Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves

"Mrs. Creedon:

Your daughter will die just like Florence McDonnell.

The Police will never know who murdered both.

I will give your house the once-over until I see how easy it will be for me.

signed - THE UNKNOWN"

Daily News photo-
June 21, 1932

When the body of 5-year-old Florence McDonnell had been found on February 4, 1932 there was fleeting but genuine suspicion that the intended target might have been Nora Creedon's granddaughter.

An attack on Mrs. Creedon's daughter would have been payback from the band of gypsies she had recently ejected from a store she'd leased to them. The address was 232-A Ralph Avenue, Brooklyn. It was in the cellar of that building that Florence's body was found. The Creedons lived next door to the McDonnell family on Chauncey Street. Chauncey Street is only 75 feet from the store's location. Florence had been known to play with some of the gypsy children and she was similar in appearance to the young Creedon girl. Armed with significant circumstantial evidence, police quickly rounded up and questioned dozens of gypsies. This was widely reported in the newspapers.

Deputy Chief Inspector Vincent J. Sweeney told the press that he was not inclined to continue with this line of inquiry - "I have heard of gypsies stealing and kidnaping but in my experience I cannot recall a case where they committed murder."

The day of Florence's funeral, February 8th, police arrested and detained Fred Hicks, the last man seen with Florence. John Hugo, a Salvation Army chaplain, told police that he had seen Hicks and Florence together the afternoon of her disappearance (February 3rd) and he had even overheard Hicks promising to buy Florence some candy. Two candy wrappers were found at the crime scene.

Fred Hicks offered up an alibi but his it was his word against that of a Salvation Army chaplain so he was held until police had a chance to confirm his story. Why, yes Fred Hicks had been purchasing insurance policies that day and two agents backed him up and produced the paperwork as evidence.

Daily News photo -
February 12, 1932

Now it was John Hugo's turn in the hot seat. John Hugo ultimately admitted to police that he was just seeking some attention from the newspapers when he pointed at Fred Hicks and made him the prime suspect in a murder case. Hugo also admitted that his judgment that day might have been affected by an morning spent in City Hall Park, Manhattan drinking "smoke," which is a combination of denatured alcohol and water.  Police discovered Hugo had previously been an inmate at Dannemora Hospital for the Criminally Insane as well as Bellevue. John Hugo had a criminal record dating back to 1911 (mostly for theft but there was a 1927 arrest for assault and battery) and Hugo was an army deserter.  He was thrice married and inserting himself into a police investigation was nothing new for John Hugo. In 1917, while incarcerated on a burglary charge, he claimed to have knowledge concerning the murder of Ruth Cruger. This was, he admitted, a ruse to get out of prison; he actually knew nothing about that crime. John Hugo was held without bail, as a potential material witness but since he had witnessed nothing and was not credible, I imagine the police just wanted to punish him in some way for hindering the investigation with false information. Hugo's own wife, Zilla McBane Hugo, was one of the first to call him a liar. She, John Hugo and their landlady were discussing the McDonnell murder the first day news of it appears in the papers. When they read about the candy wrappers being found at the scene, John Hugo said, "I wonder if the man who took her there offered her candy?" And so it began.... The Salvation Army quickly distanced themselves from John Hugo and rightly so. Hugo had only signed up with the Salvation Army shortly before Christmas and his job was not that of chaplain but he was selling "War Cry," the official publication of the Salvation Army and Hugo had not yet turned in any of the money he collected while performing this task.

Florence had been strangled to death with a length of wire, wrapped multiple times around her throat. Her body seemed arranged and her head was resting on a football. Early medical examinations indicated she had not been raped. Concrete behind the building was busted and what looked like a too shallow grave had been dug in the yard behind the building but abandoned before being used. A baby carriage was placed over the three foot long hole.

Police arrested an additional 5 suspects at Florence's funeral on February 8th. One hundred police investigators were assigned to this case.

