William J. Sharkey’s Not-so-great Escape

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm Tracy ve Wilson. So this was going to be an episode about several escaped criminals that have never been found, you know, one of our little Schmorgasbordi popoury episodes. Yeah, we have a six Impossibles on jail breaks from a few years ago. Yeah, and this was kind of similar. But then I got to reading about William J. Sharky's case, and then I was like, well, this is going to be a whole thing on its own, because it's got some fun drama. Also, frankly, I'm in the middle of a lot of travel and I wanted to do something that would be really fun and engaging that I didn't have to like learn telemetry or something for and I could talk about, you know, crime without having to do that. So for Contextilliam J. Sharky was a pickpocket, a con man, a politician, and a murderer, although whether or not that murder was an accident became the question at the center of a case that gripped New York for months, and then he vanished sort of. So In eighteen seventy nine, The Sun newspaper of New York described William J. Sharky this way quote. Sharky was the son of respected residents of the ninth Ward, but he went astray early in life, and after a brilliantly notorious career of the crooked sort, bloomed out into a successful political adventurer. He was a power in the eighth Ward primaries, had a club named after him, and belonged to every influential political organization in the fifth Congressional district. Sharky, who was born sometime in the late eighteen forties, got into theft at an early age, and he actually became known as an expert pickpocket, specializing in stealing fine jewelry right off of people as they were wearing it. He got arrested after stealing a pocketbook, but that didn't sway him from a life as a career criminal. And then he got involved with Tammany Hall as William Boss Tweed was rising to power, and Sharky rose right along with him. As the New York Times put it, quote, the Tammany Ring was seeking a suitable servant in the eighth Ward and Sharky was selected as the man, but eventually Sharki fell out of favor as a politician. There is some indication that Tweed used him as a pawn in eighth Ward politics until his defeat when running for Assistant Alderman, and then he was kind of discarded and went back to his criminal enterprises. In eighteen seventy two, Sharki arrived in Buffalo. He wanted to drum up a gambling opportunity. He started a game called Pharaoh Bank. Faraoh Bank, sometimes just called Pharaoh is a card game that was hugely popular in Europe and the United States at the time. It's one of the oldest card games intended for gambling. In this game, the player bets against the house or bank, and Sharky lost a lot of money in Buffalo, a reported four thousand dollars over the course of just five days. Yeah, Pharaoh Bank is kind of interesting to me. It's spelled Faro. It is meant to sound like Pharaoh, as in Egyptian Pharaoh, because apparently the French cards originally used for it had Egyptian iconography on them. I'm just fascinated by the way card games come and go. That one fell out of favor, like in the early nineteen twenties, kind of never to return again in terms of its popularity in the US until now when people hear about it on our podcast and stage a revival, now a revival of Pharaoh. After this big series of losses in Buffalo, though, Sharky went back to New York City, and although he had lost a lot of money in Buffalo, he still thought gambling offered plenty of opportunity, and he actually got involved in the startup of another game of Pharaoh Bank in Buffalo, this time through a friend and associate of him. So Sharki gave a man named Robert Dunn six hundred dollars to start up and run the new Pharaoh game, hoping that this one would be more successful and would generate some cash. Dunn theoretically knew a lot about money. He worked at the New York City Controller's office. But Don's Pharaoh operation went the same way as Sharky's earlier effort. He lost the six hundred dollars seed money which he had promised to repay Sharky, and lost some more money. Besides that, the two men met up again at a funeral of an associate named James Riley on September first, eighteen seventy two, and after the funeral, they went to a saloon on Hudson Street called the Place They had a drink. Arki demanded repayment of his money, and when done could not produce that money, Sharky shot and killed him. Sharky just left the place. He was caught and arrested a few hours later at a private residence and charged with first degree murder. It was almost ten months before Sharky's trial began in June of the following year, and when the court date finally arrived, Sharky's three brothers were in attendance, as was Robert Dunn's widow. Although there were two eyewitnesses willing to testify that they had seen William Sharky purposely shoot Done in the chest at short range, the defense's story was that it had all been an accident, and as the testimony played out, it's