True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office

of Miss

se committed, but even so the conviction constantly grows that the world is astonishingly honest when one considers the unlikelihood that any specific prospective offence will be discovered. How few dishonest servants there are, for example, out of the mill

airs of life is concerned, and the fact that we rely so implicitly upon the truthfulness and integrity of our fellows is the principal reason why violations of t

n old lady, who says her name is Sarah Jones, living in it, and offers her forty thousand dollars for her real estate. She accepts. His lawyer searches the title and finds that Sarah Jones is the owner of record. The old lady is invited to the lawyer's office, executes a warranty d

nterest to be claimed by unknown heirs or next of kin. Even if the real ones cannot be found

have been to turn up a nephew! Yet the industry of producing properly authenticated nephews, heirs, legatees, next of kin and claimants of all sorts has never been adequately developed. There are plenty of "agents" who for a moderate

condition. Fortune smiled upon him and he amassed a modest bank account, which, with considerable fores

y miles south of Sable Island and two hundred miles out of Halifax, the Geiser, in the midst of a thick fog, crashed suddenly into a sister ship, the Thingvalla, of the same line, and sank. The Thingvalla was herself badly crippled, but, after picking up thirty-one survivors, managed to limp into Halifax, from which port the rescued were brought to New York. Only fourteen of the Geiser's passengers had been saved and the

ork City. It so happened that Browne had, not long before, induced Levitan to go into another real-estate deal, in which the architect's suspicions had been aroused by finding that the property alleged by the lawyer to be "improved" was, in fact, unbuilt upon. He had lost no money in the original transactio

ate lawyer of some distinction, and an editor of what were known as the old "New York Civil Procedure Reports." He was a middle-aged man, careful in his dress,

ne that he had learned that the latter was not the owner of record, to which Browne replied that that was true, but that the property really did belong to him in fact, being recorded in Hubert's name merely as a matter of convenience (because Hubert was unmarried), and that, moreover, he, Browne, had a

ers, and invited the lawyer to accompany him to the District Attorney's office. To this Browne offered no opposition, and the party adjourned to the Criminal Courts Building, where Mr. John W. Hart, an Assistant District Attorney, accused him of having obtained money from Levitan by means of false pretences as to the ownership of the property, and requested from him a

day. He therefore sent at once for Mrs. Braman who, upon her arrival, immediately and without hesitation, positively identified the defendant, H. Huffman Browne, as the person who had executed the papers before her an hour or so before. The case on its face seemed clear en

utterly without an object. But the lawyer was nervous, and his description of Hubert as "a wealthy mine owner from the West, who owned a great deal of property in New York, and had an office in the Flatiron Building," did not ring convincingly in Mr. Hart's ears. The Assistant District Attorney called up the janitor of the building in question on the telephone. But no such person had an office t

antime the writer, to whom the case had been sent for trial, ordered a complete search of the title to the property,

bert's name, was originally part of the property owned by Ebbe Petersen, the unfort

Rourke, by a deed, which purported to have been executed on June 27, 1888, about two weeks before the Petersens sailed for Copenhagen, and whic

ed to take his wife and daughter with him on the voyage until a few days before they sailed. They had then invited her, the witness-now a Mrs. Cantwell-to go with them, but her mother had declined to allow her to do so. Mrs. Petersen, moreover, according to Mrs. Cantwell, was a woman of education, who wrote a particularly fine hand. Other

extraordinary instrument was H. Huffman Browne! It also appeared to

cuted and recorded in 1896, purported to convey part of the Petersen property to a man named John J. Keilly, and was signed by a person calling himself Charles A. Clark. By a later deed, executed and signed a few days later, John

l serve to clear up any confusion whi

ETERSEN 1896 C

conveys same property

F.X. O'ROURKE

JOHN J.

nvey

.X. O

__________

olds land throu

recorded Mrs. Petersen's deed giving O'Rourke the very same property. Thus this O'Rourke, whoever he may have been, held all the Petersen property by two chains of title, one through Clark and Keilly, and the other through Mrs. Petersen. Then he had gone ahead and deeded it all away to various persons, through one of whom William R. Hubert had secured his title. But

