Janet Wilkinson—The Playground Mystery

The Red July of 1919

On July 21, 1919 the Wingfoot Express burned and crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank building. The very next day a child was murdered coming home after playing in a nearby school yard. Just five days later, the murderer confesses to the senseless crime and on that same day, a black swimmer was murdered at a south side beach which triggered race riots that shook the country.

July 21—Wingfoot Express | July 22—The Janet Wilkinson Murder | July 27—Race Riots

Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1919

After more than forty hours of search by men, women, and children there is still no trace of Janet Wilkinson, the 6 year old girl who disappeared Tuesday noon when within 200 feet of her home.

The police spent yesterday searching the house where she lived, dragging the lake, cutting down the weeds near the water’s edge. They sweated Thomas Fitzgerald, a middle aged man who admits he was fond of the girl and frequently gave her candy, the man who was last seen talking to her, the man of whom Janet’s mother complained.

Fitzgerald maintains he knows nothing of Janet’s disappearance. His rooms were ransacked. The cellar was searched. The fifty tons of coal were turned over, the ashes were sifted, the rubbish examined. There was no sign of the missing girl. There were no suitcases or trunks missing; there was no place where a body could be hidden that was left unsearched.

Locate Suspect’s Wife.
Mrs. Fitzgerald, wife if the man in custody, was located at Bangor, Mich., and is coming home. She will be questioned today.

Fitzgerald will be 39 year years old within a week. He is night watchman at the Virginia hotel. He goes to work at 7:30 in the evening and quits at 7:30 in the morning. After midnight he runs the elevator and “hops bells.”

He lives in the same building as the Wilkinson family. This is a three story double stone building in East Superior street with a common stairway. The Wilkinsons reside on the third floor at 114; Fitzgerald and his wife and Edward C. Watson, the star boarder, on the second floor of 112. Mrs. Fitzgerald owns the furniture in this flat.

Goes to Playgrounds.
Janet left her home about 9 o’clock Tuesday morning, and went to the North Shore playgrounds at the foot of Chicago avenue. She registered there, as it was her first visit. Marjorie Burke, 7 years old, and Marjorie Dee, another friend, went with her.

She left them about noon, and the Burke girl says the last time she saw her she was talking to Fitzgerald at the corner of Rush and Superior streets.

Janet’s sister, Bernice, 15 years old, prepared a lunch for her, and left it on the table. Then she went to the grocery of her parents, in Rush street. When she returned the lunch was still there, untouched—proof that Janet had not come home.

Admits Talking to Girl.
Fitzgerald says that when he quit work Tuesday morning at 7:30 he walked around “to tire himself out,” and that about 9 o’clock he noticed Janet on Rush street, going toward Chicago avenue. He stopped and talked to her a minute, and then went on. He got home about 10 o’clock and went to bed, rose at 6 in the evening, got ready for work, and left the house shortly before 7 o’clock. He worked steadily until about 2 o’clock Wednesday morning, he said, when he was arrested. That was the first he knew “Dolly”—that’s his name for her—had disappeared.

Fitzgerald, on further questioning, admitted seventeen years ago he served sixty days in the county jail on a charge of larcent; and about a year ago he was arrested on a serious charge in which two children were involved.

Mrs. Wilkinson makes an accusation against him. Her daughter told her some time ago, she said, that Fitzgerald had invited her into his home, had given her candy.

Daughter “Afraid of Him.”
She told me a graphic story of just what he did,” the mother said. “I told her to stay away from him. She was afraid of him.”

Fitzgerald told the police:

She came into the house another time, and my wife gave her some bread and jelly. She was a nice little girl. I always liked her.

Woman Cannot Recall the Incident.
Miss Winding, asked about the affair last night, said she had never seen any little girls in the parlor. She could not remember the incident at all. There is a bed in the parlor, and it is the room assigned to Watson. Watson has been a roomer there off and on for six years and says there has always been a bed there.

There was a box of candy in the house when Detective Sergeants Edward Powers and Albert Otto made their examination—a box of stale chocolates.

Fitzgerald at first said he never saw the box. Later he said he did recall that Fitzgerald gave him some chocolate about two weeks ago, and that last night Fitzgerald brought the box into his room.

Fitzgerald told the police he didn’t know where his wife was. She had gone to Michigan on the invitation of some friends who had a cottage there, he said, but he wouldn’t know just where the cottage was until he received a letter. Watson, however, knew she was in Bangor, and it was he who, at the suggestion of the police, wired her to come home immediately.