not that different from one side to the other. The only major difference that keeps coming up is kind of the perception of intent. Per the opening statement on June twentieth, which was made by one of the defense attorneys, Charles Brooke, Sharky was to another friend, and when he leaned forward with his arm on the counter as he was showing quote what he would have done for the deceased, the gun accidentally discharged. Seems safe to assume that if he was kind of waving a gun around talking about what he was willing to do for Done, that still does not characterize Sharky in an especially favorable light. This is not a safe way to handle a firearm, or to make your point right, This was the foundation of the case, though the defense also stated that Sharky did not believe the shooting had resulted in a serious wound and that's why he had left. So, as I hinted to you a moment ago, the testimony of witnesses on both sides of this case kind of paint pictures that are not identical to either the prosecution or the defense's version of the story. They sort of fall in shades in between. The one that most closely met their account was given by a man named William Welsh, and according to his version, when he got to the saloon at about eight pm, Sharky was pacing around, waving a pistol and calling Done names. Welsh stated that he said to Sharky, quote, Billy, put that away. It might go off and shoot somebody. But Sharky continued to argue with Dunn, and Welsh once again urged him to put the gun down, saying, quote, Billy, don't hold the pistol that way, it might go off. And then Sharky asked Welsh if he was willing to make good on Dunn's debts, to which Welsh said no. This is when Sharky supposedly made that statement about what he was willing to do for Don. If that sounded weird to you, this will be illustrative. He told Welsh, quote there was a time I would go into a butcher's shop and let a butcher take a cleaver and cut that arm off for that son of a bee. That is actually exactly how the paper wrote it up, which I find amusing. And then he attempted to illustrate that loyalty and devotion he had for in their friendship at that point by kind of gesturing to his arm. And it was as he said that that the gun went off. And according to Well, Sharky was not looking at done when this happened. This witness would have really helped Sharki's case, had it not been for the fact that on cross examination it became apparent that he may have attempted to tamper with the prosecution's main witnesses in the case. They were named Betts and Klein. When he was asked directly if he had offered Bets and Kline money not to testify, Welsh refused to answer. Yeah, the court date had actually been initially set to start earlier than it did, and those two witnesses had kind of gotten cold feet for a minute, and so it had had to be postponed, and they think that Welsh might have been the problem there. But even one of the witnesses for the prosecution, a local from the neighborhood who often drank at the place, more or less supported that accidental discharge story. He backed up the account that Sharky was telling people he would have had a hand cut off for Doune at one time in their friendship. This witness, William Highly, also indicated that Sharky was not looking at done when the gun went off, but was looking down at his own arm as he dropped the hand down dramatically to demonstrate his point. On cross examination, Highly also added that Sharky appeared to be intoxicated when the shooting took place. There was also testimony from other bar patrons that Sharky had loudly said that Robert Dunn had made fifteen hundred dollars in his gambling set up, so he could easily afford to pay Sharky back if you wanted to, but Dunn denied that he had been successful with Pharaoh. One particularly damning piece of testimony was that Sharky had said, quote, make good for yourself. There's only two feet between us, so that's a clear threat. According to one witness, He also challenged Done to a pistol duel, which was something that Done did not want to do. One reason that these various testimonies all offer different accounts of things that were said and done. It's just they witnessed different phases of this altercation when it came down to the moment that Done was shot. There's actually a lot of corroboration, and several different people all said that they had known both men for years, that they had a good friendship, and often according to the coverage of the trial that was published in the New York Times, quote we're in the habit of joking and larking together. Yeah, it's unclear if they're trying to hint like, oh, they got into fights like this from time to time and that was the dynamic of their friendship, or if they're trying to hint that people were thinking they may not be as angry as they appeared in some points in time. This may have come up as an issue because some people were asking questions about why did no one try to stop this? The barkeep Henry Kleine, one of those witnesses we mentioned