Killer Colt Read online

  ALSO BY HAROLD SCHECHTER

  NONFICTION

  The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers

  (with David Everitt)

  Bestial: The Savage Trail of a True American Monster

  Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America’s First Serial Killer

  Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America’s Most Fiendish Killer

  Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho”

  Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer

  Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer

  Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment

  The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World’s Most Terrifying Murderers

  The Whole Death Catalog: A Lively Guide to the Bitter End

  NARRATIVE NONFICTION

  The Devil’s Gentleman: Privilege, Poison, and the Trial That Ushered in the Twentieth Century

  FICTION

  Nevermore

  Outcry

  The Hum Bug

  The Mask of Red Death

  The Tell-Tale Corpse

  Copyright © 2010 by Harold Schechter

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Schechter, Harold.

  Killer Colt : murder, disgrace, and the making of an American legend / Harold Schechter.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52274-0

  1. Colt, John Caldwell, 1810–1842. 2. Murder—New York (State)—New York. 3. Colt, Samuel, 1814–1862. 4. Inventors—United States. I. Title.

  HV6248.C646S34 2010

  364.152′3092—dc22

  2010016777

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  For Richard Vangermeersch

  Good people all, I pray give ear;

  My words concern ye much;

  I will repeat a Tragedy:

  You never heard of such!

  —“The New-York Tragedy,”

  broadside ballad (1842)

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  Prologue

  NEW YORK CITY, FRIDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 17, 1841

  Part One

  FRAIL BLOOD CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  Part Two

  FORTUNE’S TRAILCHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  Part Three

  THE SUBLIME OF HORROR CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  Part Four

  THE GARB OF JUSTICE CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  Part Five

  THE NEW YORK TRAGEDY CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  Conclusion

  LEGENDS CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  NEW YORK CITY, FRIDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 17, 1841

  In his nondescript clothing—black coat, black neck cloth, dark vest, white shirt, and gambroon pantaloons—he is a man of the crowd, indistinguishable from the countless other top-hatted gentlemen striding along the pavement at that bustling hour. Insofar as the teeming sidewalks allow, he moves at a resolute pace. Damp and unseasonably cold, it is not a day for the sort of leisurely ramble favored by his fellow worker in the city’s booming printing trade, young Walter Whitman, recently arrived from the country and intoxicated by the hectic life of the great metropolis.1

  What sensations impinge on Mr. Adams as he proceeds on his errands can be extrapolated from the writings of Whitman and other contemporary chroniclers of that distant time and place: the ceaseless rush of traffic, the clatter of hackney cabs, carriages, and coal wagons, the incessant din of horseshoes against cobblestone, the shouted imprecations of teamsters and omnibus drivers, the cries of newsboys and fruitmongers, the snorts of scavenging pigs, the pervasive scent of horse manure, the jostle of the human throng—merchants and lawyers, peddlers and stockjobbers, clerks and copyists, office boys and apprentices, rowdies and beggars, shopgirls and seamstresses, promenading dandies with velvet waistcoats and fashionable young ladies in gaily trimmed bonnets and cassimere shawls.2

  City directories of the period tell us something about the businesses that line Mr. Adams’s path. J. C. Booth’s clothing and gentleman’s outfitting emporium, offering a “very extensive assortment of hosiery, cravats, scarves, gloves, suspenders, and linen collars.” The leather goods store of Levi Chapman, “maker of the celebrated Magic Razor Strop.” Philip Franklin’s umbrella shop, featuring “parasols, sun shades, and walking canes of all descriptions.” John Wilson’s saddle, harness, and trunk manufactory. The warehouse of Brown & Decker, dealers in whale oil, lampblack, and sperm candles. Ball & Tompkin’s tinware and cutlery establishment. And more: druggists and drapers, cobblers and corset makers, stationers and snuff venders, sellers of consumption cures and importers of “foreign wines and choice teas.”3

  How much of his surroundings Mr. Adams takes in as he makes his way uptown can never, of course, be known. He has walked these streets a thousand times, and he is focused, in any case, on the business at hand.

