Twin Serial Killers Elmira Ny
Two boys playing near a bridge at Carr’s Corners outside of Elmira, New York on Sunday, January 6, 1884 found the body of a young woman frozen in the snow under the bridge. The coroner determined that the woman had been murdered, causing a sensation in the small town of Elmira, on New York State’s Southern Tier.
The unidentified woman had been seen in several Elmira beer shops the previous Friday afternoon, accompanied by a young German man. She had displayed a large roll of bank notes and was wearing some distinctive jewelry—a gold watch on a slender gold chain, large old-fashioned gold bracelets, a large ring, earrings with long pendants, and a gold breastpin. Neither the money nor any of the jewelry were found on the body.
Although identical twins Stephen and Robert Bruce Spahalski were both killers, each acted alone, unaware of the other's homicidal tendencies. 'I thought I was the only murderer in the family,' Stephen reportedly said in 2005 when an Attica, N.Y., corrections officer showed him a newspaper article about his brother confessing to four slayings. Stephen was the first to kill, fatally stabbing a. Jul 23, 2018 - Although identical twins Stephen and Robert Bruce Spahalski were both killers. Top 10 Weirdest Twin-Crime Stories. Identical suspects!
No one knew the man who was with her, but those who saw him provided a fairly thorough description. He was slender, five feet, eight inches tall, with a light complexion, brown hair and had a light mustache and side whiskers. His left eyelid had a peculiar droop.
From some comments he made it was suspected that he had recently been an inmate at the Elmira Reformatory. Officials at the Reformatory confirmed that a man fitting that description had been released on parole, in 1882. His name was William Menken (aka Meineke) who had been sent to the Reformatory after being convicted of robbery New York City. Programma dlya sozdaniya birok etiketok torrent gratis. His left eye was glass.
The District Attorney of Chemung County telegraphed the information on Menken and the stolen jewelry to Inspector Thomas Byrnes of the New York City Police Department, who put his detectives on the case. They identified the woman as a 23-year-old servant at a residence on Eighty-Ninth Street. Menken had taken her away on New Year’s Eve and they were to be married immediately. The spelling of her name was never fully nailed down, it was reported as Katie Bradschoff, Bradshepf, Branerhoff, Broedehoft, etc. Detective-Sargent William Adams who had arrested Menken in 1879 for a robbery in the Bowery, learned that he had a sister living in Flatbush, Long Island. The police watched the house, and arrested Menken when he arrived.
In his possession were $160 in banknotes, and jewelry that perfectly matched the description of the jewelry worn by the murdered girl. Menken was arrested and sent back to Elmira for trial. The citizens of Elmira extremely pleased with Inspector Byrnes’s quick solution to their mystery, and in April presented him with an elaborately framed set of resolutions expressing the town’s gratitude. When Menken was convicted of first-degree murder, later that month, and sentenced to be hanged, the matter appeared to be fully resolved. But it would not be that simple. Menken’s defense was that Katie had accidently fallen from the bridge, hit her head on a post and died. He left her there and returned to New York City because he did not think anyone would believe the story.