earlier, gave what reads as the clearest explanation in my opinion, of this accidental firing and what exactly Sharki was doing in the moments leading up to it. So, according to Kline, Sharky was holding the pistol in his right hand, and with that hand as he talked about his willingness to lose a hand or arm for Robert Dunn, he was making what seemed like a chopping motion repeatedly to his left arm, and on the third time he dropped his hand to make this chop the gun went off. The other witness that we mentioned earlier, John Dee Betts, completely backed up Klein's version of events. Last police officer testified about how he learned of the shooting and the word had reached the police station that Sharki was willing to give himself up. The closing remarks from the defense where that it was clear that this had been an accident and that Sharky had no actual intention to shoot Doun. The prosecution felt as though the behavior Sharky had exhibited was in line with an intent to kill. The prosecution also tried to throw additional blame on the other patrons of the saloon for not doing more to end Sharki's tirade while he was brandishing a gun, something I feel is understandable considering that he was brandishing a gun. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of like uh in the newspaper accounts, there's a lot of intimation of like, you guys all clearly knew this guy, why didn't you disarm him? And it's like he's angry and he has a gun and a waven a gun around. We are going to talk about what happened with the jury after we pause for a sponsor break. As the jury was given instructions on what would qualify as murder in the first degree, versus finding Sharky guilty of manslaughter. One of the notes to them was actually about the intoxication aspect of the defendant's demeanor on the night of the murder. The judge said, quote, voluntary intoxication can furnish no excuse or immunity to crimes, and so long as the offender is capable of conceiving a design, he will be presumed, in the absence of contrary proofs, to have intended the natural consequences of his own acts. Throughout all of this, all of the closing remarks and discussion and instructions to the jury, The New York Times described Sharky's behavior this way, quote the prisoner was bent forward during the delivery of the recorder's address and listened breathlessly to every word, his face occasionally twitching nervously as allusions were made to his character and career. The jury deliberated for forty minutes. During that time, they asked to have Sharky's gun brought to the room for examination, but the defense objected. The jury returned to the courtroom, but it was not to deliver a verdict. They had questions about the gun. They wanted quote to know how hard it went off. This actually became an issue of debate in the courtroom. Sharky's defense attorneys argued that the gun had been sitting in evidence for ten months, there was no way to guarantee that it was in the same condition as it had been the night that it fired the fatal shot into Dunn's chest. The prosecution thought the jury should get to handle the pistol, but the judge agreed with the defense. The jury once again retired from the courtroom to deliberate. After another fifty minutes, the jury returned. William Sharky was found guilty of murder in the first degree, with a recommendation for mercy in sentencing. Sharky's defense he wanted the jury to be asked why they had added that recommendation for a merciful sentence. It seemed like the defense team was trying to see if the jury was actually not fully convinced of intent, which would give the defense some ammunition to pursue a mistrial or fuel an appeal in the case. But this request, after much deliberation in the court room, was denied. The defense noted that it was going to start immediately pursuing a new trial on the ground of quote misdirection of the jury by the court. When the press approached the jury foreman to ask about the unusual request for mercy for the defendant, the foreman stated that the jury had taken an oath quote not to divulge what took place in the jury room. Another juror stated that even if the judge had asked them to explain, they would not because of those oaths to one another. Sharky had worked hard to seem indifferent publicly, but according to press accounts, when he got back to his cell at the Tombs, he quote broke down completely. He had very clearly not expected to be found guilty of first degree murder. Aside from his closest friends and family and his lawyers, Sharky refused to speak to anyone that was very unlike him. He often was perfectly happy to socialize with the press and any other visitors. But in the meantime, his defense did file emotion for a new trial, but that motion was denied, and their primary argument was based on something that the judge had told the jury that there was no question that Sharky had killed done and this wasn't really a matter of question Sharky and his defense team had been operating with this as an established