MURDER OF THE CENTURY

by Paul Collins

Broadway Books
(www.crownpublishing.com)
2011, 325 pages, $16

ISBN 978-0-307-59221-7

Click Here to Purchase

Near the turn of the 20th century, in 1897 New York City, homes and businesses are robbed, arson is committed, petty crime is afoot, newspapers fight violent battles for readership and people are murdered.

Back then, it seems murder boosted readership, and quite successfully.

In this case, readers are tuned into what is penned as the “crime of the century,” or at least it seems that way to common New Yorkers. A body is discovered by boys fishing, and it takes some time to identify the carcass, because it is decapitated.

Apparently the body is of murdered massage therapist William Guldensuppe. An oil cloth draped around the body is traced to one seamstress and apparent abortionist, Augusta Nack. When it is all said and done, and the police round up the suspects, the murderer is Nack’s “lover,” Martin Thorn.

The story revolves around the forensic sciences of the time, which is not saying much. Invariably, we may never know how or why Guldensuppe was viciously murdered, only that the powerful newspapers of the time often found themselves a few steps ahead of the detectives. The things that the Joseph Pulitzer-driven World and the William Randolph Hearst Journal would do were reckless, dangerous, preposterous and, these days, blatantly illegal. But these were the frontier days of “media,” and the reporting was pure yellow journalism at times, colorful always and full of the emotions and sentiment of a preposterous era.