Every known degenerate was considered and interrogated. While this did result in arrests for other unrelated sexual assaults, it wasn't until the above anonymous letter was received by Mrs. Creedon several days after the crime that Detective Thomas Cavanagh had something solid to investigate in the McDonnell case.

Detective Cavanagh felt the handwriting was that of an immature individual; also he believed the placement of Florence's body indicated regret on the part of the killer. Cavanagh made photostats of the threatening letter and visited local schools hoping someone would recognize it.

Daily News photo -
July 21, 1932

Miss Helen T. Daily, principal of P.S. 70, thought the handwriting was similar to that of 6th grader Robert Smalls, aged 14. Attendance records reveal that Robert was absent from school the day that Florence was murdered. P.S. 70 is also the school Florence attended.

Robert's teacher dictated lessons that contained several of the words from the threatening letter and a comparison was made. A handwriting expert declared a match.

Detective Cavanagh interviewed Robert's friends and ultimately heard something very damning from 15-year-old Justin James, who they caught up with at the Juvenile Reformatory on Randall's Island. Justin told police that he was with Robert Smalls on the afternoon of February 3rd and when Robert saw Florence he said "There goes that little snitch that got me in trouble at school. I'll fix her. You wait here for me." According to Justin, Robert followed Florence into the Ralph Avenue location and returned 20 minutes later saying only, "I only went in there to look for a bike"

Shortly after that supposed incident, on February 3rd, a truant office scooped up both Justin James and Robert Smalls. Smalls was delivered to his grandparents, who promptly ordered Robert to return to school. James was transported back to Randall's Island, from where he'd escaped.

On February 16th, Detective Cavanagh brought Robert in for questioning. Smalls denied writing the letter and killing Florence. Apparently, at one point Smalls did admit to killing Florence but he later claimed it was all a joke and he was released.

On February 19th the police rearrested Smalls and arranged for a Randall's Island reunion of Justin and Robert, hoping that when confronted by the testimony of his friend Robert would confess. However, Justin changed his story and claimed he'd never implicated Robert Smalls.

Back at the station house, after hours of questioning, Robert Smalls finally confessed to killing Florence by saying "If you want to call it that. I just put my hands on her and she fainted like in my arms." Robert confirmed Florence had "snitched" on him to school authorities on a day he'd played hookey and that he held a grudge. Robert claimed he had followed Florence into the house on Ralph Avenue, carried her into the cellar, she fainted and he wrapped the wire around Florence's neck to scare her but didn't think he'd made it so tight as to kill her. It wasn't until in school the next day that he heard she was dead.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle photo -
February 21, 1932

District Attorney William F.X. Geoghan wasn't entirely convinced of Robert's guilt but proceeded anyway because he had a signed confession. Robert Smalls would later retract this confession. Robert didn't claim abuse by the police but said simply that he'd thought admitting to the crime would somehow help him.

Having been declared sane by two alienists, Robert Smalls was scheduled to stand trial on a charge of first degree murder. This would have been the first time a defendant under the age of 16 had come before the court on a capital charge. 

On June 20, 1932, it was reported that a Grand Jury's findings had resulted in the charges being reduced to 2nd degree murder and the Court of Appeals ruled that a juvenile charged with a felony can only be tried if the penalty is death or life imprisonment. The murder indictment against Robert Smalls was thrown out and the case was to be referred to the Children's Court. 

One month later, armed only with circumstantial evidence and no confession, District Attorney Ralph K. Jacobs was still having trouble pursuing the murder charge against Robert Smalls so on July 20, 1932, Children's Court Justice Peter B. Hanson ordered the charges against Smalls be dismissed because to "keep the petition hanging over this boy's head is not in keeping with the theory of this court."

Pinterest photo of random
gumball slot machine

Not wanting Robert Smalls to go completely unpunished, the District Attorney's office did what they could and managed to convict Robert as a juvenile delinquent and parole violator.