truth, and their case had been focused on establishing the shooting as accidental. But the claim in the motion for a new trial was that in stating explicitly to the jury that there was no question as to whether Sharki had killed done, the judge udge had taken away the option of the jury to acquit, and Sharki's council had stated in his brief that quote, in felonies, the prisoner has no power to admit anything. But the judge stated later at sentencing quote, I am not furnished with any case in support of this proposition, and all the clementary books and decisions go the other way. On July third, the sentence was handed down. Leading up to the announcement, Sharki was reportedly in good spirits. He seemed to have believed that the jury's request for mercy and his sentencing would be honored. The New York Times reported that he was joking and chatting with the court staff while they waited for the judge and the lawyers to get there, but then once the sentence was read, things got serious. In a hurry. Regarding that recommendation of mercy. The judge's statement was this quote. This recommendation was not and cannot be made a legal part of the verdict. The latter can only be guilty or not guilty. Even had the jurors presented affidavit's explanatory of the technical verdict of guilty, I am of the opinion it would become the duty of the judge not to award weight to them. Then came the sentencing quote. In Sharki's case, my reviewing judgment concurs with the jury. I have reread all the testimony, all the requests of the Council, and my charge in the spirit with which both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals must necessarily review Hereafter Sharky was given a death sentence and his execution was to be carried out by hanging that was initially scheduled for August fifteenth. Once again, his lawyers, Charles W. Brooks and Peter Mitchell, pursued other options, and they started by filing for a stay of execution with the Supreme Court of New York a few weeks later. Because while the judge in the initial case believed that he had done nothing wrong, the defendant's counsel wanted to take their questions of jury handling and some other issues to a higher court. The bill of exceptions they filed stated the following quote that the recorder aired in charging the jury that he could not perceive how they could acquit the prisoner, that he aired in commenting on the language used by the prisoner and saying that a man who would use such language as the prisoner used and which was testified in the case would be almost unfit to live. That the statement of the recorders was calculated to mislead and prejudice the jury coming from the judge. That bill of exceptions also mentions the judge dismissing intoxication as a mitigating factor, mentioning that anyone who picks up a gun can't not intend to do harm, incorrectly repeating a detail of distance in the crime scene, like when it came up he had said that Sharkey was closer to Robert Dunn than he actually had been, and then incorrectly explaining other possible guilty verdicts that the jury could have found Sharky guilty on such as murder in the second degree instead of the first. While he waited. Sharky was imprisoned in the Manhattan House of Detention, known colloquially as the Tombs, which is what we called earlier. Was as an aside. This Jaale is said to have gotten that nickname because the exterior, designed by architect John Haviland in the eighteen thirties, was inspired by the style of Egyptian tombs. Maggie Jordan was Sharky's girlfriend, or maybe his wife. There are apparently some police records that suggest the two of them were married. Maggie kind of gets held up as an almost tropy instance of a woman from a good family who had a predilection for a life of crime and for criminal men. Sharky was not her first paramour to be involved in some kind of illicit activity, but she seemed genuinely devoted to William Sharky. She went to visit him every day, spent hours at a time at the jail, sitting in front of his cell, or going with him on walks in the building when he was allowed to stretch his legs. That might sound a little odd, but at this point the Tombs, like a lot of municipal services in New York, was run with a pretty laxadaisical attitude. Corruption was rampant in the city government. The political organization known as Tammany Hall was directing a lot of New York's government, and if you were in good with Tammany Hall, you did not serve time in the way that another incarcerated person would. Sharky had Tammany ties, so he was staying in a section of the jail that sounds more like a hotel than a prison. Because of that death sentence, he could not leave the premises, but he could often just walk around. Maggie made sure that he had all the comforts of home and his cell, including fine furnishings, a pet canary, and the latest magazines. We will talk about how William Jshon Sharky just strolled right out of prison one day after we paused for a sponsor break. November nineteenth, eighteen seventy three, was