Feature story: Grave Robbery at the Cathedral

WANTED DEAD

THE GRAVEROBBING OF THE LATE A.T. STEWART

TEXT BY GRIFFIN LORD PHOTOS COURTESY OF JOHN ELLIS KORDES

Alexander Turney (A.T.) Stewart, founder of Garden City, NY, passed away on April 10, 1876 at the age of 72. At the time of his death, the so-called “Merchant Prince of Manhattan” was America’s third richest man, making much of his then-nearly unheard of $50 million fortune (a little over $1 billion by today’s standards) from his expansive retail empire, which revolutionized the very concept of shopping as we know it today, and helped inspire the modern department store.

Stewart’s body was discretely interred in his family’s underground vault at the Episcopalian Church of St. Mark’s in the Bowery in New York City. There, he would lay safe and protected until the completion of Garden City’s Cathedral of the Incarnation, upon which his casket would be exhumed and interred inside a vault there. Then A.T. Stewart would rest in peace forever... or so many believed. A Shocking Crime

On November 7, 1878, over two and a half years after Stewart’s death, Francis Parker, an assistant sexton at the church, saw that the stone slab covering the Stewart vault had been tampered with, and ventured into the crypt with the church’s head sexton, George Hammill, to investigate. There, the two discovered Stewart’s coffin lying by the stairs, with the outer casket it had been encased in unscrewed and opened. They then inspected the coffin, and discovered that its handles and nameplate, all made of silver, had been removed. A sizable chunk of its inner lining was also torn out.

But more important, they found Stewart’s body missing.

This discovery almost immediately sparked what would become one of the biggest stories and media storms of the time. Graverobbing wasn’t uncommon then, but robbers usually pilfered poorer people’s graves, which were more plentiful and easier to access. That this happened to the tomb of one of America’s richest, most prominent men immediately turned heads, and that the thieves managed to succeed engaged people’s imaginations even more. Various others, however, were indifferent to the theft. Some even celebrated it, citing Stewart’s reputation as a heartless miser who strategically ruined competitors and sacrificed his workers’ well-being and happiness in the name of profit. Regardless, a police investigation was promptly launched. Initial examination of the crime scene and churchyard produced numerous pieces of evidence, such as a shovel, a lantern, a women’s stocking, newspaper scraps from an issue of the New York Herald, and a trail of vile smelling fluid from the vault to outside the cemetery that

Alexander Turney “A.T. Stewart.

detectives determined could only have come from a decaying corpse. The police even dug up hundreds of other graves and vaults in St. Mark’s and other cemeteries, thinking the remains could have been moved elsewhere. However, none of this produced any conclusive results or clues.

Additionally, the unharmed and unlatched padlock to one of the cemetery’s gates was discovered laying on a sidewalk nearby. This made many conclude that the culprits somehow had a key to the churchyard. Whether this meant the robbers were affiliated with the church or had obtained the key from someone who worked there, or even from a third party, was up for debate, and added yet another layer of intrigue.

Soon after the discovery, Judge Henry Hilton, the executor of Stewart’s estate as well as his former lawyer and most trusted advisor, offered a reward of $25,000 (a little over $685,000 today) for the safe return of the remains. He made it clear from the outset that he had absolutely no intention of paying a ransom for the body should the culprits demand one. To him, the only acceptable outcome was nothing less than the retrieval of A.T. Stewart, and the arrest and prosecution of his graverobbers.

When the news reached Stewart’s grieving widow, Cornelia, she was preoccupied with her late husband’s affairs and with overseeing construction on the Cathedral that was to have been his final resting place. Along with her already failing health and fragile mental state, the matter was a source of great distress and strain to her. She was desperate to end things, and willing to do whatever it took to ensure the return of Stewart’s remains, even if it meant paying money. This put her at odds with Hilton, who insisted on no payment at all. Both Hilton and Cornelia were told by police to wait for the culprits to establish contact first before taking any drastic action themselves. Hundreds of confessions

But at first, no one came forward, at least nobody reliable. In the wake of the news, hundreds claimed to have info about the crime, and some even confessed to it themselves. Many of these allegations, though, were likely for attention and notoriety than anything else, and nearly all of them were proven false. As time passed and no solid leads came up, the case stagnated, and doubt began to solidify that Stewart’s body would ever be recovered.

In 1877, things picked up steam when Patrick H. Jones, a lawyer and former postmaster of New York City, went to the police with an unusual claim. According to Jones, the thieves had written to him, sending a $100 retainer to act as their attorney and serve as their negotiator and counsel to Stewart’s estate. Additionally, Jones claimed, the culprits demanded a ransom of $250,000 for Stewart’s safe return.

The police were initially skeptical of Jones, and didn’t pay him much mind. However, in early 1879, Jones returned with a package he claimed to have received from the same individuals who had contacted him two years prior. While looking it over, police made a shocking discovery. Inside were the same solid silver coffin handles that had been detached from Stewart’s coffin, as well as a piece of paper cut in the exact same dimensions as the tear in the coffin’s inner lining. A message accompanying the items promised the return of the still-missing silver nameplate if a personal ad requesting it was placed in the New York Herald. Its signature bore the name “Henry G.

