← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
The Alleged Murderer Known as 'The Witch of New York' (Women Behaving Badly)
00:29:43
We speak with author Alex Hortis about his new book, The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice.
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Listener supported WNYC Studios.
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A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue with our series Women Behaving Badly. That's our tongue in cheek title for interviews about unruly women in New York City. And to kick off this hour, we're heading out to Staten Island. On Christmas night of 1843, villagers were disturbed to find the burned remains of a young mother, Emmaline Houseman, and her baby daughter, Ann Eliza. They had been bludgeoned to death before their house was set on fire, and the last person to see them alive allegedly was Emmaline's own sister in law, Polly Bodine. Even worse, Polly was heavily pregnant by a man who wasn't her husband. And she was on the run. The case set off a media firestorm with multiple New York publications competing for the latest scoop. Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman both followed the subsequent trials. PT Barnum commissioned a Polly Bodine wax figure. The media attention became so intense that it became difficult to find a non prejudiced jury. Polly was eventually tried three times. Did she actually kill her niece and sister in law? And if she did, what was her motive? Author and constitutional lawyer Alex Hortas walks readers through this compelling history in his new book, the Witch of New the Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice. I began our conversation by asking Alex how we first came across Polly's story.
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B
After my first book, I was looking for a new topic and I came across this New York Times article and it had mentioned this just bonkers case from the 1840s. I'd never heard of it before. Edgar Allan Poe had covered it. Walt Whitman covered it. Like you said, P.T. barnum made a circus out of it. And I just couldn't believe that no one had written a full length nonfiction history of it. And it also just felt so fresh. It felt like, you know, today and our tabloid justice of today. So I thought I could use it to critique tabloid justice of today.
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A
Well, what sorts of resources were available to you when you were researching this story?
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B
So fortunately, because of the intense media coverage and because the press back then, the Herald, the Sun, were trying to entertain their readers, they devoted wall to wall coverage of this daily transcripts and you know, included very colorful details that was a core part of it. I also went to the New York State archives and this was particularly thrilling to get the legal briefs, you know, from 1840s. And I don't think anybody had looked, you know, since then. And so I had this amazing primary source material. And then fortunately, these famous people wrote about it and talked about it. And so I have that to draw on too. And also their particular perspectives. You can learn a lot through about these individuals, what they brought to the case.
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A
Well, what was Staten island like in the early to mid-1800s when Polly was alive?
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B
Okay, erase all perceptions you have of Staten island of today. It had barely 10,000 people spread out over these green valleys with these gurgling creeks they called the Kiels, the Dutch called them primarily Dutch Protestants, French Protestants and English Protestants. Old, old clans, I mean people before the United States was even formed, they could trace their lineage to there. All these small little villages spread across the island, very close knit, and everybody knew everybody's business. And they looked across to over masthem Manhattan, like Walt Whitman had described it. And they saw just Sodom and Gomorrah over there. And so they wanted to kind of protect their island from, you know, the bad. The bad island.
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A
All right, so we've got. We know where we are. Let's talk about the people involved. Polly. What kind of family did Polly Housman come from before she married Andrew Bodine?
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So Polly came from one of the original families to the Americas. Her family came over in the 1650s, and they settled on Staten island, as they called it. They were oystermen by trade. Manhattan loved oysters, and there was an oyster craze. And so Staten island was largely feeding Manhattan oysters. Her father was quite wealthy. He happened to buy land on top of Traprock just as Manhattan was going through a building boom. So it was worth well over 1.2 million. Then. He had a prosperous oysters business. She was a bit haughty about all of this. She would sometimes mention that she had all the pleasures of life and that she was very comfortable, and she was very proud to be a houseman, a hooseman, as they originally were called.
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A
All right, Polly Husman or houseman. She marries Andrew Bodine on December 1, 1825. They have two children, but the marriage soon crumbled. What was responsible for their separation?