a day seemingly like any other when Sharky had his usual visit from Maggie. She arrived at ten am and she was given a pass instantly as she was a regular, all the guards knew her. Maggie stayed until one pm, and then another visitor to the tombs named Missus Wesley Allen came to the prison at twelve thirty. She was there to visit a man named Flood, so her time there overlapped Maggie's by about half an hour, and in fact she was a friend of Maggie's. She stopped to chat with Maggie and Sharky briefly before continuing on to visit Flood. Missus Allen had requested and was given a pass at the check in when Maggie exited the building at one pm. It was kind of noted it as odd because she normally stayed much later than that. At one thirty pm, an unnamed woman who was described as peculiar looking left the jail and turned in her pass at the gate. As she left, she was dressed all in black, with a winter bonnet and a green veil over her face. She crossed the street and waited a few moments before boarding a street car as it came by. Then, at two five pm, Missus Allen came out. She was stopped on her way out of the prison by a guard named Johnson, who asked for her pass, but she couldn't find it, and she told the guard she must have lost it. This seemed suspicious, so Johnson detained missus Allen and then ordered a walk through and inspection of the prison by the guards on duty, and that was when they realized that Sharky had escaped. It did not take long for them to piece together that Sharki was the peculiar looking woman who had exited the building at one thirty. In his cell, they found remnants of his mustache, which he had shaved off, and his clothes were strewn about uncharacteristically. After Sharky had vanished, the guards recalled that Maggie's skirts had looked extra bulky when she got there, but they assumed that she had been wearing an extra petticoat or two to help keep out the November chill. They realized that she had brought him a dress hidden under her own dress. Missus Allen was arrested, but she was soon released because the only thing that was known conclusively was that she didn't have her pass anymore. She never wavered in her claim that it had simply been lost, but Maggie was soon arrested at her mother's house. At first, reports of the escape were met with disbelief. It seemed so preposterous and even humorous. I in fact laughed out loud when I first read about him shaving off the mustache. A lot people rejected it as just nonsense, but a rumor had also started to circulate almost instantly that Sharky had learned from his lawyers two weeks earlier that they had exhausted all legal means of freeing him, and that at that time Maggie had decided she would plan an escape. According to this rumor, she'd been sneaking in his disguise a piece at a time in the weeks that had followed that decision. Maggie was tried for aiding in Sharky's escape, but unlike in Sharki's case, the journey never reached an agreement about her guilt or innocence. She was ultimately released on bail. A reward for Sharki was offered by the city two thousand dollars dead or alive. No one ever claimed it. Sharky was never again taken into custody in New York, and according to a nineteen thirty one New Yorker account of the events of his life after the escape, he hid out in New York for three weeks before boarding a schooner bound for Cuba. After landing in Barracoa, which sits near the eastern tip of the island, he made his way west to Havana, although his location was known, and we'll talk more about that in a minute. In the eighteen seventies, Cuba was still a colony of Spain. That status did not change until eighteen ninety eight, when the US gained control of Cuba as a territory, although that did not remain the status quo. But at this point Spain in the US didn't have an extradition treaty, so Sharky was theoretically beyond the reach of US law. As for Maggie, she joined Sharki in Cuba after her trial. They only stayed together in Cuba for a couple of months, though Sharki reportedly broke up with her, and then she returned to New York. Although an article in The New York Sun that came out in eighteen seventy five makes it sound like she might have just gotten fed up with him and left a little trigger here, it hints that he was probably abusive with her. The account also gives significant updates to Sharky's life in Cuba, and that write up states quote. Private Detective Harry Davies of Davies and Companies Agency returned from Havana on the steamer city of Havanah on Monday. In a stay of many weeks in Havana, mister Davies was frequently thrown into the company of William J. Sharky, the escaped murderer, and learned much of his habits and mode of life. As a rule, mister Davies says, Sharky is not as boisterous and violent in his cups as he was wont to be in New York. While Maggie Jordan remained with him, he always had a safe and convenient outlet for his natural cussedness, for he knew that she would never complain of him. But since her flight he has had to bobble up