Part 1: Death of a Clubman - The 1920 Murder of "Whist Wizard" and "Love Pirate" Joseph B. Elwell that Inspired the Creation of Ellery Queen
All it took was one bullet to kill Joseph Bowne Elwell, shot in the forehead around eight o'clock on the morning of June 11, 1920, in his tony Manhattan brownstone. He didn't die right away but drifted between life and death for an hour or so unable to speak, an irony the perpetrator probably savored in a man prone to overexposure.
The .45 caliber round passed through the victim's skull, ricocheted off the wall behind him, and came to rest neatly on the table beside the mortally wounded man. Or it was embedded in the wall. Or in the chair; minor details really, but this and many other particulars in this case are surprisingly elusive.
One spent cartridge was found on the floor at Elwell's feet. The assassin was either a good shot or lucky, if goodness and luck can properly be ascribed to the taking of a human life. The murderer has never been conclusively identified, and the weapon was never found.
By contrast, Elwell was perhaps too well known and too easily found, but experts differed as to whether he had been lucky or good. Certainly, he had the trappings of success: a sumptuous home at 244 West 70th Street; the regular company of beautiful women and wealthy men; a measure of respect for his proficiency with playing cards and racehorses.
As a father and a husband Elwell was an unapologetic failure, but even his estranged wife, Helen, agreed that he was "marvelous" at social dancing; in the Jazz Age that surely counted for something.
However light on his feet and debonaire he had been in life, at the age of 47 he met his end slumped in a chair in his first-floor reception room, spilling out of his pajamas, his teeth and his hair both upstairs in the bedroom.
Apart from the authorship of a few books on the game of bridge, Elwell's legacy is most pronounced as inspiring the creation of one of fiction's most insightful detectives, Ellery Queen.
Wealth and Unhappiness
Elwell entered high society by marrying up. His wife, Helen Derby Elwell, said that he was "poor" when she married him in 1904, whereas she came from a prominent Brooklyn family and was related by marriage to the Roosevelts.
She taught him the game of bridge (an offshoot of an older game, whist) and played as his partner during social gatherings. Elwell took to the game and used it as a vehicle to gain a cachet that was more the domain of his wife. Although Elwell eventually made a good living by wagers on horses and cards, his real sporting instincts were in the seduction of young, impressionable women.
The development of Elwell's character through this period is revealed in the statement of Mrs. Elwell, made during the course of the investigation. She is now a woman of 40, quiet and matronly, and not at all the type of feminine person with whom Elwell indulged his social caprices.
She said: 'He was poor when I married him. Through my social connections he entered upon a career as a card expert that brought wealth and unhappiness. I wrote the books and attended to their publication, he signed them and drew the royalties. When he began to realize my mental superiority, through the compilation and publication of the books on bridge, then his affection for me turned to jealousy and indifference.
'Society turned his head. He was clever. He had a fascinating way with women. But his ideas concerning them were peculiar, to say the least. They were playthings for him. He used to say that no woman over 29 should be allowed to live. They lost their charm for him after that, so it is plain that his regard for women was physical rather than intellectual.
By 1916, once Elwell was earning royalties as an author and fees as an instructor in card games, he found himself less desirous of his wife's companionship and they began to live apart. Their son, Richard, remained with his mother. Richard was 15 at the time of his father's death and was studying at an elite boarding school in Massachusetts. Elwell seldom saw the boy and evinced no particular interest in being his father.
Helen Derby Elwell was even more candid about her husband's attitude towards women in an article published in the Wyoming State Tribune on July 1, 1920:
And he would say, 'I like them cold, false, beautiful—but withal—daring, racy, a little worldly—a little past twenty-seven, let us say—with a memory of the past—a woman who might perhaps be a little worn with life, but amused at the devastation—and laughing, that's it, laughing. They should laugh always, in the face of everything—they should take things either with humor, or with hauter.'
Indeed, the walls of the third floor of his home were filled with pictures of women with whom he had become familiar. At the rear of that floor was his bedroom, balanced by a lavish boudoir at the front of the house. An expansive cocktail bar lay between these two chambers.
Upon his death, notes were discovered cataloging the intimate details of fifty-three of these women, some of whom he was supporting financially. Elwell had no scruples as to the marital status of his conquests.
