Killer Colt Read online

  Roughly an hour later, William Dolson, a barber who operated a shop on Centre Street and was commonly known as “Deaf Bill,” arrived by prearrangement to give John a final shave under the watchful eye of Deputy Sheriff Frederic L. Vultee. No sooner had Dolson departed than a young man brought in a basket containing John’s breakfast, prepared at a local eatery called Cowder’s Victualling Cellar. John was finishing up his last meal when the Reverend Dr. Anthon arrived at precisely 9:00.4

  Though the two men had known each other only for a few days, their hours together spent in prayer, spiritual conversation, and discourse over doctrines like original sin and predestination had forged a close bond between them. Rising from his breakfast to greet Anthon warmly, John offered the minister his chair, then seated himself at the foot of his bed. Reaching over to take a small package from the table, he handed it to Anthon and asked him to open it. Inside were a bunch of gold coins and bank notes, amounting to five hundred dollars.

  Explaining that he had received the money that morning from his brother, John asked Anthon to deposit it in a savings bank and see that it was doled out to Caroline at the rate of twenty dollars per month to help support her and their newborn child. He spoke fervently of “how anxious he was that the mother and child should lead a virtuous life and the child be duly educated.” Anthon, deeply moved by John’s solicitude for the welfare of Caroline and the baby, gave way to tears and vowed to assume responsibility for the child’s religious upbringing.

  The longest of the letters John had written that night was addressed to his son. After reading it aloud to Anthon—who found himself “overpowered with emotions”—John sealed it in an envelope and passed it to the minister, explaining that it was “to be kept for his small child until it shall be old enough to understand its contents.” He then told Anthon that he had one final favor to ask. He and Caroline wished to be married. Would Anthon perform the ceremony?

  Anthon, without hesitation, assented.5

  • • •

  During each of his preceding visits with John, Anthon had “pressed upon him the indispensable necessity as one mark of true penitence of a confession of the sin for which he had been condemned.” He now exhorted him again to make a clean breast. As he had done on every previous occasion, John “solemnly declared that he committed the act in self-defense.”

  “I have said so again and again,” he exclaimed with a catch in his voice. “But what is the use? They will not believe it, they will not believe it.”

  “Will you carry this as your confession to the bar of God?” asked Anthon, reaching over to clasp John by the hand.

  “I am full prepared to do so,” John replied. “I would not die with a lie upon my lips.”

  Satisfied, Anthon suggested that they “spend the time profitably in prayer” and asked John “if there was any passage in the Bible in particular he wished to read.”

  “I will leave the selection to you,” said John.

  Taking up his Bible, Anthon proceeded to recite passages from Luke 15:7 (“I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance”), 2 Corinthians 5:1 (“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”), and Luke 18:35–43 (in which Jesus restores sight to the blind man at Jericho).

  Anthon read until 10:00, then—assuring John that he would be nearby—retreated to a vacant cell two doors down the corridor, “leaving the prisoner alone to his own reflections.”6

  • • •

  Even as John communed with his spiritual counselor, he could hear the activity in the prison yard, where the gallows was being erected directly outside his window.

  This gallows did not operate by conventional means. There was no elevated scaffold upon which the condemned man stood, nor a trap through which he plunged to his death. Instead, as one contemporary described the apparatus, “The culprit stands on the ground and is lifted up by means of pulleys and a rope to which is attached about 250 pounds. This weight is held at the top of the cross piece by a small cord which is cut by a hatchet, when the weight descends and the doomed man is suspended with a suddenness that is supposed to destroy at once all consciousness.”7

  Though the hanging was not scheduled until late afternoon, invited witnesses began arriving early in the morning so that they could get the most advantageous views of the gallows. By noon, the courtyard was so packed that late arrivals could be heard complaining that Colt “was not to be hung high enough for those in the back of the crowd to see him.”8

  • • •

  John’s lawyers Dudley Selden and Robert Emmett showed up at his cell at around 11:00 in the company of their colleague David Graham, Jr., who had just returned from his futile visit to Governor Seward in Albany. Informed of their arrival, Anthon returned to John’s cell to prepare for the ceremony.