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B
So Andrew Bedine was essentially a drunken sailor and allowed. They used, you know, euphemisms at the time, but he was intemperate, which meant she was drunk, and he was vicious, which meant he abused her. And so she was, you know, very, very young, 16, and had children within, you know, two years, had two children. And so she was stuck because New York law at the time was extremely difficult to get a divorce. Basically, the only ground at the time was adultery. And adultery is extremely hard to prove. You had to prove intercourse, that your spouse engaged in intercourse in court. And so most women were just stuck in the marriages. But she had a particularly lousy husband because the guy kind of gradually loses his mind. He eventually marries somebody else while he's still married to Pauli and is eventually convicted of bigamy. But in the meantime, she's stuck in this marriage with him. So she leaves him. She goes back to live with her father, Abraham, and their two small children, and she's kind of stuck. So Staten island is a city of gossips. And there was these rumors that spread about her. I was really taken aback when the press had said that she was a bold and determined woman. And I thought, oh, they like her, and said, no, this was an insult when they said that. And so she was very independent. She could be seen going around the island. She wore kind of a trademark green veil and a hood. She would drink gin alone. She then starts up an affair with an apothecary in Manhattan named George Waite.
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A
All right, that's Polly. We've got a vision of Polly. Let's talk about Emmeline. What do we know about the sister in law, Emmaline Housman? And then what do we know about the relationship between Polly and Emmaline Housman?
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B
So Emmaline housman was a 24 year old woman. Again, comes from an old line Protestant family. She is married to Captain George Houseman, an oysterman, who is Paulie's brother. And so that Polly is her sister in law. By all accounts, everyone, every witness said that they had a very warm relationship. She has a child named Ann Eliza, and Polly, in fact, delivered her because the doctor was on the other side of the island. So everyone said she was warm. She would take her into Manhattan, this sort of naive younger woman, and kind of escort her through Manhattan. And I always envision what that looked like, like as this poor, you know, this timid girl. Everyone describes her as timid, was seeing Manhattan through Paulie's eyes. And so she would stay over with her from time to time. And by every account, they had a warm relationship.
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A
What do we know about how Emmaline and her small daughter Ann Eliza were killed?
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So what we know is on December 25, 1843, there was a fire that broke out on the island. Villagers get into the kitchen where the fire occurred. They find the bludgeoned bodies. Emmeline had defensive wounds that cut down to the bone on her left arm. And so it was fairly clear that there was some kind of physical confrontation. Her right arm, she has this black handkerchief scarf that's tied tightly in a sailor's knot. And there was speculation on what that might have been for. Is they dragging the body? Are they tying her up? It wasn't clear. Ann Eliza, unfortunately, her body was very badly destroyed in the fire. It was a very intense heat and her head was literally seared off when they saw it. And so the person who saw that was nauseous, of course. And so they appear, at least, Emmeline appears to have been attacked in some way, bludgeoned in some way. And there was medical debate, early forensics debate, about how exactly it happened, but it appears that the infant's skull was separated before the fire. So in other words, when she was alive, she was murdered as an 18 month year old child.
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A
Well, how quickly did Polly become a suspect in these murders?
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B
Breathtakingly fast. She was considered a suspect almost immediately. Now she did give some somewhat contradictory statements about where she was, what she was doing. But what really fueled it was her reputation. She had a reputation of having, quote, bad character. There were rumors of an affair, although no one clearly knew that at the time. Nobody knew that she was pregnant. She was eight months pregnant at the time. And so when that becomes known, of course, especially in that era, for a woman to be pregnant with a man that was not her husband is extremely scandalizing. I mean, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes the Scarlet Letter in this time in part as a commentary on how severe adultery was looked at for women. And so what also fuels is John Van Pelt, the grieving father. He had consulted a fortune teller and he immediately says at the funeral, at the burial of his daughter, he's obviously bereaved. And he turns and he says, paulie is the murderess. And so this really fuels the fire. And so on the Friday after the bodies were discovered, her brother in law comes to Abraham Housman, her father's house and says, paulie, everybody in the village thinks you did it. Paulie takes her jack, her coat, exits out of the house. And then there's a low speed chase throughout Staten island and Manhattan as the press is just loving this. It's like glee, gleeful about everything that's happening. She's eight months pregnant, it's sleeting and storming. She walks the width of Staten island, then she sneaks onto this ferry and walks the length of Manhattan up to Harlem, which was then country estates. Back and I added it up, is essentially she did a marathon over two days while she was eight months pregnant in a winter sleet.
