Criminal - Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

In 1917, 18-year-old Ruth Cruger disappeared. She’d last been seen getting her ice skates sharpened in the motorcycle shop of a man named Alfredo Cocchi. Newspapers reported that she probably ran off with a boyfriend, and New York police said that there were no clues to go on. But an investigator named Grace Quackenbos Humiston decided that she would do whatever it took to find her. She became known as “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes.” Brad Ricca’s book is Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City’s Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey

involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Ruth doesn't come home.

And after a couple hours, her sister looks out the window and she sees the snow kind of falling on the Hudson, and she starts to get worried. Then the hours started to pile one upon another, and she still doesn't come home. At this point, they call their father, who's away at a business trip. They cable him, and they say, Ruth is missing, and he comes home immediately. On the day before Valentine's Day in 1917, 18-year-old Ruth Kruger disappeared. So Ruth was very well liked in her high school and very well liked in the church. She had no boyfriend, and back then the term was she had no attachment. And so when she disappeared, it was completely out of the blue, something completely out of her normal pattern of behavior.

Ruth's father and her two sisters all went out looking for her, trying to imagine all of the places she might go in a day. The bank, the stationary store, and the motorcycle shop, Metropolitan Motorcycles, where the mechanic had a side business sharpening ice skates. Ruth's sister, Helen, knocked on the door. And there was a man there, an Italian man named Alfredo Cocci. And he said, yes, there was someone who looked like that. Kind of looked like you, he said, you know, about your size. And she came in, she dropped off her skates, I sharpened them,

she came back, she paid for them, and she was gone. We're hearing about Ruth Kruger from Professor Brad Ricca. On February 16th, a New York Times headline read, Pretty Girl Skater Strangely Missing. A neighborhood women's group jumped into action. They distributed missing person flyers with Ruth's picture. They asked movie theaters to project Ruth's photograph on the screen before movies began. At that time, the big movie was Charlie Chaplin's Easy Street. The NYPD commissioner ordered all available detectives to join the search. The police have no clue to go on. And as the days start to go on, then you start getting things

in the newspapers that say like, well, maybe she ran off with a boyfriend. Maybe she had some sort of secret life that no one knew about. And in 1917, this is, you know, scandalous news of the highest order. And this really made her father angry. He doubled down by hiring private detectives to look for his daughter. But they say there are no clues and there's no way to pursue a case in which she left of her own accord with someone else, so there's no reason to pursue it. Newspapers reported that there were no leads. The police felt the case was unsolvable.

The family held a press conference. Ruth Kruger's father criticized the mayor of New York, the police commissioner, and the NYPD. And he says they have not done their job. My Ruth was a good girl. And people start to notice that in the back of their kind of entourage of family, there's a woman, a middle-aged woman who's cloaked in black. And this woman steps up and she announces herself as the lead investigator on the case.

The woman's name was Grace Humiston. And she says, I will find Ruth. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Grace Humiston was born in 1869 in Greenwich Village. Her father was an insurance claims expert and was often called to court to testify on different cases. He'd take Grace along with him. She loved it.

Grace grew up and got married to a doctor named Henry Forrest Quackenbush. The marriage didn't last, however, when they discovered that the esteemed Dr. Quackenbush had drilled holes into his waiting room walls to look at his patients when they were getting undressed. In 1901, she decided she wanted to go to law school, but she had to find one that would allow women. The only school in New York that accepted women was NYU. And this was, you know, a full 60 years before Harvard started accepting women. And women had to go to the night class, which was this motley crew of, there were ex-baseball players in the night class, and there were kind of older

students, and they would play pranks on the women by dumping snow on them to discourage them from being there. But Grace had none of this. She was such a good student that the dean of NYU's law school made an exception for her and let her take classes during the day, too, with the men. She finished the three-year program in two years, graduating 12th in her class. Grace got a job at the Legal Aid Society of New York. She passed the bar exam and then used her inheritance to open a clinic called the People's Law Firm. She hung a sign near the door that read, Justice for those of limited means.

