The Pulitzer Murder Case

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On September 19, 1902, the body of a woman named Anna (Nilsen) Pulitzer was found in the Morris Canal just outside Jersey City, New Jersey. A twenty-pound weight was attached to a leather strap around her waist. Her skull was fractured in two places, and she had been stabbed in the abdomen as well.

A motorman named Howell was the first person to see her. He ran the trolley car that went from Newark to Jersey City. The police immediately saw that the culprit was not a local person, who would have been aware of the tides there. At low tide, the water was only about six inches deep; it was hardly the place to conceal a body.

On the night of the 18th, the men who tended the bridge saw two men in a rig drive by, with the curtains of the rig drawn tightly closed.

In New York City, a man had reported his wife missing. Joseph Pulitzer, a tailor living at 160 West 46th Street, read of the discovery of the woman's body and went at once to the Hoboken police. He identified her immediately. Joseph said that she had gone out a few nights before to buy bread, was last seen at the bakery. After questioning Joseph at length, the police were fairly sure of his innocence: after all, he had reported her missing the morning after she vanished, and he had been at a public meeting with many witnesses.

Joseph and Anna were both known around the neighborhood for their colorful ways. Anna "was well known in the Tenderloin district" and "was a very bad woman" who had been arrested several times for soliciting, said Captain Titus, the head of the New York police investigation. Joseph was described by those who knew him as a flashy dresser who liked to flirt with young ladies; many witnesses were surprised to learn that he was married.

Joseph Pulitzer had married Anna Nilsen in Manhattan in November 1898. He was the son of August/Ignatz and Josephine (Meth) Pulitzer. Anna was the daughter of Radmus Nelson and Clara (Jacobson) Nilsen.

At this point, a Mr. Anzer, who had been following the case in the papers, went to the Jersey City police. He was a friend of a man called William Hooper Young - they had worked together on a Hoboken newspaper called The Weekly Counselor. Mr Anzer said that Young had been to his house on the previous Thursday. Young stated that he was returning a hired gig to Charles K. Evans' livery stables. Charles K. Evans identified Young and said that Young had made a special request: he wanted a weight along with the gig.

A New York cabman testified that he had taken Anna Pulitzer and the mystery man to 103 West 58th Street, which was an apartment building called the Clarence. This was the home of John Willard Young, a promoter who was in Paris at the time of the murder. He was the son of the great Mormon prophet Brigham Young. John Willard's 31 year old son, William Hooper Young, often used the Clarence apartment when his father was not there.

In John Willard's apartment, the police found empty beer bottles, one with crystals of what turned out to be chloral hydrate, and a bloody carving knife. There was blood everywhere. All the evidence was pointing towards one man: the grandson of Brigham Young.

William Hooper Young was born at Salt Lake City on March 13, 1871, son of John Willard and Elizabeth (Canfield) Young. His mother, who was divorced from John Willard, said that Hooper had been damaged by being sent out to a cattle ranch when he was a child, by himself. She said that he was forced to work on the railroad when he was 18, which left him homeless. She mentioned that Hooper's brother was in jail for robbery.

Hooper's relatives in Utah were not fond of him. They said that Hooper was weak minded and deranged. They said he was a morphine addict who led a double life (there was some talk of his possibly having committed a murder in Salt Lake City in 1893, which is the year he left that city). He was a drifter, "a bum" who had lived all over the United States, from Seattle to Chicago to New York, since leaving Salt Lake City. He worked sometimes as a newspaper writer, in Washington, D.C. as well as in Hoboken, New Jersey. In Washington he was open about being Brigham Young's grandson. He was strongly anti-Mormon as well.

Residents of the Clarence said that Hooper had come in late on September 18th, with several packages. On the following day, he had them shipped somewhere, in a trunk. The neighbours (who were a curious lot) watched all of this; and then they told the police, who were asking around at the Clarence for information. The police contacted the shippers, who checked the records. Oh yes, that trunk had been sent to Chicago.