  Roughly fifty minutes later, Caroline was escorted into the cell by Sam and John Howard Payne. She was “attired in a straw bonnet, green shawl, claret colored cloak trimmed with red cord, and a muff.” Though she managed a brave smile, “her appearance denoted much anxiety, and she was much thinner than when a witness at the trial.”9 At precisely noon—in the presence of Sam, Payne, the three attorneys, Justice Gilbert Merritt, and Sheriff Monmouth Hart—John and Caroline were wed by the Reverend Dr. Anthon. “The mistress became by law a wife,” as one historian put it, “and the same law decreed that in four short hours she would become a widow.”10

  The strange, somber nuptials would, in coming days, inspire the penny papers to new extremes of overwrought wonder. “What a bridal scene!” marveled one reporter. “The marriage hall a prison cell! The prospect from the bridal window the bridegroom’s gallows on which he was sentenced to die a felon’s death in a few short hours. What an anticipation for a bride! Ere the setting of the sun to mourn over the ignominious grave of him with whom her reputation and fortunes were just linked by the sacred ties of love and matrimony!”11

  At John’s request, he and Caroline were left alone to bid each other farewell. While Anthon retired to the nearby vacant cell, Sam, John Howard Payne, and the three attorneys waited in the corridor, where Sheriff Hart paced ceaselessly up and down, “evidently deeply affected by the shocking duty he was about to perform.”12

  Shortly afterward, Anthon called Sam into his cell and gently asked if “he had made arrangements to provide for the internment.” At the question, Sam “was completely overcome.” “Oh,” he cried, “I did not think it would come to this!”

  Seeing his anguish, Anthon “felt no hesitation in offering temporary use of a vault in St. Mark’s and the services of the sexton.” Sam, in a voice quaking with emotion, offered a fervent thanks before stepping back into the hallway.13

  At one o’clock—“the honeymoon of an hour” having ended—Sam reentered the cell “where John was still engaged in conversation with his wife, who was sitting at the foot of his bed, convulsed with tears.”14 By then the Colts’ friend Lewis Gaylord Clark had arrived at the prison. At John’s request, Clark and Payne, along with the three lawyers, were admitted into his cell, where tearful good-byes were exchanged.

  A few minutes later, the five visitors, all weeping openly, stepped back out into the corridor, leaving Sam and Caroline alone with John for another ten minutes. When Sam finally emerged, he looked, according to one observer, “even more ghastly than the condemned man.” For her part, Caroline “could scarcely support herself, so violent were her feelings and acute her sufferings. She stood at the door of the cell for a minute—Colt kissed her passionately—strained her to his bosom—and watched as her receding form passed into the corridor. Here she stood and sobbed convulsively as though her heart would break for five minutes. At last she was led away by Colt’s brother, and his friends followed.”15

  • • •

  Once his loved ones were gone, John asked to speak
privately with Sheriff Hart. Making a last desperate appeal, John proclaimed once again that he had not meant to kill Adams, and “begged the sheriff to postpone the execution.” Hart, steeling himself against his own sympathies, replied that “it was impossible to delay any longer than 4 o’clock, and John must now prepare himself to die.”

  John appeared to submit. Extracting his watch from his vest pocket, he synchronized it with Hart’s, then asked to see Dr. Anthon. The moment Anthon entered the cell, John took him by the arm and said, “Now, let us pray.”

  “O my God, I come to thee,” John began, as the two men knelt side by side. He then “poured out his soul in prayer, supplicating for his wife, his child, friends and enemies,” while Anthon “exhorted him to die with Christian fortitude.”16

  After ten minutes, Anthon got to his feet and retreated to the vacant cell “to count the minutes until four o’clock.”17 John then asked his keeper, Mr. Green, “to let him be alone until the last moment.” His cell door was closed, Green remaining just outside.