Powers said:

He would have been seen. Besides, we searched the roof. He didn’t take her into the basement. We searched that. There was a fine fire in the boiler, but there always is. Janet’s body was too big to shove through the boiler door, unless it was dismembered; there are no blood spots anywhere.

We’ve tried to find out if any taxicabs were called to that address Tuesday or Tuesday night. There were none.

It is possible Fitzgerald could have got away from his work Tuesday night before he was arrested to dispose of the body—if you accept the theory that he murdered the little girl. His employers admit that. But, so far as they know, he remained at work all that night.

It’s a queer thing about that candy. The box filled weighs about three pounds and is of cheap grade. Fitzgerald wasn’t in the habit of spending much money, especially for candy for his wife and Watson. And just why he should keep a box of stale chocolates around the house is rather odd.

It’s ridiculous to say the girl was hit by an automobile and carried away. She was right near her home and there were many people around. If she had been hit by any machine some one would have seen the accident. No one saw such a thing.

Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1919

Thomas Fitzgerald has confessed to the murder of little Janet Wilkinson.

The breakdown came at 8:13 yesterday morning. An hour and a half later he had led the police to the spot where the body was hidden. It was buried in the coal pile in the basement of the building where they both lived at 112 and 114 East Superior street. The police recovered it.

The turning point in the case came abruptly at the close of the most remarkable grilling in the history of Chicago crime.

Confession Follows Eight Hour Inquisition.
It lasted eight hours and thirteen minutes. It was a new “fourth degree” in which psychology took the place of the antiquated forceful methods. When the tolling of the Sabbath church bells announced to the man that he had reached his thirty-ninth birthday he gave in and told all.

But every possible mental shock had been hammered home into the man’s sleepy and muddled brain during the wracking ordeal.

A detective disguised as a priest had sought his story in the name of the church. He kissed the hand of the robed figure reverently, but denied his guilt.

Tiny hands, taken from dolls, were laid before his bewildered eyes on a table in the dimly lit lighted police station basement as an appeal to his softer feelings. He wavered, but told nothing.

Thousands of questions, appeals, threats, promises, often mere words without sequence, were hurled at the exhausted man. When he nodded in sleep he was slapped into wakefulness.

Self-Control Finally Gives Way.

Finally the great moment came. Fitzgerald hesitated. But his mind had been slowly made up. Perhaps it was the grilling. Perhaps it was because he knew the body must be found during the day, owing to decomposition. Perhaps he hoped for mercy if he told the story voluntarily.

“Send down Mr. Howe,” he directed quietly.

Upstairs in the station Acting Lieutenant William Howe, exhausted by the all night vigil, was nodding over some routine reports. Howe hastened to the cellroom. There was a quiet, kindly talk. Then Fitzgerald confessed everything. He told the lieutenant:

She hesitated. Then I picked her up in my arms and carried her into my apartment.

She started to scream. Before I knew it or realized what I was doing, I grabbed her by the throat and choked her to death.

Having realized what I had done, I then dressed, as at the time I was in my bathrobe. I then took Janet’s body in my arms, going down the front stairs to the basement, where I buried it under a pile of coal.

While Fitzgerald was signing the first formal confession, Acting Chief of Police Alcock arrived at the station. A grim searching party, surrounding Fitzgerald, hastened to the six flat building and down into the damp, semi-dark basement.

Points to Place of Burial.
Fitzgerald, with beads of sweat covering his haggard face, walked to a corner. He pointed behind a rusty iron chimney flue, unused for years, that protruded from the pile of coal.

“She’s over there. Behind that box.”

He reached the spot.

Detective Sergeant Powers said:
“Do you want to lift her out?”

“Sure.” he replied. But his trembling hands refused to act.

Again he pointed. “The head is here—and the feet are there.”

Two white wings, ready to start shoveling away the coal pile, sprang forward. Feverishly they tore lumps of coal from the spot where the body was wedged between the fkue and the basement wall.

They uncovered the little form—swollen and discolored and blackened with coal dust.

“No, I can’t bear it,” moaned the murderer as he turned his back.

On the left, three attaches of street department removing body of murdered child from coal from coal cellar after being directed by her slayer. To their right (reading from left to right), Lieut. William Howe, Acting Chief Alcock, Sergt. E. J. Powers.

