A Series: County Judicial Officers
A SERIES — This is the second part of a series examining the role of the coroner, the lead officer in charge of investigating suspicious deaths for centuries in Maryland. For the first installment about the history of the coroner’s office click this link. This article examines how a murder investigation progressed in one case in 1886.
The murderously battered body of William Green, an old man living on a barge on Back Creek at the edge of Chesapeake City was discovered on March 18, 1886. Incoherent and urgently needing medical attention, people carried the insensible fellow to George Whiteoak’s home in town, where he lingered for a few days.
As news of the grisly assault spread, lawmen hurried to the desolate cabin at the edge of the marsh. First, they came in ones and twos, Town Bailiff Foard and County Constable Carpenter arriving promptly. And when word of the cruel assault traveled to Elkton, Cecil County’s entire criminal justice system, the sheriff, state’s attorney, magistrate, coroner, deputy sheriff, and more constables bolted into action.
The local officers scoured the abandoned canal boat cabin at the edge of Chesapeake City for clues. On the floor, they discovered a stonemason’s hammer covered with blood, and in a trunk the man’s revolver, its chambers fully loaded. Otherwise, the assailants left no trace of their identity, and there were no witnesses.
Working off slender leads, the officers chased down suspects, questioning a local stonemason, interrogating canal boat crews, and rounding up a few wayward types. However, it was fruitless, mystery surrounding the crime as nothing viable developed. Only the incoherent victim knew what happened.
Green lingered on his death bed until 8 a.m. Sunday, March 21, when officials sent for Coroner Perry Litzenberg. He dashed to Chesapeake City to hold an inquest upon the remains, State’s Attorney William Bratton coming down from Elkton with him.1
Murder Investigation Begins
In the hands of the Cecil County Coroner, the investigation into the violent and untimely death began that afternoon at the Whiteoak house. Chesapeake City Magistrate Christfield rounded up twelve good and lawful men to serve on the coroner’s jury, and Litzenberg swore them in. Upon their oath, the panel swore they would inquire on the part of the State of Maryland when, how, and what manner Green came to his death.
The inquest began when the jurors viewed the body in the dining room. They carefully eyeballed it for marks of violence, taking note of the wounds, before retiring to the parlor to continue the inquest. Some 30 witnesses testified and evidence was exhibited as doctors Bratton, Krasner, and Wallace conducted the postmortem in the next room. After finishing the autopsy, the physicians testified that blood on the brain and a crushed skull, a piece about the size of a quarter pressing into the brain, caused death. His jawbone was also broken, and they were satisfied that the hammer was the instrument that took him down.
Four hours after the inquest started, the jury presented the verdict. Although they were unable to connect anyone with the murder, they swore upon their oath that “William Green came to his death from compression of the brain caused by blows upon the head by a blunt instrument in the hands of persons to the jury unknown.”
This murder ruling triggered a full homicide investigation, all the elements of the county’s criminal justice system sprinting into action to pursue leads while grilling suspected assailants. However, the murder investigation grew cold, the local officers exhausting every avenue as they ran down suspects.
Pinkerton Detectives
Therefore, the Cecil County Commissioners hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. One sleuth worked the case around town, spending the entire month of April and part of May combing through tips, leads, and clues while working up suspects. Nevertheless, after a “patient investigation” of weeks, he was unable to make any viable discoveries, so an undercover agent was added to the case. In the dry town of Chesapeake City, this gumshoe started a “pear cider saloon,” covertly listening to the “class of the community who spent their time in drinking and playing cards” for clues.
This approach to criminal investigations was a waste, the Cecil Whig reasoned. “Instead of asking the governor to offer a suitable reward open to competition among professional detectives for the discovery of the criminal,” they hired two private eyes from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to work up the case with a “vengeance” at the expense of the county. One took it in hand and masqueraded in the role of a detective for quite a time in Chesapeake City, while the other worked as a “blind,” the paper remarked.
Weeks after the “miserable failure in detective work”, one of the participants in the crime confessed his guilt and an arrest of his associates followed. This big break came when Alfred T. Mannon took his son, George, to State’s Attorney Daniel Bratton. There he admitted to being one of the parties involved in murdering the “old Englishman.” He along with Paul Reed came upon a stonemason’s hammer in the road and they carried it to the desolate cabin in quest of whiskey and money, he reported.
