City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago by Gary Krist Page A
Authors: Gary Krist
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streetcar strike,” the paper reported. “It may last two days; it may last longer. But it’s coming.” 15
* * *
Late that night, after another unsuccessful interrogation in Captain Mueller’s office, Lieutenant Howe decided that the time had cometo push Thomas Fitzgerald to the limit. Along with two other police lieutenants and several reporters from the Tribune and the Herald and Examiner , Howe planned out an elaborate overnight program of ruses, psychological assaults, and other interrogation tactics designed to get the already sleepless and overwrought prisoner to crack. This so-called fourth-degree interrogation, described in hour-by-hour detail in a subsequent edition of the Tribune , began at midnight with five men in Fitzgerald’s cell, all of them pummeling him with questions. And for the next eight hours, police refused to ease up on him, saying that they wouldn’t let him rest unless and until he confessed to the crime they all knew he had committed.
They tried everything. They took his glasses away so he couldn’t see. They had a policeman dress up as a priest to counsel him and urge a private confession of his sins. They had another policeman pose as a relative of the missing girl and plead with him to end the family’s agony. A doctor came in to examine him (Fitzgerald complained of a weak heart) and then left, looking worried but not saying a word. Once (bizarrely) they even stood the suspect before a table covered with dozens of small plaster doll hands posed in pleading gestures. For hours on end, they shouted at him, whispered soothingly to him, invoked his own mother’s name, and slapped him when he tried to sleep. But nothing would work. Fitzgerald would just sit there grasping his head in his hands, complaining about the bright lights. “Sleep, sleep, sleep,” he moaned at one point. “I wish to sleep. Please let me alone.”
“Tell me where the body is,” one of the interrogators told him, “and you can sleep.”
“I don’t know! Honest to God, I don’t know!”
Finally, around dawn, they decided to try something they hadn’t tried before—they left Fitzgerald entirely alone. They exited the cell and went upstairs to the main floor of the station house, locking the cell behind them. Whether they put Fitzgerald in restraints beforehandis unrecorded. Presumably they did, for he was certainly a suicide risk. But he sat alone with his thoughts for some time.
At around 8 a.m., one of the reporters, Harry Romanov of the Herald and Examiner , went downstairs again and walked up to the cell. “The faint sound of tolling church bells reached the sunless cell room,” Romanov later wrote. “It was the Sabbath and by chance Fitzgerald’s 39th birthday. He was sitting in a corner of the cell with his head in his hands and elbows on his knees. He was reflecting. Now that he could have slept, sleep would not come.”
“Well?” the reporter asked. “Ready to talk?”
Fitzgerald looked up at him. “Send down Mr. Howe,” he said.
The lieutenant, exhausted by the all-night grilling, was upstairs nodding over some routine paperwork. He was visibly emotional when the reporter told him that Fitzgerald was apparently prepared to confess. More than anyone else involved in the investigation, Howe had taken an obsessive personal interest in the case, trying to befriend the prisoner and earn his trust, working long hours to extract a confession he had known for days was inevitable. And now, apparently, that confession was finally going to come. He took a moment to compose himself before rushing down to the cell.
“Lieutenant Howe,” Fitzgerald said calmly, stopping to draw a deep breath. “You’ve been the only friend I’ve had. I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but I think I’ll tell you.” He hesitated again and peered into the lieutenant’s eyes. “I’m afraid you’ll think me a horrible man.”
“No, I won’t, Fitzgerald,” Howe said. “What I’ll think is what
* * *
Late that night, after another unsuccessful interrogation in Captain Mueller’s office, Lieutenant Howe decided that the time had cometo push Thomas Fitzgerald to the limit. Along with two other police lieutenants and several reporters from the Tribune and the Herald and Examiner , Howe planned out an elaborate overnight program of ruses, psychological assaults, and other interrogation tactics designed to get the already sleepless and overwrought prisoner to crack. This so-called fourth-degree interrogation, described in hour-by-hour detail in a subsequent edition of the Tribune , began at midnight with five men in Fitzgerald’s cell, all of them pummeling him with questions. And for the next eight hours, police refused to ease up on him, saying that they wouldn’t let him rest unless and until he confessed to the crime they all knew he had committed.
They tried everything. They took his glasses away so he couldn’t see. They had a policeman dress up as a priest to counsel him and urge a private confession of his sins. They had another policeman pose as a relative of the missing girl and plead with him to end the family’s agony. A doctor came in to examine him (Fitzgerald complained of a weak heart) and then left, looking worried but not saying a word. Once (bizarrely) they even stood the suspect before a table covered with dozens of small plaster doll hands posed in pleading gestures. For hours on end, they shouted at him, whispered soothingly to him, invoked his own mother’s name, and slapped him when he tried to sleep. But nothing would work. Fitzgerald would just sit there grasping his head in his hands, complaining about the bright lights. “Sleep, sleep, sleep,” he moaned at one point. “I wish to sleep. Please let me alone.”
“Tell me where the body is,” one of the interrogators told him, “and you can sleep.”
“I don’t know! Honest to God, I don’t know!”
Finally, around dawn, they decided to try something they hadn’t tried before—they left Fitzgerald entirely alone. They exited the cell and went upstairs to the main floor of the station house, locking the cell behind them. Whether they put Fitzgerald in restraints beforehandis unrecorded. Presumably they did, for he was certainly a suicide risk. But he sat alone with his thoughts for some time.
At around 8 a.m., one of the reporters, Harry Romanov of the Herald and Examiner , went downstairs again and walked up to the cell. “The faint sound of tolling church bells reached the sunless cell room,” Romanov later wrote. “It was the Sabbath and by chance Fitzgerald’s 39th birthday. He was sitting in a corner of the cell with his head in his hands and elbows on his knees. He was reflecting. Now that he could have slept, sleep would not come.”
“Well?” the reporter asked. “Ready to talk?”
Fitzgerald looked up at him. “Send down Mr. Howe,” he said.
The lieutenant, exhausted by the all-night grilling, was upstairs nodding over some routine paperwork. He was visibly emotional when the reporter told him that Fitzgerald was apparently prepared to confess. More than anyone else involved in the investigation, Howe had taken an obsessive personal interest in the case, trying to befriend the prisoner and earn his trust, working long hours to extract a confession he had known for days was inevitable. And now, apparently, that confession was finally going to come. He took a moment to compose himself before rushing down to the cell.
“Lieutenant Howe,” Fitzgerald said calmly, stopping to draw a deep breath. “You’ve been the only friend I’ve had. I wouldn’t tell anyone else, but I think I’ll tell you.” He hesitated again and peered into the lieutenant’s eyes. “I’m afraid you’ll think me a horrible man.”
“No, I won’t, Fitzgerald,” Howe said. “What I’ll think is what
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