Two Thousand at Scene.
Janet’s remains were placed upon a stretcher and carried out to a waiting ambulance. Two thousand people, a shifting mob, touched to the heart by the tragedy, crowded to the doorway. Tribune extras in the hands of shouting newsboys had told them the story.

Fitzgerald was brought up.

“Get him away, quick!” directed Acting Chief Alcock. The slayer was shoved into a taxicab. The crowd surged forward.

“Lynch him! Hang him! String him up!” the men shouted. Trembling with fear, the prisoner was rushed into the automobile as several men tried ti reach him. He was whirled away to the police station.

On the third floor above Mr. and Mrs. John S. Wilkinson, parents of the dead girl, waited in suspense, They did not know of his confession. But the crowd below presaged important developments.

After the body had been removed from the basement the police broke the news to them. Mrs. Wilkinson fell to the floor in a faint. Wilkinson muttered a prayer that the slayer would meet death for the murder.

Outside the station, when the searching party returned with Fitzgerald, was a second great crows. Once more it was necessary to protect the prisoner from the muttering men. There was considerable talk of shooting him. If he was brought out, but policemen scattered the crowd and nothing happened.

A Prosecutors Swing Into Action.
A few hours later the wheels of Cook county’s prosecuting machinery were in motion.

“Red Necktie Jimmy” O’Brien, murder cause specialist of the state’s attorney’s office was called in.

He had Fitzgerald removed, under a heavy guard, to the Criminal Courts building, where the murder story was repeated in detail before official stenographers.

Several times during this examination Fitzgerald drew Howe aside.

“Don’t let them hang me, will you, Mr. Howe?” he pleaded. “Let them send me to some insane asylum. Please don’t let them hang me.”

Regains Composure.
He seemed to recover his composure when returned to his cell. He complained of being hungry. Acting Captain Ernest Mueller sent for a heavy meal of chicken, peas, mashed potatoes, bread, coffee and pie. Fitzgerald ate it all.

“That’s good food,” he told the police official. “If you feed me that well, I think I would like to stick around a while.” He was locked up with a detective to prevent suicide.

Coroner Starts Inquest.
During the afternoon Coroner Peter M. Hoffman personally impaneled a jury and opened an inquest over the body at Carroll’s undertaking rooms, 1153 North Clark street.

Wilkinson, the father, was the principal witness. He identified the clothes as those of his girl, and told how Fitzgerald had attempted to become familiar with her previously to the murder.

One development at this point disputed Fitzgerald’s confession.

See Evidence of Blows.
This, and the fact that the teeth were loosened, led the police to the belief that Fitzgerald, in stifling her screams, had clapped his hands over her mouth, punched her face and even tried to thrust his fist into her mouth to shut off her cries for aid.

For 103 hours the man had denied knowledge of Janet’s whereabouts, although every angle of the case pointed to the conclusion he had stopped the child on her way home for lunch from the playground at Chicago avenue and the lake shore, where she had spent the morning with her playmates.

The city, state and middle west were the searching grounds for a trace of her body. There were thousands of clews, but the police felt sure the solution remained in the Chicago avenue police district, and that Fitzgerald when he talked, would be able to unravel the mystery with a few words.

The Virginia Hotel at Ohio and Rush streets where he was a night watchman, had been ransacked for a trace of the tiny body. Every vacant lot and house on the near north side had been searched.

Basement Hunt Fails.
The basement where the body was finally found had been combed repeatedly by hundreds of detectives and newspaper reporters, many of whom passed within two feet of the burial spot without discovering the object they sought.

Moving of the 120 ton coal pile in the basement had been started Saturday night, and was about to be continued yesterday morning, when Fitzgerald brought the police to the place and pointed out the body, hardly out of reach of a whitewings’s shovel. In fact, the excavation of the coal already had passed the point where the corpse lay hidden.

While the search was progressing, Fitzgerald was denying his guilt night and day.

Crucial Test Fails.
The big test was set for Saturday night, when he was confronted with Michael Kozik, fireman in the hotel, who told him to his face that he had seen the Wilkinson girl on Fitzgerald’s lap in the basement of the hostelry only two weeks ago.

Yet it failed miserably, so miserably that Fitzgerald joked with Acting Captain Ernest Mueller about his new straw hat when the session was brought to a close.

But the police had not yet played their trump card on the taciturn prisoner. Promptly at midnight the “fourth degree” was started. It was resolved to keep him awake until he talked. Psychology was resorted to. Every trick of the police trade was used except for violence.

