Hays, sir, our unfortunate, our innocent, our sweet Mary has clearly and unfairly, to her, fallen victim to the brutal lust of some of the gang of banditti that walk unscathed and violate the laws with impunity in this moral and religious city. I presume, as of yet, no discoveries have been made, and so I must implore you, we all do, you must persevere and you must be successful.”
Taking his cue, Hays answered he would like nothing more, but he first need have mandate to begin. “Acting Mayor Purdy, unfortunately, prevents my investigation,” Hays told them all.
Something will be done about that, it was sworn in response.
To the good, but notwithstanding, to stimulate immediate action, while the mayor’s office was dually dealt with and made right, $300 was pledged for reward on the spot.
This sum offered quickly grew to $748, eventually to reach the grand total of $1,073, including public money pledged from Albany by Governor Seward. The biggest individual contributors ($50 each) proved to be Bennett, the newspaper publisher, and Anderson, the segar shop owner.
It was hoped a premium of such proportion would assure a swift solution to the crime, but it did not. With several of the public prints, including the Herald and Mercury, demanding culmination to the horror, not to mention the fact that High Constable Hays had made plain his frustration with Acting Mayor Purdy, a citizens’ group representing the Committee for Safety, was sent straightaway to his office to demand immediate attention.
Unable to resist such pressure, Purdy sent a card for Hays’ appearance, and upon arriving at City Hall, the high constable received direct orders, matter-of-factly delivered, to travel with all speed to Hoboken, and once there to disinter the corpse of Mary Cecilia Rogers from her temporary crypt and bring her back home to New York, whereupon he would commence his investigation to all of his skill and ability, to hopefully solve the crime with utmost alacrity.
Hays accepted the change in charge with accustomed grace. He dispatched Sergeant McArdel, who quickly secured a police rowboat and six oarsmen. On board with Hays was Acting Mayor Purdy (exclusively at his own insistence) and the New York medical examiner, Dr. Archibald Archer.
Dr. Cook and Hudson County justice of the peace Gilbert Merritt awaited Hays and the New York contingent at the Hoboken Bull’s Head Ferry dock. From there they proceeded to the location where Mary’s body had been sepulchred three feet deep in a double-lined lead coffin. The heavy tomb was unearthed and then transported by flatbed wagon back to the rowboat, propelled across river, not without considerable effort (a terrific thunderstorm erupted, with howling winds and driving rain), to be deposited on scrubbed pine boards at the Dead House behind City Hall.
Phebe Rogers was sent for from her home to make final determining identification. The old lady staggered into the cavernous Dead House, supported under either arm by the two ex-roomers, Arthur Crommelin and Archibald Padley, but, despite Acting Mayor Purdy’s insistence, was unable to bring herself to gaze upon the body. Decomposition had already taken place to such an extent that no trace of the once-beautiful girl could be recognized in the black and swollen features, and Hays reiterated to the acting mayor for the third time his conviction that it was unwise to insist the old woman perform this hellacious duty.
Instead, through an anguished veil of tears, the grieving mother, with Hays at her side, eventually identified her daughter’s body by articles of clothing stripped from the corpse.
That evening when Hays returned home from the Tombs, Olga already had dinner laid out on the table. She also had a newspaper tucked underneath her arm. “Annie Lynch brought this to my attention,” she explained, referring to her dear friend from the Brooklyn Female Academy. “It is an admonishing tract from the New York Advocate of Moral Reform. Papa, the editors have taken this opportunity to voice their moral repugnance with the state of affairs in our society,” she snorted. “Mightn’t I read you what they opine?”
“Most assuredly, my dear, if you don’t mind me having a seat first.” At this late hour, after a day such as this, it was comfort he sought.
She began:
“One word to the young ladies who may read this, from a voice from the grave, speaking to you in tones of warning and entreaty,
Had Mary Cecilia Rogers loved the house of God, had she reverenced the Sabbath, had she refused to associate with unprincipled and profligate men, how different might her fate have been!”
The Investigation Begins in Earnest
Later that night, having returned to his office at the Tombs, High Constable Jacob Hays officially registered the death of Mary Cecilia Rogers as murder, whereupon New York coroner Dr. Archibald Archer confirmed in the Dead House the results of the autopsy performed by Hoboken medical examiner Cook, with the exception of listing cause of death as “drowned,” whereas Coroner Cook had it listed as “strangulation.”
Hays fumed. Over the years, the more he had grown to depend on them in his investigations, the more skeptical he had grown of doctors, their acuity and theory. He had asked this specific question of Dr. Cook: Had Mary Rogers been drowned? To which said medical man had responded unequivocally that she had not been drowned, citing the absence of frothy blood in her mouth as proof.
“Dr. Archer,” Hays now pressed the New York man, “according to your colleague Dr. Cook, Mary Cecilia Rogers was dead before she went into the water. How say you to this?”
Archer relented without a fight. He said it might indeed be so. “Consider Dr. Cook kerrect,” he said. To which Hays knew he could rely on neither of these men, but would have to pick and choose what was valuable and what would prove less than gospel.
In spite of the hour, Hays trekked back across Chambers Street and up Centre to his office to consider the facts he had at hand. Once seated in his hard chair, two or three of the prison’s ubiquitous mousers began to gather about him with their annoying mewing and pestering.
Hays was no pussyite. He made no bones about that. He could not stand the felines. Yet, perversely, the prison cats seemed to take particular delight in him. Hays took that as testament to their misconceived character.
He considered the possibilities of the crime as they presented themselves to him:
1 Mary Rogers died at the hands of a gang of ruffians.
2 Mary Rogers died at the hands of a beau, or ex-beau, in the murderer’s misplaced estimation, somehow wronged by her.
3 Mary Rogers died at the hands of a stranger: until the day of her death, someone she did not know.
4 Mary Rogers died by her own hand. (Unlikely, considering the manner in which she was found trussed.)
5 Mary Rogers had not died. She was in hiding, and the body was not the body of Mary at all, but of another, as yet unidentified.
The first possibility struck him as the strongest. Mary’s death was related to some band of local riffraff. Both coroners seemed to corroborate