  About an hour later, at around 2:40 p.m., a deputy sheriff named John Hillyer came by to bid John farewell. He was admitted into the cell, where John—who had been walking back and forth—shook him warmly by the hand and said, “God bless you, and may you prosper in this life, which is soon to close on me.” Hillyer, deeply moved, then took his leave—the cell door was locked—and John was left all alone.18

  • • •

  As the execution hour approached, the mob outside the prison walls—which had been “horribly boisterous throughout the day”—grew even more raucous, sending up, in the words of one reporter, “a continuous and dissonant shout as of ten thousand voices. It seemed like the hungry cry of an army of wild beasts, eager for their prey.”19

  Within the packed prison yard, there were also some who seemed giddy with excitement—“buoyant with the ecstasy of anticipation.” On the whole, however, the prevailing mood was solemn. Among the witnesses were judges and aldermen, legislators and lawyers, police magistrates and other civil functionaries. There were also “several members of the theatrical profession, anxious to catch a glimpse of a real death scene, which they have so often mimicked on the stage,” as well as various “members of the press, shuddering at the painful duty they were required to perform.”20

  At 3:50 p.m., a group of police officers armed with long wooden staves came out into the yard and cleared a path in the crowd for the condemned man to pass through on his way to the gallows. By then the strong west wind that had been gusting all day had cleared the sky of clouds. Overhead, “the planet Venus was distinctly visible in the broad glare of the day, notwithstanding the brilliancy of the sun’s rays.” Within the prison yard, out on the surrounding streets, and throughout the city, people turned their eyes heavenward to marvel at the sight. In the days to come, many would “regard it as a portent.”21

  • • •

  Sheriff Hart had given John as much time as possible. At 3:50 he went to the cell to escort the doomed man to the gallows. With him were his deputy, J. C. Westervelt, and the Reverend Dr. Anthon, who was clutching his prayer book.

  Keeper Green unlocked the door. Anthon, who was in the lead, stepped inside the cell. Immediately he let out a cry, threw up his hands as if to shield his eyes, and backed out into the corridor, “pale as death.” As he staggered back to the vacant cell, Sheriff Hart hurried to John’s cot.

  Mouth agape, sightless eyes halfway open, John was stretched out at full length, “as if laid out for a funeral by others.” His bloody hands lay crossed on his belly. Jutting from the center of his shirt was the handle of a clasp knife, its blade buried deep in his chest.

  For a moment, Hart merely stared down at the corpse. Then, removing the glove from one hand, he touched John’s cheek. The skin, he testified afterward, was “still warm.”22

  • • •

  A tense, expectant silence had descended on the crowd within the prison yard. All eyes were turned toward the doorway from which the condemned man was to emerge at any moment. All at once, an officer of the police court, Andrew J. Campbell, burst through the doorway and ran toward the gallows.

  “He’s committed suicide!” shouted Campbell. “Colt is dead in his cell!”23

  At that very instant, a cry rang out from somewhere in the crowd. “The prison is on fire! The prison is on fire!”

  Overhead, a great stream of flame and smoke billowed from the prison roof. As the witnesses gazed upward in shock and confusion, the Franklin Street gate burst open, and the mob that had waited outside all day began to pour through.24

  • • •

  At the sight of poor Colt’s blood-soaked body, the Reverend Dr. Anthon felt he might faint. He had just managed to make his way back to the vacant cell and sink onto the cot. It took a full five minutes before he recovered his senses. Now, seated upright on the edge of the bed, he became aware of a great commotion outside the window: shouts, screams, cries of alarm. His first thought was “that the mob had risen and was storming the Tombs.” Only gradually did he become aware of another sound: the clanging of the City Hall bell, signaling a fire.25

  • • •

  Fanned by the strong westerly wind, the blaze was quickly out of control. By the time the volunteer members of Southwark Engine Company 38 arrived on the scene from Nassau Street, the seventy-foot-high wooden cupola on the rooftop of the Tombs was totally engulfed in flames.