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A
Yeah, we're talking about tabloid justice. That's a big part of your method. What responsibility did these papers feel to the truth or did they care about publishing the most fantastical story they could? What would sell papers?
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B
This was the penny press. So get out of your mind. Sort of the New York Times or the Washington Post. It was the first paper for the masses, sort of. So they would sell it for literally a penny. That's why it got its name. And it was extremely competitive. James Gordon Bennett of the Herald and Moses Yale beach of the sun, they had this fierce competition. MOSES yells beach used to have this fleet of ships that would go out into the ocean and get the early newspapers from the ships to get scoops. He had carrier pigeons on the roof. James Gordon Bennett thought of him as sort of his arch enemy. And so they would do almost anything. So their response to the truth was loose, to say the least. It was also, I would say it's a different model of it almost is closer to social media than it is today. In other words, he just said what he thought. You know, they didn't have, like, big teams of reporters. They had a few, but they didn't have big teams of reporters. So he first says it was a gang, and then he revokes that. And he very quickly calls Paulie the murderer. He calls Paulie the murderess. Within ten days after the bodies and before she's ever even arrested, she's the murderess. So you imagine there's no such thing as innocent until proven guilty. He just didn't believe it. He said his famous quote was that the press is the living jury of the nation. I have to tell you, to me, as a lawyer, that's kind of appalling. I sort of understand how you could put a spin on it, how, you know, they have transparency. But it's clearly he went beyond that. He tried to influence cases. He tried to get cases to have certain outcomes that he wanted.
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A
We're speaking with Alex Hortas, author of the new book the Witch of New the Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice. It's about the 19th century murder that took place on Staten Island. So we've arrived at the first. There's three trials. The first one, what concrete evidence existed, if any, to tie Polly to the murders.
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B
So the case was circumstantial, but fairly strong is the best way, I think, that it can be described. First of all, she's the last person seen alive with Emma lynn on Saturday, December 23rd. There is a neighbor named Mrs. Jane Taylor that said she heard screams coming from the house that night. Unfortunately, at trial, Mrs. Jane Taylor is asked if she believes in ghosts. And she says, well, I'm not sure. I haven't seen one in two or three months. And so her credibility is obviously damaged. No one else in the village hears, you know, hears these screams. She is witnessed, allegedly, by three to five pawn brokers, depending on the trial, who each said in fairly vivid detail that she came into their shops on Christmas, December 25, and pawned the victim's goods. There was no dispute that these were the victim's goods. There was heavily dispute that it was her. They only saw her for a few minutes. But the pawn brokers would say, well, we have to evaluate. And I looked at. Was looking at very Closely. And she used the name Ellen Henderson of Bergen, this woman. And so it matches the eh, on the spoons that were Emmeline Houseman's spoons and gold, there was a gold watch, a gold chain. The pawnbrokers, though unfortunately their testimony is affected because the authorities had hauled them in into the Staten island jail and they brought them down and they said, this is our suspect. Is that her? They had her dressed up as if she was there. That would never be allowed today. There are other though damaging facts to her that come up as well. On Christmas night she abruptly, she visits George Waite, her paramour and her son who was working for George Waite as an apprentice. She unexpectedly just says I'm leaving on Christmas night. And her son Albert says, well, where are you? You know, where are you going? And so she gives the name of Elizabeth Strange, which is an acquaintance. Elizabeth Strange then says she hasn't seen her in six months and she never came on Christmas night. So she has no alibi on Christmas night at the time of the fire. And then the next morning there is these ferry boat workers on Staten island near the quarantine landing which was on the other side of where her father was living. They said she comes in at 6:20 in the morning, looks haggard and this is nearly two hours before the ferry actually leaves. And she orders gin at 6:20 in the morning. And the witness, Catherine Jane Henry, who was praised by the press as being very credible because it was very, very detailed. She said, I thought it was something wonderful lady to come on board and ask for gin. And so that puts her then on Staten island in the early morning hours after the fire. She also then when a reward is being proposed, she's talking with her brother. She says, I wouldn't do that. So the prosecution was saying, well, why in the world would you tell your brother not to post a reward?
