Culled from the Thursday, August 6, 1896 issue of The World newspaper (New York, New York).
SLAIN BY HER SISTER.
The Girl Was Mad and Chopped Her Head to Pieces While She Slept.
HACKED UNTIL SHE WAS TIRED.
Then Washed Her Hands, Slipped from a Window and Told the Police How She Did It.
ALICE HEANEY WAS HARMLESSLY INSANE.
Kate Larkin, Her Sister, Had Been a Mother to Her for Years–Now She Is Dying in a Hospital.
For several years poor Alice Heaney has been regarded as “harmlessly insane.” Yet at 3 o’clock yesterday morning, lighted only by the moonbeams which streamed in through the open windows of the little home at No. 123 Classon avenue, Brooklyn, she attacked her sleeping sister with an axe, and hacked the defenseless head into an almost unrecognizable mass.
The victim is Mrs. Kate Larkin, a hard-working, self-supporting widow who for years had surrounded the demented girl – her sole blood relative – with devotional care and a mother’s love. A spark of life still lingered in the terribly mutilated body after the mad sister had thrown away her weapon through sheer weariness, but the physicians pronounce Mrs. Larkin’s case as hopeless.
Sergt. White was nodding half asleep at his desk in the De Kalb Avenue Police Station at 3:30 A. M. when a small, pale-faced woman slipped quietly in from the street. The early visitor was well but plainly dressed in a muslin skirt and fresh shirt waist. At first glance there was nothing unusual in her appearance.
“I wish to give myself up,” said the woman quietly, very much as another would have said, “Good morning.”
“You do, hey?” queried the sleepy sergeant, thinking that his visitor was about to ask for a night’s lodging. But the girls’ answer awoke the officer like an electric shock.
Told of the Murder
“You see, sir,” she said, in that even, unemotional tone. “I have just killed my elder sister with an axe. You will find her dead at home at No. 123 Classon avenue.”
“Do you know what you are saying, Miss?” demanded the astonished policeman.
“Yes, indeed,” replied the visitor, smiling at the bluecoat’s surprise. “I killed her because I feared her. She was cross to me yesterday and threatened to cut my throat. Before I went to bed last night I prayed for her – oh, how earnestly! We sleep together, you know, and at 3 o’clock this morning I awoke to find the moonlight pouring over the bed. It was bright and beautiful. I grasped at the moonbeams. She stirred and muttered in her sleep.”
The light of madness came into the shifting eyes of the queer little creature as she leaned far over the sergeant’s desk and whispered the balance of her terrible story.
“Yes, she stirred,” continued the woman, “and I made up my mind that she should die. So I just slipped out of bed and stole barefooted into the yard. There I found the axe. It was a great big one, with a blade as keen as a razor. Going softly in to our sleeping room, right up tot he bedside, I stood over my sister. The moonlight was full upon her and showed me where to strike. She shrieked at the first blow, but I cut her down again and again. She had to die. I did not dare to let her live.”
The Sergeant Shuddered.
Sergt. White is a well-seasoned officer, but the mad woman’s story, as he afterwards confessed, brought out the cold perspiration.
Detaining his visitor he telephoned the facts to the Clermont Avenue Station in which precinct is the Classon avenue house.
Sergt. O’Connell sent Policemen Gallagher and Lynch to investigate. They found the little two-story frame house tightly closed, its inmates seemingly fast asleep.
It required a dozen tugs at the doorbell to get a response from Mrs. Mary Bodie, the aged owner of the little cottage, who sleeps on the top floor. She nearly swooned in terror when the policeman bluntly explained the object of their visit.
“It must be a mistake,” she gasped. “Mrs. Larkin and her young sister Alice occupy my basement. The girl is silly, but harmless, and the widow is more than a mother to her.”
Reluctantly the old lady piloted the policeman down the narrow stairs to the basement. As the aged woman and the two men stood in the lower hall groping in the darkness for the door of Mrs. Larkin’s room, they caught a faint sound, as of dripping water.
Gallagher entered the front room used by the sisters as a sleeping apartment and stopped short just within the threshold. The sight that brought him to a standstill would have staggered most men, had their nerves been ever so strong.
On the bed, in the full light of the moon, lay Mrs. Larkin. Blood ran from a score of terrible wounds on head and face, and dripped from the saturated bedding to the uncarpeted floor. The patter of the red drops was the sound that had caught the attention of the policemen as they stood in the outer hall.
The axe with which the butchery had been done lay on the floor close by the bed, its heavy blade clotted thick with blood. Mrs. Larkin had evidently made no struggle for her life – the first crushing blow had rendered her unconscious.