It seems that prior to Robert being arrested in February 1932 for murder, he had already two arrests under his belt. Robert had been caught breaking in to gumball slot machines then released on probation in December 1931 but he violated the terms of the parole in January 1932 by stealing a bicycle. It was for these offenses that Robert was sent to the House of Refuge (a juvenile reformatory).

Now here's the thing - what if Robert Smalls really hadn't killed Florence McDonnell?

There were a rash of rapes and murders of young girls around that time and in that area of Brooklyn, many of which went unsolved. I'm going to focus briefly on 5 of them.

-Sarah Burroughs/Burrows (aged 10) on May 7, 1931

-Florence McDonnell (aged 5) on February 3, 1932 (*)

-Helen Sterler (aged 6) on January 5, 1933

-Barbara Wiles (aged 6) on March 28, 1933

and finally 

-Paula Magagna (aged 8) on July 31, 1937

I used Google Maps to pinpoint the string of murders



Sandwiched in between these homicides were numerous

sexual assaults on children who fit the type but often the assailant was interrupted or scared off so  - who's to say the body count wouldn't have been higher. Of course, it would ridiculously naïve of me not to consider there were multiple men at work during this time period.

I'd be inclined to remove Sarah from this list because, at age 10, she was slightly older than the other victims and she was the only non-white in the group however, every other aspect of the crime fits the pattern.

Sarah was sent to the grocery prior to school to make a small purchase and she never returned. Her body was found in the basement of her own building. She'd been brutally raped, strangled and her body tossed in a coal bin. She'd been gone a mere 30 minutes before the alarm had been sounded and folks began looking for her.

Daily News photo -
November 5, 1931

All of these attacks happened in a relatively small section of Brooklyn. 

All of the girls were raped. (*Although the earlier reports on Florence's postmortem didn't indicate rape, an article in the February 12, 1950 edition of The Brooklyn Eagle says she was.) 

All of the murders occurred in cellars or basements where the victims were lured rather than forced, all of the girls were garroted with lengths of rope or wire that the police believe the killer found at the locations.

The bodies were either found in coal bins or draped across something. Also a baby carriage figured prominently in at least three of the crime scenes although nobody really knows what the significance of this is; it could simply be coincidence because a cellar is a good place to store a baby carriage that you're no longer using.
On January 25, 1933 Helen Sterler had been reported missing by her parents as nighttime was approaching. Neighborhood shopkeepers recalled seeing Helen coming in with pennies that afternoon and making purchases. It struck them as odd because they knew the child well enough to know she didn't usually have money. Shortly after 11PM her body was found in the basement 1013 DeKalb Avenue. This was 5 doors away from her home and less than a mile away from where Florence's body had been found the year before.

Daily News photo - January 26, 1933

Daily News photo -
February 11, 1950

Barbara Wiles had been strangled with her own jump rope in the basement of the 6-family apartment building. On the morning of Wednesday, March 29, 1933, Barbara's unemployed father Harold Wiles walked two blocks to the Police Station to collect a bag of coal for the family. Anna Wiles asked her daughter to pop down into the cellar to fetch a baby carriage. Fifteen minutes later, Anna went down the cellar looking for Barbara. Surely, it shouldn't take this long; their apartment was on the first floor. In the dim light of the basement Anna saw Barbara's body - the jump rope wrapped around her throat and tied tight with a long iron spike. A burlap sack lay nearby. Police suspected the killer might have intended to conceal Barbara's body in it. An ambulance raced to the scene and though some sign of life was detected she would not be resuscitated. Her murder again occurred within that one mile radius. Police rushed to investigate and rounded up suspects. There were also no shortage of kooks confessing then recanting. Assorted degenerates were questioned and released when their alibis checked out. Police were never able to find Barbara's killer.

Daily News photo-Jan 28, 1933

It's interesting to note Price

demonstrating how he strangled Helen

since the autopsy showed she was  garroted.