This complicated the investigation into his death, as the police were confronted with a vast array of potentially lethal male and female suspects who traveled in social circles outside the experience of most law enforcement personnel.
In an official endorsement of Elwell's chauvinism, the investigators of the crime categorically discounted the possibility that a woman could have pulled the trigger—even after eighteen-year-old Marion Rice demonstrated that she was more than capable of handling a similar weapon.
To disprove the statement that a woman could not handle the .45 caliber army automatic with which Joseph B Elwell, turfman and whist expert, was shot at his New York home, Miss Marion Rice, eighteen, of Brooklyn, recently demonstrated to the contrary. Out of three shots she scored three bullseyes. The scene of the murder is shown about. The chair is the one in which Elwell sat when he was killed. The bullet, after mortally wounding Elwell, struck the plaster and rebounded, falling on the table. The photo shows how the bullet tore the plaster.
A Probable Timeline
The general sequence of events surrounding the shooting was more or less as follows:
On Thursday evening, June 10, Elwell enjoyed dinner at the Ritz Carleton Hotel with copper magnate and Broadway producer Walter Lewisohn; his wife, Selma, an opera star; Mrs. Lewisohn's sister, Viola Kraus, who was in a relationship with Elwell; and a South American journalist, Signor P. Figureoa.
Coincidentally seated nearby were Viola's estranged husband, Victor von Schlegell, from whom she would be granted a divorce on the following morning; and von Schlegell's fiancée, Elly Hope Anderson, a singer from Minneapolis studying voice in New York. Ms. Anderson would be identified in the press as "the woman in black" ostensibly to preserve her honor. She and von Schlegell would be married in 1922.
- Following dinner, all parties including (coincidentally) von Schlegell and Anderson attended Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic cabaret in the rooftop garden of the New Amsterdam Theatre. The show ended at about 2:00 AM.
- Walter and Selma Lewisohn, Ms. Kraus, and Signor Figureoa left the theatre at 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue in Lewisohn's limousine. Elwell declined their offer of a ride so as not to crowd the car.
Elwell began walking west on 42nd Street towards Eighth Avenue.
One account stated that he hailed a cab, paused briefly near 42nd Street and Broadway to pick up a horseracing newspaper, and arrived home at 2:30 AM.
Another claims that he went to the Café Montmarte at 50th Street and Broadway where he spent time with two men and a woman. This account claims that he was dropped off at home by a man driving a noisy roadster at 3:45 AM.
Allegedly, in the early morning hours Elwell received a call from Viola Kraus apologizing for her part in a minor quarrel that evening. Phone company records showed that at 4:39 AM Elwell placed a call to William Pendleton, his partner in a horseracing stable, in Far Rockaway.
At 6:09 AM (or somewhat closer to 8:00 AM) he placed a call to Asbury Park, New Jersey, to Florence C. Ellenson, a twenty-year-old news stand attendant he met while at a hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.
Apparently, Elwell made arrangements to meet Ellenson at Penn Station at 9:09 that morning.
All of the above telephone traffic was reported in various sources although Elwell's housekeeper, Marie Larsen, said the telephones in the house had been out of order for several days.
There was an account from a cab driver that he drove a man and a woman to Elwell's house at 5:00 AM but drove off without his fare when he heard a woman scream.
There was a further allegation that several other calls were placed from Elwell's number, one of them described by the operator as featuring a woman's voice.
Yet another cab driver said he picked up a man and a woman at Elwell's address at 2:30 AM and took them to the corner of 76th Street and Park Avenue.
- At 6:45 AM Jost Otter, a milkman, left bottles of milk inside the vestibule's outer doors.
- At 7:35 AM postman Charles S. Torey dropped the mail on the vestibule floor, pressed the buzzer twice, and left.
- Between 7:35 and 8:00 AM two house painters next door described hearing a loud noise that they ascribed to a car's blown-out tire.
At 8:10 or thereabouts, Marie Larsen, Elwell's housekeeper for over a year, unlocked the front door and entered the house, whereupon she smelled gunpowder smoke. She followed it into the front sitting room and found Elwell in his pajamas slumped in a chair, alive but unconscious, with a bullet wound in his forehead.
The morning mail was on the table beside him, and a bloodstained letter from a horseracing colleague lay in his lap. The telephone on the small table next to him was broken.
