DAN'S PAPERS, June 20, 2008 Page 36 www.danshamptons.com (continued from page 29))
there were people who told me to tell this story, and I did. Interestingly, I was involved in a similar sort of school prank the same year the train wreck took place in East Hampton. I was born and raised in Millburn, New Jersey and was, at that time, an eighth grader in what was then called Millburn Junior High. As I recall, it was around 7:30 in the morning and as I walked to the school, I saw a small crowd of kids in the parking lot there, so I went over. They were standing around a brand-new car that one of the teachers had
Murder
bought the preceding week. The car was called a Nash Metropolitan, and it was a little tiny thing that looked a bit like a Donald Duck cartoon car. It probably weighed just 1,500 pounds. I guess it was about the size of a Smart Car today. Anyway, it was green with white trim, and it was brand-new, and the ninth graders were sizing it up to decide what they ought to do with it. Certainly there were enough of us to do something. A lookout was posted. One idea was that we ought to turn it upside down, but there were the cautious types who said that the
teacher was a nice guy and it would scratch up the roof. Finally we decided to pick it up, which we did, and carry it through the woods around to the other side of the school, where we could put it in another parking lot. So that’s what we did. For the record, I didn’t lift anything, but I did walk along behind. It was fun. And the teacher surely must have thought he was losing his mind at the end of the school day. Well, it doesn’t compare to the Ford having lunch. And it surely doesn’t compare to the great high school train wreck of 1952. •
Tuthill left the house unharmed. Mrs. Downs invited the doctor over the next night. Tuthill came into the house while Mr. Downs was drinking heavily. Mrs. Downs entered the cottage and heard scuffling in the living room. She looked around the room to find her husband and Tuthill with revolvers drawn. Mr. Downs won the altercation, hit Tuthill over the head and then shot him repeatedly. While most stories are linear, this one is fragmented. “Mr. Downs told his wife that he would drive the corn doctor’s body in his own car into the woods,” recounted Mrs. Overton, “and then he would hitchhike back to the cottage.” But an August 21, 1932 article in The New York Times claimed that, “A frayed rope end extending from the front axle indicated that the car had been towed to the spot.” While one New York Times article claims that Jack Brislin and Matt Hayes found Tuthill’s body, another article states that Robert Story Jr. stumbled upon the doctor’s remains. Without a factual account, the Downs case fluctuated. The police didn’t even know the real story. After hearing Mrs. Downs’ account of events, Mr. Downs was arrested. When Mrs. Downs refused to testify, however, she was
also arrested and charged as an accessory to the crime. Mr. Downs was eventually released on bail, but Mrs. Downs remained in the county jail. Then, Mr. Downs pleaded guilty to a charge of slitting a man’s throat a few months after his release from jail. Upon pleading guilty, Mr. Downs forged an agreement that ensured his wife’s freedom. He was sentenced to Sing Sing prison for three to 10 years. Mrs. Downs was never heard from again. While the Downs faded from the headlines and the story of the infamous murder was forgotten, the house remained timeless. A photograph entitled “Closing a Summer Cottage, Quogue, New York,” which was art-directed by Norman Rockwell in 1957, captured the cottage as it stands today. Along with its preserved architecture, the cottage shelters many stories beneath its shingles. There are still secrets to be uncovered. “I recently found a hidden liquor cabinet behind the installed wooden seat in the living room,” said Brown, the current cottage occupant. With a driftwood door for a mouth, the Murder — or Honeymoon — House is good at keeping secrets. If only floorboards could speak.
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“It’s been said that he used to throw his cash on the floor, and when people stopped to pick it up, he would take out his revolver and threaten them.” Tuthill made an appointment to tend to Mrs. Downs at her cottage on 205 Dune Road on August 6, 1932. On the night of the appointment, a paranoid Tuthill told his landlady, Mrs. Fillmore Dayton, to call the police if he did not return that night. Whether it was a premonition or an instinctual feeling, no one can say, but Tuthill did not come home that night — or the next, or the night after that. Two weeks later, his body was discovered. An August 22, 1932 article in The New York Times reported that Tuthill’s body “had been riddled with bullets, and he is believed to have been murdered and robbed of about $5,000 which he is supposed to have carried.” Tuthill’s body was found sprawled on the floor of his own car behind the ruins of the old Shinnecock Casino. An autopsy revealed that his skull was fractured, indicating that someone struck him numerous times on the head, and that six bullets penetrated his stomach. What happened in the cottage? Mrs. Downs made a statement to the police explaining the chain of events. Mr. and Mrs. Downs, who intended on robbing Tuthill, invited him to the house on August 5. The night that Tuthill arrived, Mr. Downs was not home. Therefore,
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