  Unhitching their engine from the four-horse team, the firemen—attired in their distinctive fitted jackets and leather helmets with long black brims—dragged it through the packed crowd into proximity with the blaze. Newly purchased from a company in Philadelphia, the engine—a handsome apparatus proudly maintained in spit-and-polish condition and operated by foldout “pumping brakes”—was capable of throwing water a horizontal distance of 180 feet from its central tank. Even with the most vigorous efforts of the forty-eight men required to operate the pump, however, the water could not shoot high enough to reach the conflagration. The fire was finally extinguished—but not before the entire cupola had burned down to the roof.26

  • • •

  By then, Coroner Archibald Archer had arrived at John’s cell, where he found Sheriff Hart keeping watch over the body. Despite his suitably solemn mien, Hart—according to the testimony of one contemporary—could “ill conceal his relief” that he would not have to carry out the hanging.

  Outside the prison walls, the prevailing mood was very different. Cheated of the hanging, the disappointed mob—in the words of the same observer—reacted “with fierce mutterings of frustrated rage.”27 There were mutterings of another kind, too. Even before the ashes of the prison tower had cooled, wild rumors about John Colt’s suicide—conspiracy theories, as a later age would call them—had begun to circulate.

  57

  In the days leading up to the execution, reports that John’s friends were plotting elaborate, last-minute rescues had already appeared in the press. On Thursday afternoon, for example, the Herald claimed that “the sum of $1000 had been offered to each of three of the deputy keepers of the City Prison, provided they would connive at the escape of Colt by allowing him to dress in the clothes of Caroline Henshaw, who would be sent into his cell for that purpose.”1 Even more improbable was a widely disseminated rumor that “employees of the Tombs had been bribed to cut down Colt’s body from the gallows while it was still warm and smuggle it quickly to the Shakespeare hotel at the corner of Fulton and Nassau Streets, where two doctors would restore it to life by the use of a galvanic battery.”2

  However far-fetched, these stories reflected the widespread opinion that a man with as many wealthy and influential connections as John C. Colt would never be allowed to die on the gallows—that his powerful supporters would somehow contrive to save his life. In the minds of countless New Yorkers, the mysterious blaze that had broken out at the very moment of the scheduled hanging seemed a clear confirmation of this belief. By Friday evening, a story had “swept through
the city that Samuel Colt had been arrested on suspicion of setting fire to the prison with a view to divert the attention of spectators and thus attempt a rescue.”3

  • • •

  Like every other rumor relating to the bizarre events of that day, this one was completely unfounded. Even as the city buzzed with false reports of his arrest, Sam was sitting in the Court of Sessions chamber, attending the coroner’s inquest.

  Shortly after arriving at John’s cell that afternoon, Coroner Archer had summoned and sworn in a jury of twenty-two men. After viewing the body, they had repaired to the Halls of Justice to hear testimony from a dozen witnesses.

  Dr. Alexander Hosack, who, along with the prison physician, John R. McComb, conducted the postmortem examination, “found that the suicide had been premeditated and arranged with mathematical accuracy. A hole two inches square had been cut out of the prisoner’s vest and shirt with the knife, so that nothing might interfere with the knife. Through this hole and into the body about a half an inch below the left nipple between the fourth and fifth ribs, the knife had been lodged. The left ventricle of the heart was pierced, to a depth of about an inch and a half with the four-inch blade.” It was a mark of John’s steely resolution that, with his last bit of strength, he had managed to “work and twist the knife round and round in his heart to puncture it as thoroughly as possible.”4

  From McComb’s testimony, it was clear that John had been contemplating suicide for some time. A week before the execution date, he had asked the doctor “for a book on anatomy.” When McComb refused, John “then made a number of serious inquiries as to the location of the large veins and arteries of the body, evincing a disposition to ascertain at which particular point death would be the most easily and effectually produced.”5

  Sheriff Hart, informed by McComb of these highly suspicious queries, had confiscated the buckhorn-handled penknife that John used to sharpen his writing quills. John had subsequently sneered at this measure, remarking “that such precautions were useless, inasmuch as if he wished to kill himself, he could open his veins with his teeth.”6