Headless body in tabloid city

Today the block off 55th Street and 37th Avenue in Woodside, Queens, attracts little notice. There’s a warehouse, a halal poultry shop, a car detailer. But in 1897, a vacant home on this sleepy block was at the center of a murder case that plunged New York into scandal — and America into a new era of journalism.

The afternoon of June 26, 1897 began quietly enough. On a lazy and sweltering Saturday on the Lower East Side, boys idling on the 11th Street Pier noticed something floating in the East River: a heavy bundle, tightly wrapped in red and gold diamond-patterned oilcloth. The boys figured it might be peddler’s pack, and perhaps worth something. But as they impatiently cut through rope securing it, the penknife jammed into the package and a grisly red stain appeared. Inside was a headless and legless torso — and the greatest murder case of 1897 had begun.

Initially written off by police as a med-student prank, the mystery turned darker when the coroner announced the body still contained blood and organs. That ruled out a cadaver. “The man of which this formed a part,” police announced, “was still alive 24 hours ago.”

More disturbing clues followed. The next morning, some 150 blocks away, Julius Meyer and his two sons were blueberry picking by the Harlem River when they spotted a parcel hidden in some bushes. It was an abdomen and upper legs, wrapped tightly in the same red and gold diamond oilcloth as the East River package. News of the horrific find raced across the city. Was it anarchists? A new Ripper on this side of the Atlantic? One detective opined that it was the Mafia, because the flashy oilcloth was a dead giveaway: “Sicilians love bright colors,” he explained.

Police faced a baffling crime: a murder case with no identity, no motive and no crime scene. But others saw an opportunity. A war had been brewing between William Randolph Hearst’s upstart New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. With his no-expenses spared juggernaut of high-speed presses and new color graphics, Hearst sensed an opportunity to wrest the crime of the year from the World.

“BEHEADED, CAST INTO THE RIVER” his front page screamed. Hearst hired grapplers to drag the East River for the head and splashed pictures of his can-do coverage across the Journal. Pulitzer quickly struck back, offering $500 to any reader who could solve the case. So Hearst hit back harder: he’d pay $1,000. Staid papers like the New York Times were appalled by their “yellow journalism,” but New Yorkers loved it. That summer the Evening Journal’s circulation doubled to over 500,000.