young men, Venneman had drawn a revolver and threatened to shoot.

Subsequently police had found in his possession a list of houses many of which had been entered by a thief who specialized in stealing money. And after the listing of each home was a brief descriptive paragraph, such as “Two-story; porch; windows unlocked, man and woman away all day.”

All told there were 50 such notations. Sixteen were crossed off. Investigation revealed those 16 places had been entered.

We knew further that Venneman now was employed in an auto agency which was located in the general vicinity of the murder scene. We needed to talk to Venneman. In a few minutes we were headed for the auto agency. But we did not find our man there.

“He didn’t come in today,” said his boss.

“Is he in the habit of laying off?” Sheehan asked.

“No, he isn’t. It’s the first time it’s happened.”

“When did you see him last?” inquired Maloney.

“Yesterday afternoon. He was out making calls and he came in before he knocked off.”

“Did he have any trouble that you know of?”

We asked the question carefully. Venneman’s employer’s face clouded at the words. “Well his face was scratched. He said...”

“His face scratched!” We could not help interrupting.

“Yes,” he continued. “Said he got into a fight with some chaps who almost hit him with their car at Delaware and Amherst streets.”

“Did he say what it was all about?”

“Nothing except that they had an argument and one of them dug at him with his nails when Lou tried to pull him out of the car.”

We had learned enough. A visit to Venneman’s house was not unproductive. His parents were worried because he had not been home the previous night. But where he was his parents did not know.

When a check of his haunts had been made without uncovering any trace of Venneman, we sat down to compile a list of everything we knew about him. He was an excellent athlete and once had tried out but failed to make the grade with the Cleveland Indians. His prowess as a pitcher had earned for him release on parole from Elmira reformatory. He had written to the head of a roofing concern which had a good semi-pro ball club and had asked for a job, drawing attention to his athletic ability. Given the job, he had been paroled, and had worked one day — enough to comply with the law so as to escape resentence for parole violation — then had quit.

A quick checkup revealed that Venneman was keeping company with a young woman whose home was on the West Side. She was employed in a restaurant in Tonawanda, a Buffalo suburb. Venneman was in the habit of calling for her when she finished work in the afternoon. We learned that the night of the murder he had called for her as usual and after dinner had taken her to a theater.

In questioning the young woman we came across an interesting fact. It was with regard to the scratches on his face. He had told her, she said, they were caused in a fight with some men in a car but he had said it happened at a different point than the one he had mentioned to his employer.

We had an ever-growing conviction that Venneman was the man we wanted.

But where was he? After leaving the theater he had been seen to glance at an early edition of a morning newspaper. Shortly afterward he had dropped from sight. That edition had announced that police were seeking a man with a scratched face in the Sokolowska killing.

A routine bit of checking gave us a lead as to what had happened to Venneman. Questioning a ticket agent who had been on duty in the railroad station the night Venneman disappeared we learned that a man answering his description had purchased a ticket for Pontiac, Michigan. The scratched face was the point which stood out in the ticket-seller’s mind and he readily identified a photo of Venneman.

Further questioning brought to light the fact Venneman had an uncle living on a farm in South Township near Pontiac. Maloney hopped a train for Michigan and early the next morning we received a wire. He had Venneman under arrest.

Venneman had been taken without trouble. Confronted with the evidence we had compiled, he confessed that he had shot Pauline during a burglary of the home. But he contended, the shooting was accidental. And then it was that we learned details of how he had burglarized homes when the householders were out. He simply telephoned first. If he got an answer he hung up. If he got no answer, he concluded that no one was home and proceeded to do a quick job of entering the place and stealing what money he could find.

“Where I made my mistake,” he said bitterly, “was when I telephoned this home. The phone was upstairs and when I got no answer I figured everybody was out. The back door was open and I walked in. The girl had been reading on a couch and was asleep. I ransacked the back part of the house and was ready to leave when she woke up and saw me.”

It was not hard to picture what had transpired next. The girl had screamed and tussled with Venneman, scratching his face. Fighting her off, he gave her a blow that sent her reeling. Her head hit the edge of a cabinet. She slumped unconscious to the floor.

Venneman said he carried her into the bathroom and washed off her face and head, accounting for the blood we had seen in the bowl. Then he took her into the bedroom in which we later found the body. But, said Venneman, in laying her down, the gun, which he was carrying under his coat, slipped out and discharged, the bullet piercing the girl’s body, killing her on the spot. Then, Venneman related, he fled from the house and decided to leave town when he saw newspaper accounts of the police search for a man with a scratched face.

Venneman said in answer to our queries about the death weapon that he had taken it out into a sparsely settled part of Kenmore, a suburb immediately to the north of Buffalo, where he tossed it away in marshy land. Donning rubber boots, Maloney, Sheehan and I spent several afternoons at the scene with the prisoner before I finally was fortunate enough to come across the revolver.

On April 5, Venneman was indicted on a charge of first degree murder. His trial was begun on June 14, and two days later, after the state had entered its evidence, Venneman was permitted to plead guilty to the reduced charge of second degree murder. On June 18, he was sentenced to from 20 years to life.