Mary
Cecilia Rogers
Mary Rogers was a
20-year-old girl who lived in a boarding house run by her mother. She
She
became a Manhattan celebrity, so when she disappeared the first time and failed
to appear
for work, it was front-page headlines. Her mother said she had found a suicide
note. The coroner saw the note and said Mary was “fixed and unalterable
determination to destroy herself.” But she returned, saying she had gone to
visit friends and did not know what all the fuss had been about. The Sun was accused of manufacturing the
story to sell papers, and John Anderson was accused of developing the scheme as
a publicity stunt. Shortly after, she left the Emporium to go help her mother
with the boarding house. While at the boarding house, she met a cigar cutter
named Daniel Payne. The two developed a romantic relationship and finally got
engaged.
One
night in 1841, she told Daniel she was going to visit her aunt. There was an
arrangement that he would come to pick her up, but that night there was a
terrible thunderstorm and Daniel thought Mary would not want to go out in that
weather and decided he would get her in the morning. Now there were no
telephones or text messages at that time, so Mary had no idea he was not coming
to get her. The next morning Daniel and Mary’s mother found out that not only wasn’t
Mary at the aunt’s, but she had not even been expected. Where had she really
gone?
A group
of men were walking by the river in Hoboken near Sybil’s Cave, a local tourist
attraction, not an isolated location, when they saw a bundle in the river. They
borrowed a boat and dragged from the river a lovely young woman. When they
reached the shore, they called for the authorities, and the coroner said she
had been strangled. Her clothes were torn, and her body looked beaten. It just
so happened that one of Mary’s ex-boyfriends was looking for her and came upon
the group surrounding her body and recognized her as Mary Cecilia Rogers. Solving
this crime became a local obsession, and it ran on the front pages of all the
papers. These newspaper editors knew Mary and wanted her murder solved, but
they also saw headlines that sold papers.
A
few days later, two boys found the rest of Mary’s clothing in a pile in the
grasses. It was suspected that the clothing had been put there after the search
had been done of the area. It had already been searched thoroughly and
carefully by the investigators. White gloves were found in the pile, but they
couldn’t be Mary’s because she was wearing white gloves when she was fished out
of the river.
The
police believed that a “roaming gang of thieves” could be the culprits, but
they also took a very close look at the fiancé. The couple had been arguing lately,
and Mary had threatened to call off the wedding. But he had an alibi.
Frederica
Loss, mother of the boys who had found the clothing, had her own tale to tell.
She said that Mary and an unknown man had checked into the Nick Moore House
that night. They had both gone out but had never returned. Later she heard
screams from the woods. Why didn’t she tell the police her story sooner?
The
papers made sure to keep the crime on the pages daily. They criticized the
investigators and publicized the $750 reward posted by the Governor. The press
even warned parents about letting their daughters come into the city, using
Mary as an example of what can happen to them. These papers had at least one
avid reader. Edgar Allen Poe devoured every word he could read on the death of
Mary Rogers.
On November 6, 1842, Frederica Loss was accidentally shot
by one of her sons and lingered in pain, hallucinating for days. She told a
slightly different story about what happened to Mary Rogers. Mary had come with a
doctor who performed an abortion on Mary, but Mary died during the operation.
Loss’s sons dumped the body in the river and later scattered her clothing in
the area around the river. The sons were briefly charged, but there was not
enough evidence to bring them to trial.
One night, Daniel Payne sat on a bench near the spot Mary’s
body had been found and took poison. He wrote a note saying, “To the World, I
am on the very spot. May God forgive me for a misspent life.” Was this a
confession? Was he on the spot where he had killed her? What did God need to
forgive him for? The police would have been convinced that this was a
confession and their mystery had been solved, except Daniel had an airtight alibi,
so they were still left with questions with no answers.
It was then suggested that John Anderson killed her and
had paid Edgar Allen Poe $5,000 to write his story to take the suspicion away
from John. John claimed to be haunted by the ghost of Mary Rogers.
The death of Mary Cecilia Rogers was never solved. The New York Herald published a poem
about Mary:
She
moved amid the bland perfume’
That breathes of
heaven’s balmiest isle;
Her eyes had
starlight’s azure gloom
And a glimpse of
heaven – her smile.
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