Try a Hundred Ruses.
Detectives and newspaper reporters were sent down into the station basement to grill him hour after hour. Each pursued a new line of tactics.

At the start Lieuts. Hughes and Norton opened the enfilade of questions. They did not reason with him or try to prove he was guilty. They simply asked him to confess—asked it a hundred ways, shot the proposition at him from a hundred angles.

A physician examined him carefully and left the room without telling him what the finding was. This proved to be disquieting.

His glasses were taken from him. One reason was they feared he would try to cut his throat. The other and better reason was they seemed to be a barrier between the minds of his inquisitors and the prisoner.

Fails to Flinch at Hands.
Once the detectives led him into another room and continued to shoot queries at him. On the table before his eyes were several small hands taken from dolls. The detectives appeared not to see them. He stared at the images for several minutes an made abstracted answers to their questions. Perhaps he saw the tiny hands of Janet Wilkinson on the table, but he did not flinch.

Then Detective Sergeant Frank Smith was closeted with him dressed as a priest. In sepulchral tomes he bade the murderer to confess to him. Fitzgerald said he knew the priest would keep his confidence, but he had nothing to tell.
A reporter then posed as a relative of Janet. He wept for pleas for the truth. But Fitzgerald did not wave.

Confession Ends Vigil.
Then, when the detectives became exhausted, the end came. Fitzgerald asked for Acting Lieut. Howe.

Howe went down overwrought with his emotions. But he displayed none of them to Fitzgerald. Knowing the end of the long vigil had come, he quietly advised the prisoner to talk,

And the man did.

Fears Public Opinion.
At no time during or after the ordeal and confession did Fitzgerald show any emotion, except when he heard the threatening shouts while in the basement.

He was grim, determined and unsmiling throughout. He bore the mien of an innocent man.

Then, with his soul unburdened, he acted like the boy who had been caught in a lie. He worried because “they” might think he was a “horrible man.”

Wilkinson, the father, pleaded to be allowed to talk to Fitzgerald, just to find out what his daughter last said before meeting her death at the man’s hands. His request was denied.

“They Must Hang Him!”

I hope he hangs. O, surely they must hang a creature like him. I wish they would cut him to pieces, bit by bit. Yes, I wish he could die by inches, having a leg torn off today and an arm tomorrow, until he pays for the life he stole from me. He deserves no better fate. He had no right to take my girl’s life.

I want to talk to him. I want to ask what Janet said last, how she acted, what caused mim to kill her. I should know these things. They belong to me, these facts. I am her father.

Attacked Once Before.
This was not the first time he he had tried to assault her. She came running to her mother one day last December.

‘That man pushed me over on the couch,’ she said.

I wanted to kill him then, but Mrs. Wilkinson told me, a week after it had happened, only because I promised not to mention the matter to Fitzgerald. I wish I had finished him then.

Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1919.

BY DR. W. A. Evans
Health Editor of The Chicago Tribune

The editor asks me to write something for the enlightenment of the public on morons, the cause for sexual perversions, their effects on character and responsibility, and the legal responsibility of such persons as a class for their sex crimes and the crimes which grow out of them.

According to the confession of Thomas R. Fitzgerald, murderer of little Janet Wilkinson, he attempted a crime against this child and murdered her, intentionally or unintentionally when exposure threatened. The impulse to the crime of murder was an effort to escape the consequences of the other crime, and differs psychologically and sociologically in no way from the impulses of the burglar, robber, or highwayman to commit murder when suddenly confronted by a situation presenting no easier way of escape.

A Case Like Fitzgerald.
The condition which results in crime against children was termed pedcrosis by Forel, who recited the history of a case similar in many respects to Fitzgerald, but who was a talented artist, possessing high moral sentiments. Krafft-Ebing, who Havelock Ellis calls the great clinician, but not the great psychologist of inversion (and almost equally so of perversion), calls the perversion erotic pedophilia, as does Moll. This is enough to indicate that the condition is well recognized, has been extensively studied, and that there is a considerable literatum pertaining to them.