Grace thought the legal system often took advantage of immigrants, and she wanted to help. And she says, give me, you know, what you can afford. And some people would pay her a little bit, and some people would cook her meals, and some people would bless her. And there's one woman who says, you know, you have the ugliest hat in the world, let me make you a new one. And she makes her a new hat.

Soon after she opened her law firm, Grace got a letter about a woman in prison. This woman had been sentenced to death by hanging. She had less than a week to live. Her name was Antoinette Tola. Antoinette and her husband Giovanni had recently immigrated to New Jersey from Italy. You could come to this country a little easier if you had a sponsor here in America. And so some of these smaller neighborhoods would have a big sponsor who would bring in people and they would support him because it was always a him. And this was the case in a

small community in New Jersey where there was a patriarch for, you know, that's the word for it, named Santa. And Santa would bring people over from Italy, he would sponsor them, and in turn they would owe him. Santa had helped Antoinette Tola and her husband emigrate to New Jersey. And Santa would always, you know, kind of give her a wink and make a gesture and say, you know, what you owe me will happen eventually. One day, Santa found Antoinette alone at home. He walked into her house with a gun in one hand

and a roll of cash in the other. He told her she had a choice. She could sleep with him, and he'd give her the money, or he would kill her. And she takes out a gun and shoots him and kills him. Antoinette was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. She went to trial, but she didn't speak any English and was entirely dependent on the court's translator. And the translator kind of changes things as to what happened, and she is sentenced to be hanged.

No self-defense whatsoever. What hurts her case especially is that the gun has gone missing. Santa's gun. Without it, Antoinette's argument that she'd acted in self-defense didn't hold up in court. And Grace hears this, and this speaks to something in her. Grace visited Antoinette in prison, and despite the fact that she hadn't done much criminal law before,

she decided she'd try to intervene. She didn't have much time. Antoinette was scheduled to be hanged within days. Grace went to the home of the coroner. When she got there, he was playing the organ. He invited her to stay and listen. When he finished, Grace told him who she was. And then, she said she was there to see the gun

she knew had been taken from Santa's dead body. The coroner looked at her. And then he gets up and comes back with the gun. The coroner looked at her. And then he gets up and comes back with the gun. The coroner admitted everything. That he had the gun the whole time. That they had framed her because Santa's power was so great. People owed him, even in death, and were protecting him. Antoinette's execution was put on hold for 30 days

to give Grace a chance to petition the New Jersey Supreme Court. When she did, she asked for a new trial in light of the discovery of the gun. Her request for a new trial was denied. But then, the day before Antoinette was scheduled to be executed, Grace happened to run into the governor on a train. She approached him and found a way to convince him to stop the execution. Antoinette's sentence was reduced to seven years in prison.

The New York Evening World reported that Grace had done the impossible and that the, quote, old gray beards of the New Jersey bar are shaking their heads in amazement over the woman's feet, she is rather worth thinking about. Some reporters said that Grace could solve mysteries no one else could because of her women's intuition.

As word spread of what she'd done for Antoinette Tola, her legal clinic took off. She opened a second location, then a third. Eventually, she had offices all over New York City. She was willing to do anything to solve a case. To investigate the conditions at a labor camp, she pretended to be a traveling saleswoman selling scissors. She would often wear disguises. She has to find different ways of getting things done. She becomes a detective because she can't always trust police departments and so forth. She really believes in doing things herself.

So she becomes, and she says this, a necessary detective. And she kind of makes this her thing, and she's very successful in it. And because of this, she gets a lot of press coverage. And this leads to bigger and bigger cases, and the Krugers see it. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention,

and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series

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wherever you get your podcasts. When 18-year-old Ruth Kruger disappeared and the police weren't able to find her, the Kruger family went to Grace Humiston. By this point in her career, Grace was well-known as an investigator who would do anything to solve Humiston. By this point in her career, Grace was well known as an investigator who would do anything to solve a case. The first thing she did

was get every single newspaper article about Ruth Kruger and every document the NYPD would give her. And then she went to visit Metropolitan Motorcycles, the last place Ruth Kruger had been seen. When she got to the motorcycle shop, the owner, Alfredo Cochi, was not there. He hadn't been seen in a while. Neighbors said he'd been badly shaken by the fact that he was the last person to see Ruth alive. His wife was trying to keep the business afloat by herself. Grace asked if she could look around the shop.