RSEN CLAR

testing

RKE K

LLY B

testing

'RO

_______

RKE B

sting w

M P. C

M P. C

BRO

SON attesti

GAR

BRO

TE attesti

AN B

BRO

MAN attest

. FR

BRO

UBERT attest

, to begin at the beginning, was Charles A. Clark, and why should he be deeding away Ebbe Petersen's property? And who

ars were searched, no Charles A. Clark, John J. Keilly or I. F. X. O'Rourke could be discovered. Nor could any o

irection of Browne. Herman Bolte, an ex-judge of the Municipal Court, who had been removed for misconduct in office, admitted grumblingly that, while at, one time he had considered purchasing the property in question, he had never actually done so, that the deed from Garretson to himself had been recorded without his knowledge or his authority, that he had paid noth

aimed. Accordingly, he had set about the easiest way to reduce it to possession. To make assurance doubly sure he had forged two chains of title, one through an assumed he

sserting that if the District Attorney would only look long enough he would find Wi

ive title thereto under the name of John Doe, and convey it under that name without violating the law. This as a general proposition is true so long as the taking of a fictitious name is for an honest purpose and not tainted with fraud. The Assistant District Attorney felt that the very strength of his case created, as it were, a sort of "legal weakness," for the more evidence he should put in against Browne, the clearer it would become that Hubert was merely Browne himself, and this would necessitate additional proof that Browne had taken the

am R. Hubert as a witness; stating that, although the latter had been in town on December 14th, and had personally given him the deeds in question, which he had handed to Levitan, Hubert's interests in the West had immediately called him from the city, and that he was then in Goldfields, Nevada; that since he had been in the Tombs he, Browne, had been in correspondence with a gentleman by the name of Alfred Skeels, of the Teller House, Central City, Colorado, from whom he had received a letter within the week to the effect that Hubert had arranged to s

had produced an affidavit, purported to be sworn to by Hubert, to the same effect, with deeds alleged to have been signed by him. Mrs. Braman then swore that

hether or not Browne would take the stand in his own behalf, or what his defence would be, and, in order to make assurance doubly sure, offered in evidence all the deeds to the propert

hat he had not heard of their tragic death until some years after the sinking of the Geiser. He had then ascertained that no one had appeared to lay claim to Mrs. Petersen's estate, and he had accordingly taken it upon himself to adveritse for heirs. In due course Charles A. Clark had appeared and had deeded the property to Keilly, who in turn had conveyed it to O'Rourke. Just who this mysterious O'Rourke was he could not explain, nor could he account in any satisfactory manner for the recording in 1899 of the deed signed with Mary Petersen's mark. He said that it had "turned up" in O'Rourke's hands afte

owne, these are all the signatures of imaginary persons invented by Browne to further his schemes. The

o believe that this respectable-looking person could be a dangerous character, yet the nature of his offence and the consequences of it were apparent when the State called to the stand

could call our own. Then when we saved eight hundred dollars this man come to us und sold us a lot. We were very happy. Yesterday anoder man served me mit a paper that we must leave our house

h this piece of testimony ringing in their ears, it is hardly surprising that t

e sentenced him to twenty

es, the Norwegian Government was sure that he was a Norwegian, and the Danish that he was a Dane. No one knows yet who is the real owner, and there are half a dozen heirs squat

titled to a one-sixth interest in the estate of Jane Elizabeth Barker, recently deceased. George Wilson had last been heard of, twenty years before, as a farmhand, in Illinois, and his whereabouts were at this time unknown. Suddenly, however, he had appeared. That is to say, H. Huffman Browne had appeared as his attorney, and demanded his share of the property which had been deposited to his credit with the City Chamberlain and amounted to seventy-five hundred dollars. The lawyer had presented a pe

ining uncalled for in the city's treasury. In how many cases he had been successful will probably never be kno

d enthusiasm on the part of the prosecutor, the present writer, whom he characterized as a "novelist" and dreamer. The whole case, he alleged, was constructed out of the latter's fanciful imagination, a cobweb of suspicion, accusation and falsehood. Some day h

to be the only original, genuine William R. Hubert-such a dénouement would not be beyond the realms of possibility, but more likely the request will come in the form of a petition, duly attested and authenticated before some notary in the West, protesting against Browne's