Who killed the beautiful cigar girl?
- May 10, 2016
- 11 min read
One unsolved murder case from New York dating back to 1838 is that of Mary Cecilia Rogers. She was also known as the Beautiful Cigar Girl or the Beautiful Seegar Girl. Miss Rogers was simply a working-class girl, but her disappearance and death proved to be a case that would change New York and newspaper reporting forever.
Mary Rogers worked at a tobacco emporium in New York City called the Anderson's Tobacco Emporium, owned by John Anderson. The tobacco shops were frequented heavily by newspapermen, but Anderson's shop was always full.
Most believe that this shop was so busy all the time due to the young, attractive Mary Rogers. It is said that many men would frequent Anderson's just for a chance to speak with (and flirt with) Mary. While working in the tobacco shop, she served famed individuals like Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, and even Washington Irving, among other clients.
In 1838, Mary mysteriously disappeared for a fortnight (two weeks). Anderson's business immediately declined. He and his clients missed her. The penny press, which had become popular at the time, increased coverage of Mary's disappearance, and this increased their circulation. A suicide note, allegedly written by Mary, surfaced and added to the drama. The police were severely criticized for how they handled the situation. Then, she suddenly reappeared, and instead of being thankful that people were concerned about her, she showed anger over the notoriety being given to such a "humble little cigar girl."
Mary worked for Anderson's cigar emporium for another year after her mysterious disappearance. In 1839, using her earnings and other money she had acquired, she was able to buy an inn for her widowed mother. Mary then left Anderson’s shop and went to work with her mother at the boarding house.
At the boarding house, Mary was once more well beloved and had many suitors. Two of the suitors were lodgers in the boarding house. They were Alfred Crommelin, a polite gentleman with excellent manners and elegant bearing, and Daniel Payne, a cork cutter, who was known to be hot-tempered and inclined to drink very heavily. Just as many young girls are today, Mary was not as inclined to the "nice guy" Alfred as she was to the "bad boy" Daniel. This displeased everyone, including Mary's mother and Crommelin, who had returned to the boarding house one evening and found Payne and Mary in “unseemly intimacies." He criticized Payne for his ungentlemanly behavior and moved from the boarding house. Before leaving for good, though, he told Mary to remember him if she should ever find herself in trouble.
In late July of 1841, Mary disappeared a second time.
According to reports, Mary arose before dawn on Sunday, July 25, 1841, and helped to prepare breakfast for the lodgers and completed various morning chores. Shortly before ten o’clock she went to Payne’s room, and she informed him that she was going to visit her aunt, Mrs. Downing, who lived fifteen minutes away. She would be traveling by omnibus. She planned on returning in the early evening, and she wished for Payne to meet her so that he might escort her safely home.
One question is... Why would she do this? A few days earlier, according to other reports, Mary had been persuaded by her mother to break off her engagement to Payne.
After her breaking her engagement, Crommelin received a note asking him to call at the boarding house. At his office, he found a second note, written on a chalk slate, and a red rose left in his keyhole, allegedly from Mary. Even though he had been interested in Mary, Crommelin did not go to or contact the boarding house as requested.
Now on July 25th, Payne kept himself busy by visiting his brother, a market, a tavern, and then an eating house before going home to take a long nap. He arose in the evening and went to meet Mary. It was only when he went to the omnibus to meet her that he realized the omnibus did not run on Sunday. She did not arrive (since the omnibus didn't run) and he allegedly decided Mary must spend the night at her aunt’s.
The following morning, Mrs. Rogers was upset that Mary had not returned home the night before. Payne was not worried and went to work.
At lunchtime, Payne came back to the boardinghouse and found Mary's mother more worried and Mary still not at home. He decided to go to the aunt’s house, where he found out that Mary had never arrived there—and the aunt had not even expected her. At this, he posted an ad in the paper giving Mary’s full description and then returned to the boarding house.
On Tuesday, Payne went looking around for Mary. He inquired in several locations and questioned various individuals.
