ON DECEMBER 15, MAYOR STOKLEY, POLICE CHIEF JONES, police captains, and two of Christian Ross’s brothers met at police headquarters on Chestnut Street to discuss whether they could continue offering $20,000 for Charley’s return.
That night, New York’s Detective Doyle and two officers prepared to raid a small, deserted island off of Westport, Connecticut, in Long Island Sound. Doyle had learned about an elderly couple who sold provisions to fishermen and wanderers from their home on the island. Assuming that Mosher and Douglas had stopped there more than once, Doyle thought the pair could very well be hiding Charley Ross. Doyle assembled a team, secured a search warrant, and landed on the island at 3:00 A.M. on December 16.
Domesticated animals and birds roamed the grounds outside of several shacks. When officers knocked on the main cabin, nobody answered. They pounded harder. An elderly man cracked open the door. Behind him, an old woman stood holding a candle. In a shaky voice, the man asked why they were bothering him so late at night. Doyle’s men pushed the door open, entered the cabin, and said they were there to take Charley Ross back home to his family. As the couple watched the officers search their home and the surrounding shacks, they insisted that they never let anybody stay with them, not even a child. Officers asked about Mosher and Douglas. Boatmen came to visit them often, the couple said, but only to buy provisions. Doyle left without making an arrest.
Later that morning, the Philadelphia Inquirer questioned the logic of praising police efforts now that Mosher and Douglas were dead. “Neither the police authorities of New York or Philadelphia accomplished any discovery which has led to one appreciable result; and, if the child should be restored through the terrible infliction upon the abductors, while perpetrating another crime, it cannot, in any wise, be credited to the vigilance or sagacity or efficiency of either of these police authorities or of any one who has aided them.”
The Baltimore News also chastised Walling and his men for their blatant self-promotion. “The New York police, for the sake of their own credit, had better keep quiet about their knowledge of these men for had they done their duty Charley Ross would not have been stolen.” Questioning why the police hadn’t arrested the former convicts earlier, the paper realized members of the department had hoped to profit from the ransom. “These things look very suspicious, and if they were not in league with the police, then the police were certainly very indifferent to their duty.”
For Walling to retain the spotlight, he needed to find Charley fast. Doyle’s mission to the Connecticut island had failed, and any associate of Bill Mosher’s who had information on the child wasn’t coming forward. Douglas had said that Mosher didn’t trust him with details on the boy, and if he were to be believed, then perhaps Mosher didn’t trust anybody.
The integrity of one of Walling’s top investigators, Detective Silleck, had also been compromised. In her interview at the Brooklyn morgue, Mrs. Albert Mosher had directed allegations at the detective, implying that the Silleck and Mosher families had shared the same ignoble acquaintances. They had. Like Officer Moran, Detective Silleck had not only grown up around Bill Mosher, but he had also arrested him. Silleck had revealed his familiarity with Mosher when he publicly identified the body at Bay Ridge, and Walling knew he had been the officer to bring Gil Mosher to the attention of Captain Hedden back in July, the single action ultimately responsible for Walling’s current high profile in the press. It was Silleck whose knowledge of the harbor led a search by the joint Philadelphia and New York forces, and it was he who had told the authorities that Bill Mosher’s deformed nose was due to either cancer or a disease, like syphilis.
Two officers and two criminals—Moran and Silleck, Mosher and Douglas—had grown up along those same Long Island shores so favored by river pirates. Ever since they were children, thieves had gravitated to their East River world, targeting shipments headed to isolated piers along the bay. The authorities tried not to interfere much. The force allotted such a small number of men to the harbor police that only hideous robberies—such as ones where captains were beaten with handpicks—were investigated. Pirates knew the odds were in their favor, and so they thrived—until the very end of the nineteenth century, when a fearless police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt overthrew their stronghold. Until then, it was hard to tell between the law enforcer and the criminal. Their worlds overlapped too frequently. It was too easy to become a police officer: all one had to do was find a veteran officer who would either sell his position or nominate the newcomer for one. And once an officer, it was too easy to operate as a criminal: all one needed was to maintain enough underworld connections to collect a decent paycheck as a thief catcher or as a thief protector.
Walling and Silleck knew that more of the Moshers could begin talking soon, and the police had no control over what they would say, contradict, or allege. Based on Mrs. Albert Mosher’s interview at the morgue, reporters were certain to ask more about the family’s past associations with Silleck. In the meantime, the detective continued working closely with Walling.
