Unraveling 19th-Century Mysteries: How to Solve a Murder

A determined dive into dusty records and curious confessions (or, how to avoid needlework).

How to solve a murder—

It helps if someone already solved it for you. Sometimes, I like to play a little game. I take an old case, or a newspaper article, or a rumor, and see how far I can chase it. Find a fire, or some seamen. Solve a murder, perhaps.

In Volume 2 of the Transactions of the Massachusetts Medico-Legal Society, there is a case report with an intriguing title: “A murderer’s dying confession disproved by surgical and anatomical facts.” 

In the report, Dr. Benjamin Cotting tells the story of a young woman brought to the hospital with a severe head injury, surrounded by unusual, sharply-defined, crescent-shaped wounds. She was not expected to survive — it was, after all, 1874 — and so the attack was investigated as a homicide. 

Remarkably, she did live. She survived for fourteen years, during which time one man would be arrested for her attempted murder, and another would confess to it. 

As a case report, there was a lot of detail, and care, and if you’re interested in late-nineteenth century medical forensics, it is absolutely worth a read. But there were no names. Nothing to identify the people involved. I wondered: Could I find this 19th-century victim? The confessed killer? The actual killer?

I mean, fuck, why not. What else am I going to do, needlework?

The place we always start - a date, and an event. 

Dr. Cotting’s introduction to the case is a great bit of writing:

On the afternoon of July 1, 1874, a woman, twenty-two years of age, of uncertain reputation, was brought to the Boston City Hospital. She was completely paralyzed on the right side, and seemed nearly or wholly unconscious. She had fearful and bloody injuries about the head. The story that came with her was that she had been found in this condition, a few hours before, in her own hired room, and in her own bed. When found she was motionless, and was at first supposed to be without life. 

[...]

Who did the deed, and what the instrument used, were mysteries that seemed at the time to be past finding out. To ascertain the former became at once the duty of the officers of justice and the courts; to solve the latter was an appropriate task for medicalmen.

Of the investigation, Dr. Cotting wrote: 

…[a]mong those interested in the woman was a young mechanic, who was, in fact, so tremulously anxious about her possible recovery as to excite suspicion, and induce the surveillance of the police. 

Since my visit to the hospital this man had been taken into custody. Proving to be a turner by trade, his workshop and tool chest had been searched. The chest contained the usual tools, having a series of gouges complete, with the exception of the inch-bladed one. That was missing!

[...]

These were rather damaging circumstances, but he stoutly asserted his entire innocence of the whole affair; and no other evidence was found against him. He had, it appeared,

known the woman for sometime….

[But] [t]he woman, on her recovery of consciousness, did not in any way connect him with the matter, nor at the time even recognize him; in fact, she was never able to recall the assault or any thing or person of the evening previous – an ante-accident oblivion not uncommon in those who have been severely stunned. The detained man made out an alibi, and was subsequently set free. 

Dr. Cotting provided no other details concerning the “mechanic” who’d been suspected of the attack, or the details of why, and how, he’d been “set free.” 

Concerning the “confession,” Dr. Cotting wrote, “[i]n May, 1876, nearly two years afterward, a condemned murderer, a few days before his execution, made a confession of many of his misdeeds, and claimed this assault as one of the number.” 

Capital punishment — and who received it, and when the sentence was carried out, and for what — is, like fires and shipwrecks, newsworthy. It was a place to start.

Our murderer leads us to his victim

Massachusetts hanged two men in May of 1876: Samuel Frost and Thomas W. Piper. There were few details readily available concerning Mr. Frost, but, per the Mass. Attorney General’s Annual Report for 1877, Mr. Frost was indicted, tried, and convicted of the murder of Frank B. Towne. No mention of crimes against women or a last-minute confession. 

Thomas W. Piper, however. The Attorney General included this aside, in his otherwise businesslike report: 

This cause, from the remarkable circumstances attending the commission of the crime, the previously supposed good character of the defendant, the pertinacity with which he was defended, his final conviction and subsequent confession, has passed into history as one of the most remarkable in the administration of criminal jurisprudence…

Thomas Piper’s pre-execution “confessions” were, like his execution would be, newsworthy. The details were covered in papers, nation-wide. 

Piper confessed not just to the murder for which he’d already been convicted, but also to the murder of Irish immigrant Bridget Landregan, and what we’d call, these days, an attempted murder:

Piper also confesses that he was the assailant of Mary Tyner, who was so mysteriously beaten on July 1, 1874, but after lying for months between life and death recovered her health but not her reason, and is now an inmate of an insane asylum. He says that he attempted to kill her, and that the murder of Mabel Young and of Bridget Landregan were both prompted by the use of rum and opium, under the use of which he had a crazy desire to shed blood. 

The date of the attack lined up with Dr. Cotting’s report. However, to be absolutely certain, I wanted the date and cause of death to line up, as well. Off to the city clerk’s records. 

And there she was: 

Mary Tynan. Fracture of skull, alcoholism, soft of brain. 

And from the false confession, to the real killer

But, what of the “mechanic?” He was a bit harder to find. “Colby” is mentioned as an alternate suspect in the assault on July 1, 1874. Was he the one detained and released, with the alibi and the missing gauge? 

As I had Ms. Tyner’s name, and its most popular misspellings, and the confessed killer’s details, I had enough to gather articles. They led to the address where it occurred; the names of the investigating detectives; and finally, via endless scrolling, issue by issue, with crossed fingers, I found a newspaper article concerning the grand jury’s refusal to charge the suspect. Then, another.  

A full name. 

And some confirmation: 

…

But who was the “real” killer? The confessed murderer, Thomas Piper? Or Dana S. Colby, who later returned home to Maine, to build coffins and farm stands and voting booths?

Dr. Cotting had an idea.¹ For what it’s worth, I agree. 

1. Dr. Cotting’s work is here: https://archive.org/details/transactionsofma02mass/page/n69/mode/2up