The most interesting question relating to this matter as it presents itself in this case is that of responsibility. Moll, whose chapter on the child as an object of sexual practices, is the best of which I know, says:

We must hesitate about condemning old men who are guilty of crimes against girls. Men affected with congenital imbecility, general paresis, senile dementia, chronic alcoholism, cerebral syphilis, and post epileptic disturbances of consciousness may be guilty of sexual offenses against children. Old men especially in his opinion are not to be lightly convicted. But when pedophilia develops as a result of any of these diseases, their is an easily demonstrative mental and social decadence for those who will investigate in an unbiased manner.

Legally Responsible.
Moll¹ says that in general such persons must be held to be legally responsible. It would be an error to assume that only morally defective persons are thus affected.

There are all degrees pf mindlessness, from imbeciles and idiots pracheally without mental capacity of any degree to high grade morons with all the mental power of a boy or girl just entering adolescence.

Fitzgerald may be a moron; as to that I have no information; but the fact that he is a paedophile or any other variety of a sexual pervert or invert does not prove him feeble minded.

Some sexual perverts are feeble minded, but perhaps more are not.

Chicago Tribune, September 24, 1919

Thomas R. Fitzgerald was sentenced yesterday afternoon by Judge Robert E. Crowe to be hanged on Oct. 17 for the murder of 6 year old Janet Wilkinson.

Morbidly cnrlous men and women lied the courtroom. The parents of the victim sat within a few fet of Fitzgerald as sentence was pronounced. Other than to mumble that he “was sorry,” the murderer betrayed little feeling. Nevertheless, the ehe was tot lacking in drama.

“Thomas R. Fitzgerald, stand Up.” said the Judge. Fitzgerald had finished telling his own story of the slaying—a story that coincided with his riginal confession-and the closing pleas had been made.

“Have You anything to say?”
The prisoner gazed mildly at the speaker with a pair of lackluster eyes deep set In cadaverous sockets. The thin, hueless lips that served to accentuate the small, receding chin and the slanting bald head curved upward into the shadow of a grin as a bailiff assisted him to his feet.

“Have you anything to say before I pronounce sentence upon you for the murder of Janet Wilkinson?”

As Judge Crowe uttered this question an electric silence pervaded the crowded courtroom.

Fitzgerald’s fingers twitched and twisted.

“I’m sorry. I-I ask forgiveness.”

“Is that all? ” asked the court.

“I ask God to forgive me.”

“Thomas R. Fitzgerald, I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead on Monday. Oct. 27, at the Cook county jail.

And as the judge concluded the formula Fitzgerald sat down.

At the table opposite him, inside the railing, Mrs. Wilkinson began sobbing, it was the reaction from the ordeal of the trial. Her husband placed his arms about her. He did not weep.

Change Hanging Date.
Later, after the state’s attorney’s office had examined the statutes, the date of the hanging was changed to Oct. 17 in order to comply with the provision that it “shall be between the tenth and fifteenth day after the first day of the convening of the state Supreme court.” This In order to afford the condemned opportunity for Immediate appeal.

The conclusion of the trial was marked by the customary scenes. There were the usual perfunctory arguments. Assistant State’s Attorney O’Brien, who wore his red necktie, did not disappoint the curious ladles and gentlemen seeking emotional thrills in the way of dramatic rhetoric.

Chicago Tribune, October 18, 1919

Thomas Fitzgerald, slayer of little Janet Wilkinson, paid his debt to society yesterday. He was hanged in the county jail before the largest crowd that ever witnessed a hanginging in Chicago.

At 9:24 a.m. the little man, dressed in black, raised his hat to quiet the crowd in the death chamber and Janet’s slayer walked out upon the platform. A priest commenced a prayer and Jailer Will T. Davies bound the slayer.

“Fitzgerald, have you anything to say?” asked Sheriff Peters.

Quietly, without expression:

“No, thank you.”

The shroud was tied, the white cap affixed, Jailer Davies stepped off the platform, there was a crash, and Fitzgerald was hanging. They cut the body down sixteen minutes later.

On July 22 little Janet Wilkinson failed to return home. The police arrested Fitzgerald, and there commenced a course of cross-examining that has never been equaled in Chicago.

On July 27 Fitzgerald broke down and confessed. He took the police to the basement of the flat building in East Superior street in which both he and the Wilkinsons lived and pointed out the body of the 6 year old girl he had choked to death.

Two weeks ago Judge Robert E. Crowe sentenced him to be hanged.

NOTES:

¹ Albert Moll (4 May 1862-23 September 1939) was a German psychiatrist and, together with Iwan Bloch and Magnus Hirschfeld, the founder of modern sexology.

The Red July of 1919

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