She ran to Patrolman William Singer at the corner of 70th Street and Amsterdam Avenue who came to the house, then called from next door for an ambulance at 8:31.
Initially the police believed the incident to be a suicide attempt, so they did not immediately dispatch officers to the scene. The medical examiner, Dr. Charles G. Norris, arrived an hour later and ruled the "suicide" a homicide.
Obviously, there are substantial discrepancies in the events described during the six hours preceding the shooting. No one was seen entering or leaving Elwell's residence apart from those noted above. A .45 caliber shell casing was found on the floor where he had been shot, but no weapon was located. Mrs. Larsen said that the front, rear, and basement doors were all locked, and only one window was open, on the third floor. She claimed that the locks had been changed recently and that only she and Elwell had keys.
After intense questioning by the police, Mrs. Larsen admitted to removing a pink lingerie set and slippers from the third-floor boudoir and hiding them in a washtub in the basement, ostensibly to protect the owner of the garments from disgrace.
She also admitted that she had "tidied up" Elwell's bedroom after he had been taken to the hospital. Nothing appeared to have been stolen although money and jewelry were easily available. His bed was made up, but he may have lain down for a nap or to read the paper.
In the settlement of his estate, Elwell was found to be solvent, and no large outstanding debts were discovered such that someone might kill him over them. Elwell's estate went to his parents, who provided for his son. There were allegations that he illegally procured liquor, but these were insubstantial.
- A former housekeeper, Anna Kane, reached in Ireland, claimed to have overheard a "Miss Wilson" (a fictitious name) threaten to kill Elwell if he deserted her again. After weeks of stonewalling the press, Ms. Kane's allegation forced District Attorney Edward Swann to admit that the "Pink Lady" was in fact Viola Kraus.
During her three-hour interview with the police, Kraus downplayed her relationship with Elwell, whom she had known for at least eight years. However, Mrs. Joseph E. Wilmerding, whom the press referred to as "the woman in white," acknowledged that she was the rival of "Miss Wilson" (i.e., Kraus) to whom Kane referred.
So much of this saga was cloaked in an exaggerated sense of propriety and coded sensuality that one practically needs a scorecard to keep track of all the players. This era was not called the "Roaring Twenties" for nothing. The police were out of their depth in many respects.
True Crime to Detective Stories
As sensational as this crime was, it was only natural that a book would be written about it. That book was The Benson Murder Case by Willard Huntington Wright, writing under the pen name of S.S. Van Dine. Wright had been bedridden for two years in 1923 and had read thousands of detective novels to pass the time. As the beneficiary of a Harvard education and with experience as a journalist at The Los Angeles Times, he thought he could elevate the genre. He fictionalized the Elwell murder and introduced the character of Philo Vance as the detective on the case.
As a proof that truth and fiction are very much intertwined, this from "Ellery Queen" in 1952:
Now it happened that two young New York advertising men—who were later to join forces under the pen name of Ellery Queen—heard the rising din, read The Benson Murder Case. In the manner of immortal Sherlock in A Study in Scarlet we saw the handwriting on the wall and found it a revelation. We had been under-the-blanket addicts of crime fiction since boyhood. We had once gone so far as partially to plot one (in which the detective's moniker—hold your hat—was to have been "Wilbur See"). But a decent respect for the opinions of mankind had (happily in that case) quenched our fire.
The Van Dine novel kindled it again.
With the publication of The Benson Murder Case the back-alley American detective story crossed the tracks to sign a long-term lease in the most reputable part of town.
Accordingly, in 1928, we wrote The Roman Hat Mystery and Ellery Queen was born.
So the Elwell case, from which The Benson Murder Case sprang, has always occupied the warmest corner of our hearts.
The two authors, Frederic Dannay and his first cousin, Manfred B. Lee, would publish thirty-five novels under the pseudonym, "Ellery Queen" over more than forty years. Some readers may recall a television show in the 1970s in which Ellery Queen was played by Jim Hutton and his father, Inspector Richard Queen, was played by David Wayne. Lee died in 1971; Dannay in 1982.
Stay tuned for Part 2! Readex Senior Researcher Brian Benoit will reopen the case of Joseph Brown Elwell to see what a retrospective of historical newspapers reveals.