Meanwhile, Reed had slipped out of the county and the Pinkerton man collared him near Annapolis. The detective brought him to the jail and put him in the custody of Sheriff Robert Mackey and Deputy Harvey Mackey. Both made confessions implicating each other.
Not one clue, trace, or step in the case was due to the gentleman who “mulcted” the county for the nice little sum of almost $600, doing practically nothing except to aid in defying the law in Chesapeake City and in doing police duty to bring Paul Reed from Annapolis to Elkton, the Cecil Whig noted following Mannon’s confession.2
Murder Trial
Reed waived his right to trial by jury, opting instead for a bench trial, while Mannon put his case in the hands of jurors. Owing to the great interest in the matter, Judges Stump and Thompson ordered Sheriff Mackey to summons “forty talesmen,” as the pool for jury duty.
At 11 p.m. on October 1, 1886, George Mannon, 19, walked out of the courtroom, a free man having been declared not guilty by the jury. As the foreman announced the acquittal, friends of Mannon applauded and shouted vigorously. At the time of the disruption, Judge Robinson made a remark that caused controversy. Some thought he said this verdict was an outrage on all decent people.3,4,5,6
Reed was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, Judge Stump remarking:
A more deliberately planned, premeditated, cold-blooded murder was never perpetrated in this or in another community, than that of which you stand convicted. After numerous consultations with your confederates . . . you twice walked seven miles with the deliberate purpose to murder and rob. . . . . After the second visit George Mannon was your companion. There was no hesitation then. He was possessed of the nerve that was wanting in you and Goffney. I have no doubt that he struck the blow, which deprived William Green of Life. You were present, aiding, abetting, counseling, and robbing. But you are as guilty as he. The conviction of Mannon would have added nothing and his acquittal can subtract nothing from the full measure of your guilt.7
A Wilmington newspaper, the Daily Republican, had this to say about the shocking murder verdict:
Read, it was proved, was an accessory to murder, while Mannon was the real conspirator. But Reed selected to be tried by the court and Judge Robinson adjudged him guilty. Then came Mannon’s trial and availing himself of the same privileges selected to be tried by a jury and that jury, though he was the real murderer, brought in a verdict of not guilty. Reed was an African American and Mannon was white. While there was no doubt of the guilt of Reed, there was, if such a thing could be, less doubt of the guilt of Mannon. But the latter knowing his guilt and knowing that Judge Robinson would not have spared him on account of his color, knew he would be in safe hands of a white jury, and that was his choice. This is a sad commentary on the justice of trials by jury, and if this is the way they work the sooner they are abolished the better. Governor Lloyd, however, will display good sound reason and judgment by never setting a day for Reed’s execution.8
Reed Pardoned
Under the circumstances associated with the verdict, State Senator Clinton McCullough States Attorney Daniel Bratton, and several Elkton lawyers went to Annapolis to present Governor Lloyd a petition “signed by all the officials and most of the prominent citizens of Cecil County” urging a commutation of the Reed sentence. Governor Lloyd commuted the sentence to life in prison.9,10
On De. 24, 1907 Governor Warfield pardoned Reed. He had been in the penitentiary since 1886 for the murder of William Green, also known as “Billy the Joker.”
- “Death of William Green,” Cecil Democrat, March 27, 1886[↩]
- “Something Else to Show,” Cecil Whig, Nov. 5, 1887[↩]
- “Billy the Joker,” Cecil Whig, Oct. 2, 1886.[↩]
- State of Maryland V. Paul Reed, Criminal Index 1, R.P., 394, Sept. 1886, Cecil County Clerk of the Circuit Court[↩]
- State of Maryland v. George Mannon, Criminal Index 1, Sept. 1886, 522, Cecil County Clerk of the Circuit Court[↩]
- “How Billy the Joker Was Killed” Cecil Democrat, Oct. 2, 1886.[↩]
- “The Sentence,” Midland Journal (Rising Sun), October 22, 1886[↩]
- “A Question in Cecil County,” Daily Republican, Wilmington[↩]
- “Read not likely to hang,” Cecil Whig, November 6, 1886[↩]
- “The Governor commutated the death sentence to imprisonment for life Will not be Hung,” Daily Republican, November 1, 1886[↩]