Mrs. Kochi said no. The police had already searched it repeatedly. And then, Grace noticed that Mrs. Kochi had put up a sign in the window that said, mechanic wanted. She got an idea. Grace enlisted the help of a man named Julius J. Krohn, a Hungarian detective. And he's really this definition of the hard-boiled detective.

He has a scar on his left eye. He was a brilliant man of facts, but he was also unafraid to, you know, throw a right hook. And she met with him at the Manhattan Hotel, and they had lunch, and she, you know, gave him the details of the case, and she said she needed his help. She said, do you know how to fix motorcycles? The next day, Julius Krohn went to Metropolitan Motorcycles and asked Mrs. Kochi to give him the mechanic job.

She looked him up and down, and she seemed very wary, but she hired him on the spot. The only problem was that Julius Krohn didn't really know how to fix motorcycles. So what he does is during the day, he kind of acts busy and memorizes what's wrong with the bikes, goes home, looks through all the manuals and figures out how to fix it. And the next day goes in and fixes it. I mean, motorcycles back then weren't what they are now.

They were basically kind of bicycles with sewing machine engines on them. So they weren't the worst things to fix. But he still is able to pull off this really great gambit to get in the store. The only problem is he wants to get into the basement of the store. But Mrs. Kochi will not let Krohn in the basement for anything. So that becomes his goal to get in that basement. How does he do it? So after a few weeks of gaining her trust and actually fixing these motorcycles, to good success,

he's working on a bike and he says, well, I have to go solder these spokes. And this meant that he would have to go down the street to another machine shop and do it there. And she says, oh, no, don't worry about it. Go do it in the basement. And he freezes for just a second because here's his opportunity. But he's a professional. So he just says, okay. And he goes down into the basement. And he knows he only has a few minutes at most. And he looks around. And one thing he looks for, he's looking for shiny nails, which means they're new nails that they might be covering something up. He's, you know, conscious of the clock, conscious that she's up there. And then he hears her.

She screams, you come up here right now. And he knows he waited just that split second too long where he was revealed. And he comes up and she says, you get out right now. With Julius Krohn's cover now blown, he and Grace needed to come up with a new plan. So they find an old coal chute from the street that goes up to the basement. And they find through the permits that that's public property. And through a variety of ways, Grace gets a permit for this.

And Krohn and someone else start digging in it. It's a hole they find. And they start digging every day and policemen walk by and laugh at them and kind of throw things at them. Mrs. Kochi stands there with a hammer and says, if you come closer to my property, here's what I'm going to do. But they're fine. They keep digging and digging, and then they find a door. They open the door, and they find some weird things.

They find street signs, and they find a newspaper from two days after Ruth Kruger disappeared. And then they find this small flower. And they wonder what this is, why is there a flower? And then they find it was a piece of a corset. And then they find bones. And Crone finds them, and he pulls them up, and he brings them to Grace, and he says, well, this is it.

And she takes them to an expert, and he says they're pigs' bones. Grace realized right away that the bones had been planted. Someone was playing a trick on her. Almost everybody, it seems like, in reading the story and researching the story, is against them. The public wants to find Ruth. They want to find her alive. But it seems like the people in power, the police, the mayor, everything else is working against her. Grace had had enough. She took matters into her own hands

and announced to Julius Krohn that they would resume digging at Metropolitan Motorcycles. He says, well, what do you mean? We can't dig anymore. We can't get in the building. She goes, no, just walk in. You can dig in the basement now.

And what Krohn finds out is that Grace bought the store. Grace just buys the store. Yeah. And so does she march right in? She marches right in. A huge crowd gathers on the street because they know this is the moment and in the photographs it's men with their sons and people, you know, hanging over the balconies and Crone goes in with his men and they start looking around, they start digging. And true to her word, Grace Humiston finds Ruth Kruger.