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You're listening to my conversation with author Alex Hortas about his new book the Witch of New the Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice. We'll hear more about the trials after a quick break. This is all of it. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Let's continue my conversation with Alex Hjordas, author of the new book the Witch of New York, the Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice. It's about a 19th century murder on Staten island and the woman who was tried three times for the crime. We pick back up with the jury decision after the first Murder trial of Polly Bodine the jury gets all this information. People should be, should learn that at that time, jurors were denied food or water until they reached a verdict. It seemed like they reached a verdict except for one man, James Decker. Why was he so steadfast in his not guilty vote?
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So James Decker was a bit of an eccentric. He was one of the wealthier people in Granite Village. He was in the same village that Pauly was from. And he was difficult from the very beginning. First of all, he wouldn't take the oath. Then the judge says, well, I'm going to put you in jail. And he said, that's fine, I paid for it. So he's difficult from the very beginning. But because of the press coverage, it's so hard to get any unbiased jurors. So they let him on. It proved to be a huge mistake for the prosecution. During the jury deliberations, James Decker literally becomes a runaway juror. He is tired of being berated by the 11 other jurors, the 11 other men who tell him we need to reach a verdict. And so he leaps out of the window and runs away until the sheriff comes and hunts him down. Today that probably ended up in a mistrial. But back then they had to keep the jury together. It was hard to keep juries together. And like you said, this cracked me up when they withheld food and water from them until they reached a verdict. And they later asked him, he just wouldn't convict. He said, I'm not going to. And so they later asked him, why wouldn't you convict? And he said, well, I would not render any verdict unless than circumstantial evidence in the fourth degree. And they said, what is that? He said, four eyewitnesses who swear that they saw the act committed. Of course that's not circumstantial evidence. That's direct evidence. It's legal gibberish. There's no such thing. But he just was a bit of an eccentric.
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A
There was a second murder trial happened in Manhattan. She was found guilty. In this particular murder trial, what stood out to you about this trial? Was it the actual evidence? Was it the media tabloid? What was obviously out of play?
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So what's fascinating to me, first of all, six week trial almost, and that's extremely long for that time. The prosecution went all out. They brought in anyone that had any glimpse of poly that weekend. What also stands out to me, it was held in City Hall. And so there's all these beautiful portraits of, you know, George Washington and the founding Fathers originals. And they're sitting there, but it's not air conditioned, obviously. And so it's sweltering hot. They get visiting dignitaries. It becomes so widely followed. James Harper, which is the mayor at the time, was in a tough reelection battle. He sits in on the trial. They would get visiting justices and politicians from other states that would sit there. They literally fought to get seats at the trial. And so it was sort of Manhattan high society treating it like entertainment. And they compared it to like going to the opera almost. And it was just extremely thorough. It was extremely closely followed by. And the press just was completely unscrupulous. What also stands out to me, PT Barnum has his American Museum. It's new and it's literally a block from City Hall. He creates this wretched wax figure of Paulie. She's on trial for her life for capital murder. And we know that there were thousands and thousands of people that bought tickets. It was very popular. Kids would later say they remember how scary it was and they had nightmares. And so he was like prejudicing her trial. And, you know, he's seen as this lovable rogue, but in my opinion was just reprehensible what he did here. And so she is found guilty, as you say, they do reach a verdict. It was a compromise verdict, it appears at the time, because they said, we find her guilty of murder, but with recommendation of mercy to the court, which was essentially code for don't hang her. Because at the time, first degree murder, the penalty is death. And it was in that era. The one thing that in a way helped her, in a way was that people were particularly squeamish about hanging a woman.
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A
We're speaking with Alex Hortas, author of the new book the Witch of New the Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice. Third trial. The judge was unable to find a jury pool that was unbiased in this case. He was forced to move it to Newburgh, New York, in Orange County. We won't say what happened. You'll have to read the book. But did Polly Bodine ever take her own defense?
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B
No. She does make a few comments, a quote. So we get an idea of her personality. She was sort of a bit haughty. She never testifies by the Newberg trial. Remember, this is two years in and she's living in 1840s jails, wretched places where the death rate was very high. They said she looked catatonic. Walt Whitman said that he would be surprised if she was alive at the end of the trial. She basically was staring straight ahead the whole time. Wasn't registering by now in Newburgh. And she just sits there and stares straight ahead. Fortunately, she had, you know, very good defense team and working very hard. And the prosecution was going all out as well. But it was eerie, it was strange by all accounts.