  On that chill autumn day, the newspapers are still filled with sensational details of the death of the “Beautiful Cigar Girl,” Mary Rogers, whose brutalized corpse was found floating off the New Jersey shoreline several weeks before and whose murder, despite the concerted efforts of the city constabulary and the ingenious speculations of Edgar Allan Poe, will forever remain unsolved. Other events, too, occupy the papers, including the upcoming murder trial of Alexander McLeod, a Canadian lawman whose arrest by U.S. authorities for the killing of an American citizen has provoked threats of war from the British government. But these and other penny-press sensations will shortly be supplanted by the case in which the unwitting Mr. Adams is about to be fatally involved.4

  On the corner of Ann Street, along Mr. Adams’s route, stands Scudder’s American Museum, a run-down repository of seashells, minerals, s
tuffed birds, and other natural-history specimens. Within a few months, it will be purchased by Phineas T. Barnum, who will transform it into a gaudy showplace crammed with astounding artifacts, believe-it-or-not exhibitions, and bizarre anatomical “curiosities.” At present, Barnum has not the slightest awareness of Mr. Adams’s existence—though, like the rest of the population, he will soon come to take an absorbing interest in the printer.5

  The time is somewhere around 3:30 p.m. Near the Rotunda on Chambers Street, Mr. Adams is spotted by an acquaintance, a clerk at City Hall Place named John Johnson, who has just emerged from the post office. The two men have already spoken several times that day. Intent on his affairs, Mr. Adams does not notice the clerk, who watches as the printer strides purposefully in the direction of Broadway.6

  It is almost 4:00 p.m. when Mr. Adams arrives at his final destination. Catercorner to City Hall, the Granite Building is an unimposing structure by today’s standards but “large and rather glooming-looking” to the eyes of Jackson-era New Yorkers.7 Mr. Adams enters unnoticed, proceeds directly to the dimly illuminated stairwell, and climbs to the second floor.

  Minutes pass. Outside on Broadway—oblivious to the horror transpiring just out of sight—the swirling human tide hurries along.

  Part One

  FRAIL BLOOD

  1

  The neighborhood of his birth would later become known as Asylum Hill, after the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, the nation’s first institution of its kind. In 1814, however, it was still called Lord’s Hill, an apt name for a place so steeped in Puritan tradition—though, in fact, it derived from the original owners of the land: the descendants of Captain Richard Lord, one of the early heroes of the colony.1 In succeeding decades, various luminaries—among them Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe—would make their home on Lord’s Hill, drawn by the tranquil charm of this rural district of Hartford. The infant born in a farmhouse there on July 19, 1814, would himself grow up to be one of the century’s most eminent figures, a man whose name would become synonymous with the nation’s burgeoning industrial might: Samuel Colt.

  He came by his enterprising spirit honestly. His maternal grandfather, Major John Caldwell, was one of Hartford’s leading citizens: first president of its bank, first commander of its volunteer horse guard, a founder of the deaf asylum, and one of the commissioners responsible for building the statehouse in 1796. He was also the richest man in town, a shipbuilder and canny businessman who—like many another God-fearing New England merchant—made a fortune in the West Indies trade, shipping produce, livestock, and lumber to the Caribbean slave plantations in exchange for molasses, tobacco, and rum.2

  To his other grandfather, Lieutenant Benjamin Colt, Samuel owed some of the mechanical aptitude that would make him one of the world’s great inventors. Admired throughout the Connecticut Valley for his handiwork, Benjamin had been a blacksmith of unusual skill and ingenuity who owned a wider variety of tools than any metalworker in the region. History would credit him as manufacturer of the first scythe in America.3

  The children of these two worthies, Christopher Colt and Sarah Caldwell (“Sally” to her family and friends), had met in Hartford in 1803, when—according to one possibly apocryphal account—the strapping six-footer had stopped the runaway buggy in which the young woman was trapped.4 An attraction immediately developed between the pair, both in their early twenties at the time. Despite his many virtues, however—his manly bearing, indefatigable energy, and striving ambition—Christopher Colt did not appear to be a particularly suitable candidate for the hand of Sarah Caldwell, patrician daughter of Hartford’s leading citizen.

  To be sure, Christopher claimed an illustrious background of his own, tracing his lineage to Sir John Coult, an English peer in Oliver Cromwell’s day who gained everlasting renown in his country’s civil wars. During one ferocious battle—so the story goes—he had three horses killed under him, shattered his sword, and still led his troops to victory. Knighted for his heroism, Coult adopted a coat of arms emblematic of his exploits: a shield with three charging steeds above the family motto, Vincit qui patitur—“He conquers who endures.”5

  At the time of his meeting with Sarah, however, Christopher—a recent arrival from his native Massachusetts who had left home to seek his fortune in Hartford—was in dire financial straits. Indeed, the members of the city council, wary of indigent newcomers who relied on the public dole, had resolved to expel him from town.6 Impressed, however, with young Colt’s personal qualities, Major Caldwell took the youth under his wing. Before long, thanks to his strict adherence to the Franklin-esque values of industry, frugality, and perseverance—coupled with a zeal for commercial speculation—Christopher Colt had accumulated a sizable fortune of his own. In April 1805, with the blessing of his mentor in Hartford’s booming mercantile trade, he and Sarah were wed.