Crommelin became aware of Mary’s disappearance on Wednesday, when he was shown the missing person’s report that Payne had put in the paper. He hurried to the boarding house, where he found Phoebe (Mary's mother), glassy-eyed and in a state of mourning, and Payne standing at her side. Crommelin then began a search of his own, retracing the steps Payne had taken the day before, going to Hoboken and then to Elysian Fields. While he was searching in Hoboken, a body was found floating in the river. Two men in a rowboat towed it to land, and the body was pulled ashore. As her face was unable to be used due to discoloration and from being in the water, to identify her, he ripped open a portion of her sleeve and examined the hair on her arm. This, evidently providing ample proof, he declared it to be Mary Rogers.
It was a hot July day, and the condition of the remains threatened to deteriorate further in the heat. When the justice of the peace arrived, the body was moved to a nearby building where an autopsy was performed by Dr. Richard H. Cook, the New Jersey coroner. Her face was bruised. She had clearly been beaten, and there was no foam in her mouth or lungs, and it was determined that she had not drowned. On her neck was deep bruising in the shape and approximate size of a man’s hand. He found that a piece of lace was tied so tightly around her throat that it had embedded itself into her skin. He had not so much as seen it but felt the knot, which was situated just behind her ear. The undergarments of her clothes were found in disarray, and, upon closer examination, he found evidence of bruising and abrasions in the “feminine region." Her arms had been positioned as if her wrists had been tied together, and the abrasions caused by the tethers seemed to indicate she had tried to raise her hands to her mouth. A loop of linen was found tied loosely about her neck, as if it had been used as a sort of gag. These strips had been torn from her own clothes, which matched precisely the description of those last seen upon Mary Rogers. A foot-wide strip of fabric had been torn from her petticoat and wrapped around the body to form a sort of hitch to aid in the carrying of the corpse. Her hat had been tied on her head with a sailor’s knot, rather than the typical knot tied by a lady, suggesting it had been replaced by her assailant or someone connected with the crime before her body was thrown in the river. He concluded she had been raped by no fewer than three assailants.
About the time the autopsy began, one of the men, H.G. Luther, who had pulled the body from the water, arrived at Mrs. Roger’s home to deliver the news. Payne was there. They took the news with apparent indifference. The lack of emotion was curious to Luther.
Payne took no action that night. Many thought that he might have gone to Hoboken with a hope of finding that Crommelin had been mistaken, but he did not. He stayed at home with Mrs. Rogers.
It took time for the officials of New Jersey and New York to decide who would take responsibility for investigating the death of Mary Rogers, and in the meantime, rumors and speculations began to fly.
Some believed Mary had fallen into the hands of one of the many notorious gangs that frequented the Hoboken area. Others were certain it was one of her jilted lovers. Some felt it wasn’t Mary at all, supported by the belief that a body that was in the water for no more than three days could not have decomposed to such an extent or even risen to the surface by that time.
Of course Payne and Crommelin were suspects. Payne’s alibi was solid. He had been with his brother, had frequented taverns and eating places, and witnesses could attest to his being there. Crommelin, too, was a suspect, but as he had been so outspoken and proactive in finding her and then in discovering the killer, it seemed impossible it could be him.
On the 25th of August, as two boys were hunting for sassafras bark in a thicket in the woods near Weehawken, some articles of clothing were found. Among them was a petticoat, an umbrella, a silk scarf, and a handkerchief with M.R. embroidered upon it. The boys took the articles to their mother, Frederica Loss, the owner of a nearby tavern, who put them away and then, a day later, took them to the police. Her tavern was very near and often frequented by those who visited the Elysian fields. Mrs. Loss told the police that a young woman of Mary’s description had been seen at her establishment. She had been accompanied by a young man of ‘swarthy complexion' and went on to describe Mary’s attire and appearance exactly. She told police that a short time after the couple left, she heard screams from the thicket. She thought it was her son, whom she had sent out again, but he had returned a short time later unharmed.
It was suggested by some that Mrs. Loss had actually planted the clothing articles in the thicket. Whether this is true or not, no one will ever know, but there were many who came to get a glimpse of the place for themselves, and thus she had increased prosperity and notoriety from it. If the path to the tavern was so well traveled as to give Mrs. Loss a steady flow of customers from Elysian Fields, how was it possible the articles were never seen before? Many also did not think that the thicket was used as much as Loss had indicated, as it was overgrown --so much so that a person could only enter it if they were on hands and knees. There were many footprints about; the clothing found had been caught on brambles, had mildewed, and had been overgrown with grass.