And so the Chicago police were told to look out for a mysterious trunk addressed to a C.S. Eiling, which had been sent on September 18th from New York. Chicago police were unable to find anyone by the name of C.S. Eiling in that city. When the trunk arrived in Chicago, the police opened it. They found women's clothing, a knife, a pawn ticket for a Mr. Stiner and a memorandum book with Hooper Young's name in it. All of these items were smeared with blood.
The police caught up with Hooper Young in Derby, Connecticut. He had been spotted in Brooklyn just before this, at a rooming house on Roebling Street (not far from where my Reed great great grandparents were living at 269 Roebling Street, in 1902). He was dressed like a tramp, drunk on whisky, and very upset and nervous. He did not admit to who he was until his old friend and ex-employer showed up. The friend's name was Mac Levy.

Levy told the New York Times that Hooper had lived from March to May 1902 in Brooklyn and had been training with Levy during that time. He said Hooper did not drink (contradicting the barman in the saloon across from the Clarence) but was "a cigarette fiend." Levy didn't see Young from May until August. At that time, Young looked terrible and haggard; he said said he wanted to go "to the Rocky Mountains." He had no money, so Levy offered him a job gave him a week's pay in advance. The next time Mac Levy saw Hooper Young was in jail. Young was insisting that he was not Young but a "Bert Edwards."

Hooper made his first confession to Levy. He said that Anna had been killed at his father's apartment and that the following night she had been dumped in the Morris Canal. Young said that Charles Simpson Eiling had murdered Anna at the Clarence, and that he had only been Eiling's accomplice. He said that he went out to get whisky, and that Eiling had killed Anna while he was out. He said he wanted to go to the police but was afraid of "the disgrace" that would come to his father and himself. Young did admit to taking the body to New Jersey and putting it in the canal.

Young was tried early in 1903 and convicted of murder. In the 1910 census, he was a prisoner at Sing Sing prison, in Ossining, New York.

There was much debate at the time, concerning the role that the Mormon idea of blood atonement might have played in the Pulitzer murder. In fact, Anna was found to have died of chloral poisoning. The bottles at the Clarence, with crystallized chloral hydrate, as well as the evidence of the autopsy, proved this to be so. The mutilations of her body occurred after her death.

Anna Pulitzer was taken to her old hometown of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where she was buried. Her family still lived there. They said that she had once been "a belle of Perth Amboy." In fact, some people in that town said that Anna had actually met Hooper 9 years earlier, when he was part of a Mormon proselytizing band that came through Perth Amboy (the villagers chased them out of town, they said). Anna went to New York City a few weeks after this, and some people thought that she went there to join Hooper Young. But that story - like so many pieces of this fascinating case - was never proven.

Brian Evenson, a former professor at Brigham Young University, has written a novel in which the protagonists research the Pulitzer case in some detail, called The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press, 2006).

SOURCES

From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

"Pulitzer Murder Mystery Baffles the Detectives," Sept. 19, 1902, p. 3.
"Young's Trunk in Hands of the Chicago Police," Sept. 20, 1902, p.
"Young Is Caught at Derby, Conn.," Sept. 22, 1902, p. 1.
"The Man Left For Freeport," Sept. 24, 1902, p. 20.


From the New York Times:

"Murdered Woman Found in Morris Canal," Sept. 19, 1902, p. 2.
"Slayer of Mrs. Anna Pulitzer Is Known," Sept. 20, 1902, p.
"Young Known In Washington," Sept. 20, 1902, p. 1.
"Jewels of Murdered Anna Pulitzer Found," Sept. 21, 1902, p. 1.
"Search For Young in Greater New York," Sept. 22, 1902, p. 1.
"Prisoner at Derby May be Hooper Young," Sept. 22, 1902, p. 1.
"William Hooper Young Caught, Confesses," Sept. 23, 1902, p. 1.
"Young Dragged To Court," Feb. 5, 1903, p. 16.

Other Sources

International Genealogical Index [IGI], Batch M001273, marriage record of Joseph Pulitzer and Anna Nilsen.

Josephine Pulitzer household, 1900 U.S. census, Ward 32, Manhattan, New York, New York, sheet 19B, household #412, ED 0912, 22 East 106th Street.

William Hooper Young, 1910 U.S. Census, Sing Sing State Prisons, Ossining, Westchester, New York, Roll T624_1089, p. 19A, ED 103. [age 38, b Pennsylvania, occ: Janitor, Chapel]