  Their first child, Margaret, was born a year later. Seven more followed at regular intervals. Of this substantial brood, two would die in childhood, two others in the bloom of their youth. The survivors would comprise a judge, a textile pioneer, the legendary Colonel Colt, and a brilliant accountant responsible—in the language of nineteenth-century sensation-mongers—for the most “horrid and atrocious” murder of his day.

  2

  Of his three brothers, Sam was closest to the eldest, John Caldwell Colt, four years his senior.1

  Much later, at the height of John’s notoriety, commentators would offer radically different views of his boyhood character. According to his harshest critics, he was a “willful, cunning, and revengeful youth,” ruled by “violent passions” over which he had “no great control.” Bridling at parental authority, he displayed rank “insubordination from childhood upwards,” refusing to submit to “the common restraints of the family, the school room, and the law of God.”2

  Other people, whose loyalty to John never wavered, described him in far more flattering terms as a rambunctious but fundamentally good-hearted boy, who reveled “in air and freedom” and would “do anything for a frolic.” “His juvenile characteristics,” insisted one acquaintance, “were a fondness for boyish sports, extreme bravery, and great generosity of character … His daring was remarkable.” Though given to all sorts of juvenile pranks, “there was nothing vicious about his sportfulness.”3

  In his own published statements, John recalled himself as a headstrong youth—“rash and foolishly venturesome”—whose boldness often bordered on sheer recklessness and whose penchant for risk taking frequently put his life in danger. Besides numerous hunting and riding accidents, there were at least five separate occasions when his fearlessness nearly got him killed.

  At the age of five, for example, while playing near a cider press, he lost his footing and “plunged head foremost” into the vat full of juice. Only the quick actions of a playmate, “a stout young girl” who saw him go under, saved him from drowning.

  Several winters later, he nearly drowned again, this time while playing on a frozen river. He was “jumping up and down on the ice” when it gave way beneath his feet. “Swept by the current some sixty feet under a sheet of ice,” he was carried into open water, where he managed to catch the limb of a fallen tree and drag himself onto the bank.

  Another time, he was “playing tricks with” his favorite horse, which retaliated by throwing him from the saddle and delivering a near-crippling kick to his hip. And then there was his “awful encounter” with an enraged buffalo, part of “a caravan of animals” that arrived in Hartford with a traveling show. Sneaking into the creature’s pen, young John found himself face-to-face with the “shaggy-throated beast” that “forthwith plunged at me, nailing me fast against the wall between his horns.” He was rescued by the keeper’s assistants, who immediately leapt at the buffalo and began to “belabor him with their clubs.”

  The most memorable of all John’s juvenile mishaps, however, occurred when he was eight. His favorite pastime at that age was playing so
ldier. His doting mother—whose father had fought with distinction in the Continental army—was happy to encourage her little boy’s “military mania” and supplied him with the means to “rig out a little troop of boys” with outfits and toy rifles. The centerpiece of their company was a miniature brass cannon. One day, John, with the help of a companion, loaded the little weapon with an excessive charge of powder. When John put a light to the fuse, the cannon exploded.

  Somewhat miraculously, neither John nor his playmate suffered serious injury, though their eyesight was temporarily impaired. “How we escaped with our lives,” John later recalled, “is a wonder.”4

  Whether Samuel Colt was present when his older brother detonated the toy is unclear. Some biographers speculate that the four-year-old boy did, in fact, witness the event, which had a powerful effect on his imagination, sparking his lifelong fascination with armaments. If so, the repercussions from that small blast would be felt, in time, throughout the world.5

  • • •

  Besides the bond they shared with each other, both boys were deeply attached to their older sisters, Margaret and Sarah Ann. Throughout his exceptionally peripatetic life, John would carry keepsake locks of their hair; while the adult Sam, after finally achieving his hard-won fame and fortune, would hang framed mementoes of his sisters in his private room at Armsmear, the baronial estate he constructed in Hartford.6

  Beyond their importance to their brothers, little is known about the two young women. Margaret, the firstborn of the Colt children, was described by an acquaintance as a warm and loving spirit who took simple joy in the “pleasant things” of “this beautiful world.” The same observer recalled Sarah Ann as a pretty young girl “with profuse flaxen hair, clear blue eyes, and sweet smile” who “affectionately depended” on her older sister.7 Apart from this testimony, verifiable facts about the sisters are scant. One salient detail of their early lives, however, is part of the historical record. In 1814, at the respective ages of eight and six, Margaret and Sarah Ann were enrolled in an unusually progressive private school run by their neighbor, Lydia Howard Huntley.