Her mad assailant, satisfied that her victim was dead, had deliberately washed the blood stains from her hands and, after dressing with considerable care, had left the house by a rear window connecting with an alley and the street. She had then walked straight to the De Kalb Avenue Station, three blocks away, and made her startling confession to the sleepy sergeant.
Mrs. Larkin still lived when the police found her, but the pulse of life was beating faintly. Policeman Gallagher sent in a hurry call that brought an ambulance in hot haste from the Homeopathic Hospital.
The unconscious sufferer was taken to that institution, where House Surgeon W. W. Blackman found three separate and distinct fractures of the skull, each of itself almost inevitably fatal. One terrible stroke of the axe had cut out the woman’s right eye and smashed the bridge of her nose. Fifteen other blows had each left a deep scalp wound covering the head with a net work of mutilations.
Identified Her Sister.
Mrs. Larkin partially regained consciousness an hour after reaching the hospital, and managed to identify the mad sister as her assailant. Then she sank into semi-consciousness and throughout the day lay writhing in convulsions, which grew steadily weaker as her life ebbed away. The physicians do not regard her recovery as possible.
Alice Heaney was taken before Justice Teale late in the day and committed, to await the result of her sister’s injuries. She was perfectly cool and self-possessed, and retold her gruesome story with few additions.
“I killed her,” she said, “because she had beaten me and had threatened to cut my throat.”
The prisoner showed no sign of regret for her mad act until she was led from the court Raymond Street Jail. Then, turning to a court officer she whispered, in a frightened way:
“I meant to murder her, you know, but I’m sorry now that I did it.”
Mrs. Larkin was the wife of Perry Larkin, an old-time professional ball player who drank hard and embittered her life. She was finally forced to leave him and make a home for herself and sister Alice. Two years ago she took possession of the little basement in Classon avenue, and began her single-handed struggle for bread.
Alice Had Religious Mania.
Alice, now twenty-two years old, has from early childhood been known as queer. Once she was seized with religious mania and kept the neighbors so alarmed with her ravings and prayers that it became necessary to remove her to the Flatbush Asylum, but several months ago she was returned to her sister’s care as “harmless.”
Mrs. Larkin earned her living as a washerwoman, and won the respect and friendship of her neighbors by her indomitable energy and never-failing cheerfulness.
During the day preceding the tragedy Mrs. Larkin worked hard over her tubs, while the demented sister moved quietly about the little home, giving no sign of approaching madness. The sisters chatted pleasantly with neighbors until 9 P.M., and then retired, seemingly in perfect accord.
Alice, in her cell at Raymond Street Jail, passed a quiet day, but at nightfall a returning fit of madness seized her. Physicians were summoned from the Brooklyn Hospital, but they could do little for the frenzied woman. At a late hour preparations were being made for her removal to a padded cell.
Follow-Up from the August 13, 1896 issue of The Standard Union (Brooklyn).
SHE IS A LUNATIC.
Dr. King Examines Alice Heaney as to Her Sanity.
FINDS SHE IS CERTAINLY MAD.
THE GIRL MURDERESS WILL PROBABLY GO TO THE ASYLUM FOR INSANE CRIMINALS AT MATTEAWAN– MR. BACKUS APPOINTS LAWYER “BOB” ELDER TO LOOK AFTER HER INTERESTS.
An inquiry was held in the office of District Attorney Backus this morning by Dr. James S. King, of 146 McDonough street, who was yesterday appointed a commission to determine the mental condition of Alice Heaney, who on Aug. 5 assaulted her sister, Mrs. Kate Larkin, at her home, 123 Classon avenue, with an ax, inflicting injuries from the effects of which she died in the Homeopathic Hospital two days later.
Dr. Ira O. Tracy, assistant physician at the Long Island State Hospital, testified that the prisoner was an inmate of the asylum for six weeks in August and September, 1895. Her condition was that of an imbecile suffering hallucinations of sight, and that she frequently “saw saints and angels.” He considered her insane. Sergeant James P. White, of the Fourth precinct testified to the prisoner’s visit to the station house on Aug. 5, when she said her sister wanted to cut her throat, and she had hit her with an ax.
Patrolman Thomas F. Gallagher testified that he arrested the murderess. When the officer referred to Mrs. Larkin’s death the prisoner burst into tears, and said that was the first she had heard of her sister’s death.
Dr. King made a formal report to the effect that the prisoner was incapacitated of understanding the proceeding of a trial, and that it was dangerous to public peace and safety to have her at large.
She will therefore be committed to the insane asylum for criminals until the Grand Jury meets, in October next.
