City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago Read Online Free PDF Page A

exactly did happen? Throughout the interview, Muriel Fitzgerald continued to insist that her husband could not have hurt the little girl they both knew and liked. And yet, if he had not harmed her, where was she? Certainly the circumstantial evidence was mounting against the suspect. More and more accusers were coming forward with stories about the Fitzgeralds, some of them outright bizarre. A Helen Hedin of Sedgwick Street claimed that, just a week before Janet’s disappearance, Fitzgerald had exposed himself to her ten-year-old daughter. According to the girl, the night watchman had stood naked in his front window, blowing kisses to her as she passed on the street below. Then a vaudeville actor known as “the Handcuff King” reported that a person named Fitzgerald had kidnapped his four-year-old the previous year at Benton Harbor, Michigan. The child had been returned only when the vaudeville troupe was scheduled to leave for another town. Yet Fitzgerald continued to deny everything. “I’m not the man,” he would insist, even when positively identified by eyewitnesses. 2
    Lieutenant Howe was exasperated. “In my 25 years of police experience,” he told reporters at a news conference, “I never knew a suspect so cunning.” But the lieutenant was still confident of a confession: “He is weakening,” Howe said. “He is nervous and haggard and on the verge of a breakdown. I believe he will be glad to talk soon and tell what he knows.”
    Howe and the other interrogators had been trying numerous tactics to force the suspect to confess. They’d kept him awake now for two and a half days straight, hoping to wear down his resistance. They’d brought in an alienist (that is, a psychiatrist) to examine him. They’d even tried showing him a picture of Janet with her arms out in supplication. “Look at that picture, see those hands stretched out to you,” Detective Sergeant Powers had said to him. “She is pleading. Tell me where you have hidden her body. Where did you hide it?” 3
    Investigators were having no greater luck searching for the girl. One team of police was now scouring the streets of the North Side with a borrowed pack of bloodhounds. Another was sifting through the ashes of the enormous Virginia Hotel furnace. In late afternoon, a fisherman reported seeing a child’s body floating in Lake Michigan off Oak Street. “The police rode around in the water for hours while Janet’s father paced the beach,” the Tribune reported, “but there was no sign of the body.” 4
    Every newspaper in town was dwelling on the sorrows of the frantic parents, filling columns with sob-sister stories of the most maudlin kind. “For two days and two nights, Mrs. Wilkinson has not taken off her clothing or tasted a morsel of food,” the Daily Journal reported. “When she is not running up and down the lake shore with her husband, she sits in the parlor of the little flat, constantly praying. ‘Just send my baby back to me,’ she moans. ‘That is all I will ever ask.’ ”
    Reporters found easy poignancy in the image of Janet’s favorite plaything—a much-battered doll sitting in a little red chair in a corner. The week before, Janet had complained that the doll was “losted.” “I had put [the] baby doll away from her,” Mrs. Wilkinson allegedly keened, “for she was such an ugly doll. No wig—it had been torn off—[and] nothing but a shabby skirt.… And now it’s my baby doll who is lost.” 5
    When Muriel Fitzgerald appeared at the apartment (with a police escort), reporters were there to record the scene:
When [Mrs. Fitzgerald] entered the door, she stood a moment on the threshold, looked fondly at the mother who was lying in her bed, and then rushed over, fell on her knees, and threw her arms around the unfortunate woman’s neck. The two began to weep.
Mrs. Fitzgerald sobbed: “Is there anything in the world that I can do for you?”
The answer she got was a sad nod of the head.
The glance of the