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A
Do you have a theory of what happened?
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I do have a theory. I have to first give my lawyerly disclaimer that I have to. We have to always respect what the, what the juries do. My theory is that there was some kind of argument because there clearly was a confrontation. There's these defensive wounds. The motive that the prosecution had was weak though. She came from a wealthy family. There was some question that she was doing pawning on the side to get some income. But it's not a lot of money. It's some valuables, but it's well under $1,000. And so it's. Why in the world would she kill her sister on her knees? I think they had some kind of confrontation, some kind of argument whether she found out that she was pregnant. Emily had found out she was pregnant. Maybe Paulie had tried to steal something. George Waite was deeply, deeply in debt. And so there was some question whether Waite put her up to it. And then she realizing there's some kind of fight and it turns into a homicide. She dies. Accidentally or recklessly, I should say. And so then she sees horrifically. And this is the hardest part of the case for me. She sees this 18 month year old child. And the prosecution asked, they were very clever. They asked the grandfather, was the child speaking? And he said yes. And so the theory was, the implication was that she could point to Paulie and implicate her. So she, in this panic, she kills the child. And then she. The part I don't understand, she just decides to pawn these items. I do believe she pawned those items. There's too much of a coincidence and she doesn't have an alibi. And so why in the world would she do that? She wasn't thinking clearly. I think what's scary is people are always looking for a rational reason for murder because it's too scary to think that. Think people just kind of lose their mind. They have passions, they have angers and they kill their family members. Now, can I prove that? No, I cannot. And so I want to make that clear. I can't prove that. But if you're asking me as like historian, I think that that is the most likely scenario.
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A
At the end of the book, you draw a direct line between the tabloid coverage of Polly's trial and true crime craze of today with shows on Netflix and HBO and podcasts. And how do you see Pauli Bodine's trial as a beginning of a trend that we still see today?
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To me, it's the birth of true crime. And the reason I say that is, is that people like Edgar Allan Poe, he thought you could solve cases if you just use enough of your brilliance, at least Edgar Allan Poe's brilliance. And if you read newspaper reports, and we see this in true crime podcasts all the time now I'm going to solve a crime. And occasionally that happens, I would say, like a thin blue line. He clearly exonerated the defendant. But in most of the cases, they're frankly, in my opinion, they're skewing the evidence. They're kind of viewing it how they want to view it, or they're trying to service the story. And trials are really messy. People also project all of these beliefs and morals and ideas onto cases when cases are actually microcosms. They're not to change society for the most part. That's not what a trial is really for. It's to decide whether the prosecution has proven beyond a reasonable doubt this person committed the acts that committed a crime. And so. And you see how popular it is. Have you ever. I look on Netflix and try to go through the true crime. It would take you, like, months of watching it constantly at this point, it just. It's just overwhelming. And it's extremely popular. But I think it just a lot of problems with it. It can't replicate. I experienced this even writing the book. When you're writing a book or you're doing a story, you have to service the story. And I did the best I can. And I'm proud that people have said there's a lot of reasonable doubt here, and there's views both ways, but I could have easily tilted the story this way or that way. And I can see the temptation when you have, you know, with all due respect, journalists, or I would say more entertainment producers, when they have the story, they're not being checked by an opposing lawyer, they're not being checked by a judge. They don't have a jury to kind of filter this through. And so in my opinion, the true crime is really entertainment, and that's fine. I'm not going to be like a school marm. I'm telling people, don't watch it. I watch it. I don't watch the most lurid stuff anymore. And I would also say, but don't view it as more than entertainment. Don't think that you're going to solve a case that's extremely rare. Does it happen? Yes. But when you look at the failed attempts that have not worked, it far outstrips it. And it's not reliable. It's not a great way to do justice. There is a place for journalism to exonerate innocent people. Absolutely. Cases have gone to the Supreme Court based on a true crime podcast, but I think for the most part, it's difficult. It also creates a bad perception of the justices, a very distorted deception of what happens at a trial.
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A
The witch of New York, the trials of Polly Bodine, and the cursed birth of tabloid justice. My guest has been Alex Hjordas. Alex, thank you so much.
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B
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A
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B
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.