MARY WESTERVELT, WILLIAM’S WIFE, WAS GROWING INCREASingly frustrated with her husband’s unemployment. Not only were she, her husband, and their two children renting two rooms in a tenement, but throughout the fall, her husband’s sister Martha Mosher and her four children had been sharing the space. Mary Westervelt had not realized her sister-in-law’s family would be moving into her home until they showed up at her doorstep before 7:00 A.M. on August 20, two days after they had left Philadelphia. Mary resented their presence. Although the Moshers had accommodated her own family earlier in the year when her husband had lost his job, their home had been larger, and Mary and her children had had their own room.
Two months after her in-laws moved in, Mary and her family had to leave their two-room apartment and move into a cheaper tenement where they could afford an extra bedroom. Mary grumbled about the location. To help make rent, which was one dollar more a week, she worked as a seamstress.
Meanwhile, Westervelt indirectly directed the NYPD force of 2,500 men where to look for Mosher and Douglas. Westervelt advised Walling to keep an eye on Smith and McNeal’s, a restaurant the kidnappers frequented. He directed him to investigate the Astoria ferry, where the men could fish for food. He told him about a boating trip he had recently taken with the kidnappers; after they had traveled upriver to a venue called Rondout, Westervelt said, Mosher had asked him to accompany them on future burglaries. He described the kidnappers’ clothes, their fishing poles, and the type of bag they carried. Following Westervelt’s directions, one officer replicated the journey to Rondout in search of the kidnappers.
Westervelt also accompanied his sister Martha Mosher on trips to Five Points. There, she often visited Madame Morrow on Houston Street, where her husband sometimes met her. Sometimes Westervelt and/or Joseph Douglas joined their brief meetings. Westervelt continued to frequent the usual haunts, neighborhoods, and shops he had come to know well as a police officer. One day in late October, Joseph Douglas entered a store on Broome Street and asked for Westervelt. A young man in the building mistook Douglas for an plainclothes police officer.
“What does Walling want with him?” he asked.
The question startled Douglas. He ran out of the store and told Westervelt about the encounter.
For the first time, William Westervelt realized the police were following him. He threatened to cease contact with Walling and blamed the superintendent for his financial frustrations. He reminded Walling that he was betraying his own sister’s husband and his own sense of loyalty, and that despite several weeks of working as an informant, he had received neither Mayor Stokley’s reward nor his job back on the force. Walling told him that despite his best efforts, he didn’t think the police commissioners would let him back on the force. Privately, the superintendent feared losing his contact. Police officers, detectives, and neighbors across America and Europe had failed to find Charley Ross, and he, George W. Walling, had contact with the only lead in the investigation. He tried to assuage Westervelt by finding him a temporary job as a streetcar conductor.
Walling placed great hope in the specific details Westervelt offered. He was confident that any day, his officers would, through these leads, find and arrest the kidnappers and deliver Charley Ross in heroic fashion to his grieving parents in Germantown. If this were to happen, Walling would have begun his career as superintendent by cracking one of the nation’s toughest cases. Unless Sarah Ross’s brothers were to pay the ransom. Then, the child would be returned on the kidnappers’ terms, and he would have no glory. On October 22, Walling warned Heins against negotiating.
Dear Sir:—I saw my informant last night he says that we are surely on the right track, but they [the kidnappers] have hopes of getting the child redeemed, and he has not been able to find where it is. I think any arrangements made with the kidnappers for the restoration of the child would be a public calamity; no child would be safe hereafter if it had parents or friends who could raise money. I am confident that I shall get the guilty parties and the child at some time not far distant, provided no compromise is made with them.
Very respectfully yours, etc
GEO. W. WALLING, Superintendent
Again, Heins cooperated with Walling while suspecting Westervelt’s intentions. Through Walling, Heins learned that the kidnappers had resumed their criminal habits in order to support their lives on the run. He knew they were steering a green skiff around New York’s harbor at night, sometimes mere feet from police boats searching for them.
