Investigation, interrogation, and arrest.
Oscar F. Russ quickly became the only suspect, despite an alibi.
Oscar Russ was taken into custody — arrested, let’s stop flirting — on Monday, August 23, 1915. Police immediately seized upon him as a suspect, later testifying that Mr. Russ appeared “too calm.”
Suspicion of his demeanor even makes it into the case report from the Supreme Judicial Court:
The defendant was sitting on the lounge and took a box of cigarettes and lighted one and soon went out to get an officer. In about twenty minutes he returned. Police officers came, and the medical examiner. The latter made a thorough examination of the body of the deceased and all the surroundings, during a part or all of which the defendant sat smoking cigarettes.
Mr. Russ would later be described as “too calm” when sentenced.
After sentencing, when a boiler exploded in the yard of the jail where he played checkers with another inmate, he was again “calm.1”
Initial news reports reflect — and attribute to police — the assumption that Ms. Russ had died only a few hours before her husband arrived home, as “[t]he police think it is peculiar that the child would have remained in bed all day, without crying enough to arouse the neighbors.”
By Wednesday, August 25, the police were confident that death occurred prior to 7:00 AM on Monday, a conclusion attributed to Associate Medical Examiner William H. Watters.2
At trial, the time frame would be attributed to tests performed on stomach contents.
Oscar Russ testified that he was treated badly by the police at Roxbury Crossing, as he was held there, awaiting arrest, for twenty-eight hours.
He was kept in a cell, with the lights on.
Deprived of food.
Shouted at.
Accused.
The only one who treated him “humanely” was Inspector Dennessey.3 The inspector talked softly. Shook his hand.
And testified against him at trial.
In August of 1915, Inspector James A. Dennessey was the head of the Homicide Bureau within the Boston Police Department.4
Born in Oxford, England in 1866, James Dennessey joined the Boston Police Department in 1895. He married twenty-four year old waitress Margaret Blute on June 2, 1897.5 Daughter, Kate, was born one year and two days later.6
Inspector Dennessey became an “Inspector” in 1907, when the “Office of Criminal Inspections” was founded within the Boston Police Department. There was no formal training offered at the time.7
Fifteen years later, when New York City announced that it just might do something wild and crazy and offer training in investigation and forensics, Boston police officials jeered at the idea.8
Despite that, Inspector Dennessey was known for briefing newer detectives on his methods, informally.9 When technology became available, he was an early advocate for recording interviews with suspects.10
Throughout his adult life, he vacationed in New Brunswick, Canada, where he enjoyed hunting, fishing, the outdoors, and being interviewed at length in the local papers. Inspector Dennessey developed a sufficiently close friendship with St. John Police Chief, E.M. Slader, that when Chief Slader and his wife visited Boston, a “police car was put at their disposal.”11
After retirement, he traveled and lectured extensively, including on the topic of interrogation, taking the position that “Boston Police never use the ‘third degree,’12” and that “confessions obtained that way have no value.”
As warmly as I am inclined to view the statement — and the problem with these deepest dives, and my inherent sentimentality towards gathered facts, as they are my wave-washed rocks, picked from the shore, is that I do gradually become inclined to view the individuals sympathetically13 — I can’t quite take it as an expression of a moral position, but a practical one.
Massachusetts had an exclusionary rule for coerced confessions, even as far back as 1915. Information extracted under duress, or at least under whatever conditions a trial court judge might recognize as duress, would not be heard by a jury.
Oscar Russ testified, at preliminary hearing, to Inspector Dennessey’s soft voice. His warm handshake. His decency. His measured demeanor.
And that’s why every statement attributed to Mr. Russ, during those long hungry nights at Roxbury Crossing Station, came into evidence at trial.
Culturally-bound expectations for how a person “should” display emotions have been noted to play an unfortunate role in policing and prosecution decisions to this day.
Per the Medical Directory for the City of Boston, 1910, 1911, and 1912, and “Bostonia,” the Boston University Alumni Quarterly in 1914, William H. Watters, Associate Medical Examiner for Suffolk County, graduated from Boston University School of Medicine in 1900. He was a pathologist, gynecologist, surgeon, and curator of the “museum” at BU School of Medicine.
Highly interested in homeopathy, he worked under Dr. Timothy Leary (great grandfather of that Timothy Leary) before Dr. Leary was succeeded by George Burgess Magrath.
Except where noted, everything in this entry comes either from newspaper accounts of trial, or the Supreme Judicial Court opinion,
Boston Globe, June 3, 1917. “Police Inspector and Mrs. Dennessey 20 Years Wedded." Via newspapers.com
There was, in fact, not. Boston Globe, February 17, 1923 “Detectives Made, Not Born Says Boston Police Head: Supt Crowley Doubts the Value of Theories to be Taught in New York School.”
Saint John Times-Globe, October 06, 1932, “Man on the Street Talks with Boston Sleuth and Gets Some Real Clues,” via newspapers.com.
Id.
Boston Globe, Feb. 17, 1923, “Detectives Made, Not Born, etc.”
Vital records via Family search.
Id.
St. John Times-Globe, September 16, 1935 “On The Police Beat - Home News From Abroad!”
Lynn Daily Item, January 16, 1935, “Boston Police Never Use the Third Degree - Former Homicide Squad Head Talks Crime and Its Prevention.”
He was liked, our Inspector Dennessey. The connections he made between St. Johns, New Brunswick and the Boston Police Department persisted after his death. Chief Slader and wife even went out of their way to visit Inspector Dennessey’s widow in 1938.