The day after the shooting, Walling learned about a Mrs. Russell— a junk dealer and landlady on Ridge Street who had funded Mosher’s failed business attempts as a fishmonger and saloon keeper. He decided to go undercover as a sanitary inspector to investigate her. Walling went to Russell’s broken-down lodging house, and after introducing himself to one of the tenants as a member of the Board of Health, declared the house a target for diphtheria and unacceptable for children. He asked to speak with the proprietor about the flooded cellars.
The tenant said Mrs. Russell had left for her country home an hour before.
Walling asked to go upstairs.
The tenant said she would be gone for at least one night.
Walling pushed past him, walked upstairs, and knocked at a bedroom door. Another man answered. Identifying himself as Russell’s son, he told Walling to take his complaints to the neighboring stable responsible for the flooding.
Walling asked where Mrs. Russell could be found in the country.
Both men said they didn’t know the address.
Before leaving, Walling perused the halls and the rooms. He then walked to the stable, and while he pretended to examine the alleyway between the buildings, Detective Silleck watched the front door.
A few minutes later, Silleck saw Mrs. Russell and her son exit the lodging house. He followed them and stopped when he could to telegraph Walling.
“Got the woman in Twenty-fourth Street. What shall I do?”
“Follow—to Canada if necessary” Walling replied.
Silleck telegraphed next from Grand Central Station. “Just bought tickets for New Britain, Connecticut.”
Walling now had a more concrete answer for those who asked why Douglas’s dying confession had connected his name to Charley’s hiding place: he and his men were watching the criminals’ former accomplices. “I do not think the boy is concealed in this city,” Walling told a New York reporter. “To be frank with you, I never believed that he was concealed in this city. It is not for me to tell you all I know about the case in its present aspects, but I am of the opinion that we are still on the right track.”
Another reporter asked whether Mosher’s wife, Martha, now known to be living in New York City, ever had the child. Walling dismissed the idea. He said he would have noticed if Mosher had communicated with his wife through the papers.
“My idea is that the boy may be picked up now,” he continued, confident Silleck would soon wire him from Connecticut with good news. “You see, there is no hope of reward any more than there is for fear of a conviction of the parties who may now have the child—and I think I know what I’m talking about—and he will be a burden to his keepers; of no use to them, in fact. How easy will it be for them to ‘set him afloat,’ put him out in the streets, with the knowledge that he would soon be taken up by the police as a ‘lost child’?”
Silleck telegraphed the next morning. “Nothing here; coming back.”
Back in New York, Silleck told Walling that Mrs. Russell went to visit her nephew and niece in New Britain. While in Connecticut, Silleck had traced rumors of a little boy in their company to a child who had died a month before.
“Did she say anything to you about Mosher?” Walling asked.
“No, but she said, ‘I know what you are looking after; you are looking after that boy.’”
Walling disagreed with Silleck’s summary of “Nothing here.” He and Charley’s uncle, Henry Lewis, traveled to New Britain the next day. Mrs. Russell’s son answered the door.
“You’re a queer young man not to know where your mother lived,” said Walling, referring to their earlier encounter at the lodging house. Mrs. Russell appeared once Walling demanded to speak with her. Although she refused to give straight answers about her sudden departure from New York, she identified the dead child as a relative. If the police didn’t believe her, she said, they could talk to the boy’s doctor, who also happened to be the town mayor.
Walling turned to questions about Mosher. Mrs. Russell said she might have seen his wife recently, but she didn’t remember when.
“Was it two years ago?”
“It might be.”
“Was it eight weeks ago?”
“Perhaps it was; yes, it was about that time.”
Walling asked about Mosher.
He owed me money, Mrs. Russell said.
Why would you deal with a criminal?
It is nobody’s business, she replied, if I choose to help somebody earn an honest living.
Walling found the town mayor. After confirming Russell’s story about the dead child, he and Lewis returned to New York.
Either Joseph Douglas, riddled with bullets and gasping for breath, lied about Walling’s knowledge on his deathbed, or the superintendent was only acting like a man who had no idea of Charley’s location. Henry Lewis was a successful and shrewd businessman. Chances are, he wouldn’t be easily conned into following Walling on a wild goose chase to Connecticut. However, by calling him a kidnapper of Charley Ross, he had the country believing Douglas’s dying confession—a confession that also stated, “Walling knows, and the boy will get home all right.” Eyewitnesses believed Douglas to be of sound mind at the time of his death. Walling insisted that Douglas was mistaken. If both men were being honest, then either Douglas had underestimated Walling’s knowledge or somebody had moved Charley without telling the superintendent.
If Walling was lying, then he was protecting somebody.