Of the first four listed, only Helen Sterler's death resulted in an arrest and conviction. Lloyd Price, who had two previous convictions for molesting small boys, was described as feeble-minded and while he claimed police beat a confession out of him the jury had not trouble finding him guilty. Police also liked Price for having committed the two earlier crimes (Borroughs and McDonnell) because they were so similar to the murder of Helen Sterler but they had no evidence with which to definitively link him to those deaths. He was put to death in the electric chair on March 1, 1934.

On August 3, 1937, rooming house manager Mrs. Miriam Satakin walked in on Lawrence Marks and an 8-year-old girl. Marks tried to explain away the situation but Mrs. Satakin didn't believe him for a minute. She removed the girl from the room and called police.

Mrs. Satakin had a very good reason to be so suspicious because she had lived at 1009 DeKalb Avenue in 1933 and her son Arnold had been a playmate of murder victim Helen Sterler.
By the time police arrived on the scene Lawrence Marks had disappeared. He returned 4 days later but Mrs. Satakin had been waiting for him. She quickly called police and he was apprehended. She then learned that Marks was a known sex offender with convictions for sexual assault going back to 1914.

Daily News photo -
October 24, 1937

Daily News photo -
August 9, 1937

On August 8th 1937, after 13 hours of interrogation, Lawrence Marks confessed to killing Paula Magagna but refused to admit any connection to either Florence McDonnell or Barbara Wiles. Marks accompanied police back to scene of the crime and explained how he had met Paula Magagna at the subway station at DeKalb and Wyckoff Avenues. He asked her where she lived and if she knew where the gas meters for her house were. Paula answered yes and took him to the cellar. Once inside the cellar Marks blocked Paula's exit, he strangled her with a length of rope he had found in the cellar, raped then killed her and took the trolley home. According to Marks, he was suffering from a guilty conscious afterwards and contemplated turning himself in to police. Instead he lured another child into his room.
Good thing Mrs. Satakin was on the ball.

Daily News photo -
August 9, 1937 

Mrs. Ida Marks, wife of the accused, apparently knew about his criminal past, would dutifully visit him in prison and long for his release. She claims that in 25 years of marriage they only lived together for perhaps 1 solid year without interruption. And by interruption, she obviously means his multiple incarcerations. She would die in the hallway of her rooming house at 809-A Greene Avenue She was 47-years-old. Lawrence Marks, aged 49-years-old, died in the electric chair at Sing Sing on June 2, 1938.



If you look at the criminal history of Lawrence Marks, as printed in the August 9, 1937 edition of The Daily News, it seems as though he might have been at liberty for all of the murders. 

reprinted from Daily News -
August 9, 1937

Marks was incarcerated 1914-1926 on a morals charge. In 1927, he was sentenced to 6 months to 3 years for impairing the morals of a minor. Marks had violated his parole some time in 1933 and returned to prison but was released from Sing Sing on June 13, 1937.

I would be remiss if I didn't pass along the fact that in February 1950, Anna Wiles came forward to publicly accuse her recently deceased father Charles Gunkel of murdering her daughter/his granddaughter Barbara Wiles. She claimed to have been made aware of his guilt around the time of Barbara's funeral, in 1933, but was sworn to secrecy by her mother Louise, who died in 1939. Now with both of her parents dead and her mother and daughter each appearing to her in dreams, Anna felt the time was right to tell the police the truth and as further evidence of divine intervention - Detective Godfrey Delano of the Ralph Avenue precinct called upon her one afternoon to follow up on the cold case. Anna finally told police something she should have told them at the time - that her father had visited their home on the day of Barbara's death, he had deviant sexual leanings and that his own wife suspected him of the crime.



Daily News photo -
February 2, 1950

Her claims were immediately disputed by her three siblings.

I can see no further police or legal action taken despite the DA's office announcing they would be reopening the cases of Florence McDonnell and Sarah Burrows in light of this new testimony.