Whose body lies in Romaine.” Deciding to take their the Cathedral’s crypt? chances, the police went ahead with placing the ad. Sure enough, a package containing the very same nameplate arrived two days later. Jones later agreed through another personal ad to be Romaine’s counsel. In return, Romaine sent instructions to be fulfilled before he, or whomever he supposedly represented, would return the corpse. Stewart’s body was to be handed over to Jones and Hilton during a secret nighttime meeting at a predetermined location. No one else could be present except for those two and the robbers. The ransom money would be placed in holding beforehand until Hilton authorized the payment, which would then be transferred to a representative from Romaine’s side. Finally, once all was said and done, neither party would ever speak publicly about the exchange. Jones was to relay all this to Hilton and then, assuming Hilton approved, place yet another personal ad agreeing to the terms. Hilton, however, was having none of it. He once again refused to pay and thought it silly to communicate through newspaper ads, effectively ending his involvement. When Jones let Romaine know as much, Romaine told him to forget about Hilton and instead approach Cornelia Stewart with the same conditions. Jones opted not to, and from there, things dwindled. Oddly enough, Hilton did eventually offer a (much less substantial) sum of $25,000 for Stewart’s remains. Romaine, though, declined it, and negotiations fell through. News reports about the case eventually came to a halt, and the public moved on from the story, ending the media firestorm that had accompanied it. Much of the information surrounding Jones and Romaine’s involvement wouldn’t be widely known until 1896, when former NYPD Police Chief George Walling, who oversaw the graverobbing investigation at one point, wrote about his experiences with the case in the New York Journal. According to Walling, Cornelia Stewart secretly contacted Jones in 1881, two years after he backed out of the case. Cornelia was intent on finally recovering her husband’s corpse, going as far as to enter negotiations with the robbers herself. Her side eventually offered to pay $20,000 for the remains, quite a far cry from the original

$250,000 ransom. Surprisingly, however, the thieves agreed, perhaps because they simply wanted to get things over with and make off with what they could after failing to score their anticipated huge jackpot. A Secret Night Meeting

As with the previous tradeoff attempt, the thieves laid out the conditions. On a predetermined night, a representative of Cornelia would travel alone north from New York City into Westchester County, leaving at 10 p.m. sharp. He would closely follow a road specified on a marked map sent by the robbers beforehand. Once the culprits were certain he wasn’t being followed and could be trusted, they would send their own masked representative, who would meet him, give a signal, and send him off down the road. There, Cornelia’s envoy would be met by another masked man, who would perform the transfer with him.

The plan succeeded, with one of Cornelia’s younger male relatives doing the deed. Afterward, a spot in the now-finished Cathedral of Incarnation was prepared to hold Stewart, complete with a waiting empty coffin. The body was put into a trunk and covertly transported by freight car to Garden City. When it arrived, two men carried the trunk into the Cathedral, where they deposited the body into the coffin and placed it in the vault, bringing a quiet, low-key end to the years-long ordeal that had once shook the town and the entire public consciousness. Are the remains Stewart’s?

Even with things resolved, however, the mysteries don’t end there. For one, are the recovered remains really A.T. Stewart’s? At the time, the technology that exists today to conclusively identify the dead didn’t exist, and the concept of DNA, which had then been recently discovered, wasn’t widely known. With the exact location of the body’s vault inside the Cathedral remaining a secret to this day to prevent further graverobbing attempts, the possibility of retrieving the corpse to run DNA tests is slim. Plus, if the robbers were brazen enough to steal the corpse of one of America’s most powerful men, they very well could have also switched out Stewart’s body for another to keep the real one for themselves. With how decayed Stewart was at that point, telling a difference between the two would be tricky, if not impossible.

Speaking of the culprits, their identities, as well as how they gained access to Stewart, still remain unknown. The unlocked padlock discovered after the heist could suggest an inside job by someone affiliated with St. Mark’s, but nothing is certain. It’s also likely that the Henry G. Romaine with whom police and Stewart’s estate communicated may have been someone writing under a pseudonym. Determining whether that person really was who they claimed to be, whether they were the plan’s mastermind or simply working for someone, or something, bigger is also impossible.

A final enduring mystery surrounds the Cathedral itself. Popular rumor claims that Cornelia Stewart, allegedly had an intricate alarm system commissioned and installed near her husband’s vault. According to Walling, should anyone searching for A.T. Stewart’s remains ever find them, touching the vault will trigger a hidden spring to release, and the resulting reaction will cause all the bells in the Cathedral’s bell tower to chime loudly throughout Garden City for all to hear. As intriguing as it sounds, perhaps this is one mystery not worth finding out the answer to. After all, if he really is in there, A.T. Stewart’s body has been through a lot, and he deserves to rest peacefully.