Ruth's body was found buried six feet under the wooden flooring of the basement. Her body was badly decomposed by this point, but she was identifiable by a ring she always wore. It was engraved with the name of her high school. They bring her out in a cardboard coffin with a flower on top. And she is carried out of the front door of the motorcycle shop, and all the men take their hats off. What was discovered about how she was killed? She had a bruise on her forehead. They do an

autopsy. She has what they call a ripper's mark, which is she was stabbed in the side and all signs, all clues point to Alfredo Cochi, who is gone.

Gone. Home to Bologna, Italy. An AP reporter finds him and he says, are you Alfredo Cocci? And he says, well, I suppose I am. And he's kind of free in Italy, just living with family and so on. But then when they find Ruth, they send a cable to the Italian authorities, and it says, hold Kochi. He was held in an old monastery. When he was questioned by police, he said Ruth's death was an accident, that she'd fallen through the basement, and he'd tried to cover it up.

But he also said he had tried to kiss her and she had rejected him. What came out afterwards is that there were others, that mothers started coming forth to the papers and saying, you know, we used to live across from Kochi and my daughter would go over and he said, oh, I'll make you, I'll make your bicycle motorized. And they disappeared and she ran out and said he tried to kiss her. And this story began to repeat. And it started to create a portrait of Kochi as someone who was headed towards this direction. Ruth Kruger's family wanted Alfredo Cocci brought back to America to stand trial. But Italy refused to extradite him. They said they would handle it. Even though there wouldn't be a trial in the United States,

Grace wanted to make sure that Alfredo Cocci was punished properly in Italy. She gathered every piece of evidence she had and got written statements from people who'd known him. And she just sent it over. And what it did was it portrayed a pattern of behavior, not of murder, but of something leading up to that. And he stands trial in Italy. And in the middle of it, he proclaims his innocence and said his wife did it. She was jealous of her and she did it. But then that changes again. And he said, I did it. And he said, he doesn't even say it wasn't an accident. And he's sentenced to life in prison.

After Ruth Kruger's case was closed, the press began referring to Grace Humiston as Mrs. Sherlock Holmes. Brad Ricca says Julius Krohn was her Watson. And then the NYPD had to answer for why Grace found so many clues they couldn't. The NYPD undergoes its most extensive internal audit in its history to this point. And this is largely due to Grace pointing out that they had missed key things in the investigation. But what comes out in the audit is not only did they miss things, but they deliberately may have covered them up.

What they find is that Kochi ran a gambling ring that many of the policemen were part of. And he also fixed their motorcycles. They even found a note in all caps that said, Protect Kochi. So, you know, when they did these searches of his place, did they miss what was in the basement, or did they turn the other way? And this huge investigation goes forward, and it floods the papers for a year,

and all these detectives get fired. The New York Sun ran a profile on Grace that began with the line, the New York police let a woman put them to shame. It went on to say that trying to stop Grace is like flashing a red flag in a bull's face. The NYPD made Grace the first official female detective in New York. They gave Grace a badge, and they said she could carry a gun, and she was going to head the bureau for missing people. And it was a big deal.

And of course, you know, behind this all, because of this massive investigation, is there's also a great deal of animosity towards her from the police because she showed them up. Parents all over the country began mailing letters to Grace begging her to help them find their lost daughters. And she focuses her life on just missing girls. Grace told a reporter, It's the unfortunate truth that too often the attitude of the official police is the girl was bad to begin with. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer.

Susanna Robertson is our assistant producer. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Argo Studios. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com, where you can also learn more about Brad Ricka's book, Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, the true story of New York City's greatest female detective, and the 1917 missing girl case that captivated a nation.

Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. Shows like Passenger List, the newest Radiotopia show. Passenger List is a beautifully produced new fiction series that tells the story of a missing plane, a cabin full of suspects, and a search for the truth about what happened. Starring Kelly Marie Tran, Colin Morgan, Rob Benedict, and Patti LuPone. Who are you?

Someone who wants to find out what really happened. You can trust me, okay? I'm trying to put all the pieces together. Every time there's been a theory that just might make sense, something disproves it. There are still plenty of questions we haven't asked.

This all just got really gnarly. That's how you know you're onto something. PassengerList is out now. Head to PassengerList.org to find out more and subscribe. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing,

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