At ten o’clock on October 7, Payne arrived at a tavern near the thicket, where he ordered a drink and announced, “I’m the man that was promised to Mary Rogers." I’m a man in a great deal of trouble.” He left the tavern and went to the thicket with a bottle of laudanum in hand. He drank the laudanum and crushed the bottle against a rock. Two hours later he was found dead with a note in his pocket. “To the world—here I am on the spot; God forgive me for my misfortune in my misspent time.” There was also a bundle of papers in his pocket. What they contained was never revealed. At the time, the silence of the investigators aroused a great deal of speculation.
Edgar Allen Poe was eager for the same success he had experienced with The Murders in the Rue Morgue. He had met the famous cigar girl and decided to use her story as the basis for one of his next short stories. Poe's story character, C. Auguste Dupin, was called into action again, and this time, he would perform the feat of solving the mystery from his armchair and by using only the newspapers for his source.
Poe’s manuscript was some 20,000 words in length, and so it was published in three parts.
Poe managed to convince his readers that the murderer had acted alone. Why else would he need the aid of the ‘hitch’ found tied around Marie’s waist? He also connected Mary’s first disappearance with her second, suggesting that the sailor with whom she had meant to elope the first time had returned from sea. He went on to suggest that perhaps a falling out had occurred, and the romance ended, instead, in tragedy.
The third part of Poe's story was to “indicate the assassin.” The third part had not yet been published when the New York Tribune published headlines that read “THE MARY ROGERS MYSTERY EXPLAINED.” The new evidence had arisen that would not fit with Poe's conclusions, so he revised the third part to sort of indicate he knew the solution all along. He ends by telling his reader that Dupin has solved the mystery, that all will soon know it, but for the sake of justice and respect for the police, he will leave them to tell the tale. Not the answer everyone was looking to have him tell.
Some years later he would attempt his solution to the crime with what was soon to be the commonly accepted one. He added passages and footnotes that showed a direct relation to Mary Rogers. He also added that he might have been better prepared to solve the mystery had he been in New York and not had to rely on the papers.
So what was the evidence?
On November 1, 1842, police arrived at Nick Moore’s Tavern in Weehawken to discover that Mrs. Loss had been accidentally shot by one of her sons, who was later heard to remark, “The great secret will come out.” What was that secret? It may have been a botched abortion. It appeared that she may have been hiding the fact that Mary had come to Los for an abortion, which was botched, and she died.
It seemed Mrs. Loss had been under the attention of the investigative police in connection with a famous abortionist named Madame Restell, whose services were advertised in huge, prepaid advertisements published on the back of every paper in town. Her money was not spent at the papers alone, but to the police as well, who arrested her on several occasions but always released her again.
Reportedly, she was the best abortionist, but Madam Restell was rather expensive. Who did you go to if you could not afford her? She would refer you to some of the "other" houses in the city, those who charged less but were less proficient.
Mary’s body was not the first to be pulled from the Hudson River, merely the most famous. Giving birth alone came with incredible risks. Add to that poisons and unsanitized instruments, and the mortality rate was astounding. Mary’s mother seemed to have known that when Mary left, she might die. It would explain her behavior upon the news that Mary’s body had been found. Had an abortion been a success, Mary would have returned home by that time. It also explains why Mary went to Crommelin. It was said she went to him to exchange a boarder’s IOU for a sum of some fifty dollars. If Payne were the father, it might explain his apparent guilt at her death. It might explain why Crommelin was hesitant to help her. Perhaps his not giving her the money was the reason she went to Mrs. Loss rather than Madame Restell.
As it turned out, Mr. Anderson did in fact lend Mary some money that day.
Had she gone to have the abortion? If she had died at the hands of an abortionist, what need had they to strangle her? Why was she so violently beaten? Was it to disguise what had really happened? Had she met Payne and refused to marry him? Had he killed her? Had she died under Mrs. Loss’s roof after all? Had Mary had the abortion and been on the way home, or had she been on the way to get an abortion and somehow been attacked by an unknown person? The Mystery of Mary Rogers remains a mystery.
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