some of his passion for want of a fitting object to exercise it upon safely. Sharky has more respect for the authorities in Havana than he ever showed for the police in New York, and carefully represses him solf when there is the slightest danger. All the money he has is sent to him by his brothers in New York, and although the allowance is liberal, it is not sufficient to enable the escaped convict to cut the figure he did in his native city. So if that account is accurate, it seems like Sharky might have been really altered by his trial sentencing in prison time. Even if he did have more privileges than the average person who was incarcerated in the Tombs. It could also simply have been that he did not want to risk Cuba sending him back to the United States to face the gallows. This also mentions that he was living under the name Frank Campbell, and he continued to assert that Dunn's death was an accident. Incidentally, that same rite up says at the very end that Sharki actually got arrested in Cuba right before the publication, for threatening to kill the captain and purser of a ship. The month after that account was published, the New York Times ran an update that opened with quote, it was learned by a telegram received from Havana dated the twentieth, that William J. Sharky, the murderer who escaped from the Tombs in November last was arrested on that day in Santiago to Cuba, where he had gone for the purpose of embarking for South America and that he would be returned to the United States. But from here the story gets really fuzzy. Nobody seemed to know exactly where Sharky was, but he didn't ever arrive in New York. An account in The Evening World in March of nineteen hundred indicated that he had run from Cuba and landed in Europe. After that, there are a lot of sightings claimed, but no real evidence for any of them. There were people who said he had joined the Spanish military, and others saying that he died in Italy. That nineteen hundred ride up was prompted by a businessman saying that he had seen Sharky in Europe working as a guide for tourists. His ultimate fate remains unknown. Maggie Jordan meanwhile had married actor William J. Scanlan, although this is not a happy ending either. Scanlon was declared insane and sent to live in Bloomingdale Asylum in eighteen ninety two. Maggie became a widow in eighteen ninety eight when Scanlon died. Mysteries abound. Yeah, do you have a listener, mail? I do? It's not mysterious in the least, it's delightful, and it's about an episode that you worked on, but about a thing I said. So this is from our listener, Helena or Helena I don't know, but they write Dear Holly and Tracy. After loving your podcast for many years, I finally have to write to you. I listened to the Ballpoint Pen episode last night while making dinner, and my ears perked up when you mentioned Marie Antoinette's inks blotch on her marriage certificate. That caught my attention because I thought I had seen that certificate and did not notice sustain. It turns out I was mistaken, and it's the marriage contract, not the marriage certificate that I had seen. Apparently she was less nervous or had a better pen when she signed that. The marriage contract is kept at the library where I work, and I was pretty blown away when it casually showed up on my desk. A few years ago. We were digitizing a large collection of autographs, and while it contained many very famous people's signatures, Marie Antoinette's marriage contract, as well as some sketches from Leonardo da Vinci, really took the cake. And then there's a link to where they are as pet tax I attached two pictures of the late Ernestine, who was fearless, nosy and opinionated, especially about proper bedtimes for her human and filled my life with so much joy every day she lived with me. I still miss her. Many thanks for the wonderful work you do. I hope you never get sick of it. I sure won't. Kind regards from Switzerland, Helena. This is such a fun story and also like I think I would pass out if I had Yeah, a Marie Antoinette signed document on my desk, so I'm glad you survived that encounter without apparently losing consciousness. Yeah. This is also an email that I fished out of our spam filter this morning, which contained a number of legitimate emails. So we have said that like we read all the emails but can't answer all of them, we are seeming to have an uptick in the legitimate ones that wind up in spam for some reason. And Ernesty was indeed an adorable, beautiful baby, so I am glad that she got to live a life of very very loved If you would like to write to us, although I don't know what you could tell us that would be more brain breaking than having a document in your handsome marine toinette signed. But you could try, try, try to try to surprize us. I'm sure you can, it's really not that hard. You could write to us at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find us through the iHeartRadio app, and you can subscribe there or anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.