The deep, sheltered New York Harbor provided numerous hiding places. Fishermen and traders navigated hundreds of miles of inlets, streams, and channels near the city by day; burglars such as Mosher knew how to steer the maze of waterways in the dark. Using a small boat, thieves would sneak onto the shores of communities in New Jersey, Long Island, or Westchester, rob stores or homes, put their goods in the boat, and take off. If they couldn’t reach their “fencing” destinations by daybreak, they would hide the stolen property somewhere along the water until they could return for it another night. That way, if eyewitnesses had spied their boat at the scene of the crime, the police would find nothing when they later searched it. Mosher had grown up playing hide-and-seek with the police. It would make sense for him to move Charley, one more stolen good, among his best hideaways.
Walling rented a steam tug, and Heins sent Detective Wood from Philadelphia to join New York’s Detective Silleck, Gil Mosher, and another officer on a twelve-day reconnaissance of this territory. Detective Silleck was known among his peers as a former “sea-faring man” who “knew all about coasting.” The group deferred to his judgment as a navigator. The foursome traveled up the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie, moving ashore to interview squatters and to scout islands, woods, small towns, and little houses. They looked around Newburg, where the last letter had been posted. They poked around the East River, observing the wharves near the entrance to Long Island Sound. In a report he gave at the end of the trip, Detective Wood said they had “searched thirty or forty islands in the Sound, containing from four to five acres to a hundred acres each.” He also said that Gil Mosher had uncovered many potential hiding places.
Heins continued to wonder why William Westervelt, a man who made no pretense of hiding his grudge against the police, would cooperate in an investigation against his own brother-in-law. Westervelt’s details were entertaining, but they had not yet been instrumental in providing the police with any concrete evidence—certainly no more than Walling’s men had learned through their undercover work in Five Points. Heins agreed to keep contributing time, money, and resources to Walling’s theories, but he didn’t trust Westervelt enough to fully interfere with the Ross family’s decisions.
Walling recognized Heins’s hesitation, and as he had done before, shared enough information about Westervelt’s statements to keep the captain involved in his plans. He sent a telegram to Philadelphia on October 28.
—Yours of yesterday received. On Monday night Clark alias Douglas went to where they used to meet, but found the lager beer saloon closed. He inquired for Westervelt. I heard it yesterday morning, and about an hour afterwards Westervelt came and told me Clark had been inquiring for him. Of course I did not tell him I knew it; so I think Westervelt has kept faith with me.
Yours, etc.
Heins agreed with Christian Ross’s earlier position on Douglas. The kidnappers’ letters revealed insecurities that could trigger their threats against Charley’s life at any moment, so in Charley’s best interest, Douglas should be left free until the police could arrest Mosher as well. Walling’s continued confidence, however, made enough of an impression on Heins for him to encourage the Ross/Lewis family to postpone negotiations. He told them that he believed the New York Police would soon catch the kidnappers.
The family disagreed. Dismissing the better judgment of the authorities, the Ross camp decided to make the exchange as quickly as possible, regardless of the kidnappers’ refusal to simultaneously trade Charley for the money. Only there was another problem. The kidnappers had said they would only deal with Christian, and he could not get out of bed.
New York Herald. Oct. 28.
“John, too sick to take journey. Will relative answer?”
PHILA Oct 31 Mr Ros if you have any relation or friend that you can delegate to this important bisines then we are ready to deal with him we care not who he may be if it be mr hines or the states attorney—we are willing to negociate with him but mr Ros we want you not to deceive yourself in this bisines for we tell you plainly his acts will involve the life or death of your child we shall regard him as your substitute in every particular and hold the life of your child responsible for his actions. send your substitute to New York tuesday 3rd november with the means to settle this bisines. your substitute on arriving in new York must put a personal in herald. say. John i am stoping at ____ hotel with his name in full.
New York Herald. November 3.
“John, change address of personals. Relative will not sign his name in full.”
NEW BRUNSWICK, November 3—Mr. Ros. it looks very strange to us that you should quible about the name to address us. is your object to keep the detectives informed of our whereabouts by having us writing you so often. by the by we could tell you much about them but our place is to keep mum and yours to investigate before you give more money out. it makes us jealous to see you pay out your mony foolishly when they can give you nothing in return but a parcel of fabricated lies. —and if you want your child safe and sound this is the final day of salvation. this address will do (John Johnathan is stopping at so and so. Johnathan or who he may be must not leave the hotel till he hears from us. if you mean square bisiness have your personal in Friday’s Herald (N.Y.) and be in New York on Saturday morning.