Mobsters in The usa – The Mysterious Murder of Mary Rogers – The Attractive Cigar Girl
She was known as “The Gorgeous Cigar Female,” but the 1841 murder of 20-year-old Mary Rogers stays a single of the most baffling unsolved murders in the historical past of New York City.
Rogers was a clerk in the upscale John Anderson’s Tobacco Shop in downtown Manhattan. She was an amazingly lovely girl, and famous writers these kinds of as Edgar Allen Poe, James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving grew to become her standard clients. Poet Fitz Eco-friendly-Halleck was so smitten by her, he wrote a poem in Rogers’ honor. Many of the tops newspaper editors and writers have been also recurrent customers at Anderson’s, some just to get a brief glimpse of Rogers’ attractiveness.
On Sunday early morning, July 25, 1841, at a Nassau Avenue boarding house owned by her mom, Rogers advised one of the boarders, her fiancee Daniel Payne, that she was likely out for the afternoon to stop by her sister, a Mrs. Downing. That night time, New York was strike by a severe thunderstorm, and Rogers did not return to the boarding dwelling. Both of those her mother and Payne figured that mainly because of the storm, Rogers was paying out the evening at her sister’s dwelling. Nonetheless the subsequent day, Rogers’ sister instructed them that Rogers experienced under no circumstances shown up at all, nor experienced she expected her to go to. Joined by Roger’s ex-fiancee, Alfred Crommelin, they searched the metropolis, but could not uncover any trace of Rogers. Regrettably, this was not the very first time that Rogers had disappeared. In October 1838, Rogers’ whereabouts were unidentified for a number of days. When she returned, she claimed she had visited a close friend in Brooklyn, even although she experienced not informed her mom, or her businesses of her intentions.
This time, the mom put an advertisement in the New York Sunshine daily newspaper inquiring if any individual understood the whereabouts of a younger woman, aged 20, very last viewed on the morning of the 25th, who was wearing a white dress, black shawl, blue scarf, Leghorn hat, light colored shoes, and mild-colored parasol. No a person responded to that advert.
On Wednesday, July 28, at Sybil’s Cave in Hoboken, New Jersey, a few men spotted something floating and bobbing on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. They jumped in a rowboat and swiftly rowed to the area exactly where the object was found. When they bought there, they discovered the physique of a younger female. They exhausted pulling the human body on to the rowboat, but just after a few unsuccessful tries, they tied a rope beneath the lifeless woman’s chin and rowed toward shore.
When the coroner examined the physique, he located a crimson mark, the form of a man’s thumb, on the suitable aspect of her neck, and various marks on the left side of her neck, the size of a man’s finger, indicating she experienced been strangled and her human body dumped into the river. Crommelin, following looking through the accounts in the newspapers of the system found in the Hudson River, traveled to Hoboken and identified the overall body as that of Mary Rogers.
Because of her popularity with the press, Rogers’ dying turned front page news in all the New York City newspapers. Associates of the press cast suspicion on her fiancée Daniel Payne, who experienced advised the law enforcement that on the working day of Roger’s disappearance, he had visited his brother and had spent the working day bouncing to and from quite a few bars and dining establishments. To establish his innocence, Payne, produced sworn affidavits from witnesses, declaring he was without a doubt wherever he said he was on the working day Rogers’ disappeared.
The thriller of Rogers’ death quickly disappeared from the newspapers. The New York Town law enforcement, which then consisted of motley night time-time Watchmen and working day-time Roundsmen, who have been untrained and lowly compensated commoners with small incentive to resolve crimes, decided not to examine any further more since the physique was observed in New Jersey. The New Jersey police felt Rogers experienced most very likely been killed in New York Town and that the murder investigation was not their issue.
Frederica Decline owned a tavern termed Nick Moore’s Residence close to Hoboken, New Jersey, not much from exactly where Mary Rogers’ physique experienced been located On August 25, 1841, two of her sons, who were being playing in the woods, observed several content articles of women’s apparel, together with a handkerchief with the initials M.R. Mrs. Reduction immediately notified the police. This new discovery ignited an investigation by the New Jersey police, because they now determined Rogers had certainly been killed in New Jersey. But nothing at all grew to become of the investigation and it before long ended.
In the course of the many years, several criminologists tried out to explain who killed Mary Rogers and why. But no credible proof ever materialized and no one was at any time charged with the crime. A 12 months after Rogers’ death, Edgar Allen Poe, of course saddened by the tragedy of “The Lovely Cigar Woman,” wrote his well-known novel “The Mystery of Marie Roget.” The novel was established in Paris, and duplicated the gatherings that had occurred in Rogers’ loss of life. In the novel, Poe’s well known detective Austin Dupin concluded that the murderer was a naval officer of dark complexion, who experienced previously tried to elope with Marie (Rogers), which explained her to start with disappearance in 1838. He then killed her in 1841, when she refused to marry him a next time.
Poe’s novel carefully mirrored the most credible rationalization of Mary Rogers’ demise, which was place forth by author Raymond Paul in the early 1970s. Paul’s theory was that Daniel Payne murdered Rogers, but not on the Sunday she disappeared, for which Payne had a strong alibi, but on the next Tuesday. Simply because Mary’s entire body was even now in rigor mortis when she was observed, she could not have been lifeless for much more than 24 hrs. Rigor mortis commences scant hours immediately after a person dies, but then right after 24 hrs, it little by little dissipates.
Paul concluded, from the evidence compiled a lot more than 130 years earlier, that Payne had gotten Roger’s expecting, and on Sunday July, 25 1841, he ferried her off to Hoboken to have an abortion. Although her mother and former fiancée had been seeking for Rogers, Rogers was recuperating from the abortion in a Hoboken inn. Payne then returned to Hoboken on Tuesday, July 27, to select Rogers up and deliver her back to New York City. When Rogers advised Payne she was breaking off their connection, Paul concluded Payne strangled her and dropped her system into the Hudson River. Paul also deduced from the circumstances that Rogers’ brief disappearance in 1838, was for the similar cause to have an abortion.
Immediately after Rogers’ dying, Payne begun consuming seriously. On October 7, 1841, Payne, right after generating the rounds of various New York bars, acquired the poison laudanum. He took the ferry to Hoboken and went to Nick Moore’s Household, where he received appropriately drunk. Soused, he staggered, holding a bottle of brandy, to the location in the woods where Rogers’ apparel had been identified. He wrote on a piece of paper, “To the environment in this article I am on the incredibly spot. May possibly God forgive me for my misspent lifestyle.” He place the note in his pocket, drank the laudanum and washed it down with the brandy. Then he laid down and died.
The newspapers and the New York Town police, considering that Rogers had been killed on a Sunday for which Payne experienced an airtight alibi, figured Payne experienced dedicated suicide, mainly because the appreciate of his life had been murdered. Still, the law enforcement investigation had been so cursory, incomplete and fully inefficient, they in no way regarded the point that it was extremely hard for Rogers to have been killed 4 times before she was discovered, since her body was even now in the condition of rigor mortis.
Although the murder of Mary Rogers has in no way officially been solved, her loss of life was not in vain. The complete incompetency of the New York City law enforcement drive, merged with tension from an outraged New York Town press and populace, compelled the metropolis to absolutely revamp its policing treatments. Starting up in 1845, Watchmen and Roundsmen grew to become obsolete, as New York Town lastly established a police power, comprised of gentlemen trained specifically to stop and investigate crimes.