The Malley Murder Mystery
Part II
As the hot August sun continued to rise, a small crowd began to form around the body on the beach. Among those in the group was Deputy Sheriff James Peck, who recognized the girl immediately. In fact, he had seen her in the Railroad Grove at about 8:00 the previous evening, sitting on a bench with another woman and a young man with a black moustache. To Peck, she had looked bored and detached.
Now others recognized her and said that she was Jennie Cramer, the daughter of Jacob Cramer, who had a cigar making business in New Haven. Jennie’s beauty was well known; indeed she was known as “the Belle of New Haven,” which angered and aroused jealousy in her contemporaries. It was clear to everyone that Jennie Cramer turned young men’s heads wherever she went.
The body was wrapped in a flannel blanket and taken to a nearby boathouse, and a telegram was sent to New Haven, summoning Jacob Cramer to the scene, to identify his daughter’s remains. George Kelsey was sent for as well, on the idea that maybe the girl had fallen from his steamship pier and drowned.
By the time that Jacob Cramer had arrived on the scene along with his friend, Undertaker Stahl, two doctors were in attendance at the boathouse: they were Dr. Henry Painter and Dr. Durell Shepard. Dr. Painter suggested that there were enough indications that the girl hadn’t drowned, and that therefore it would be prudent to examine her. Cramer, overcome with emotion at the sight of his daughter’s body, agreed to their request.
Subsequently, Dr. Shepard performed the examination with Dr. Painter assisting. The most prominent discovery was that within 24-48 hours of Jennie’s death, someone had had their way with her, in a cruelly violent and very painful manner.
At this point, Jacob Cramer produced two letters that brought suspicion on three people, James Malley, Walter Malley, and their associate, Blanche Douglass, a “shady lady” from New York City. James and Walter Malley were two spoiled young men, and were part of the wealthy Malley family who owned New Haven’s Malley Department Store, which also happened to be New Haven’s largest taxpayer. And it was known that James had been paying great attention to Jennie Cramer for some time now.
Furthermore, James and Blanche matched Deputy Sheriff Peck’s description of the last people with whom Jennie Cramer was seen on the night of Friday, August 5. An inquest was scheduled for the following Monday, for now it was time to conduct interviews with the threesome.
To be continued