[SPEAKER_00]: morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: This episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Summer 1841, on a humid Wednesday, two men stroll along the Hudson River near Hoboken, New Jersey with a view of New York City just across the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: They pause by civil's cave when something floating of few hundred yards out in the river catches their eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a dead body.
[SPEAKER_00]: a young woman reportedly with her dress torn and cloth, bound around her neck.
[SPEAKER_00]: News quickly spreads that the victim is Mary Cecilia Rogers, known across New York City as the beautiful Sagar girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her mysterious murder will inspire Edgar Allan Poe to write one of the original detective stories and over 180 years later, the case still remains unsolved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over that time, detectives, journalists, famous authors, spiritualists, psychics, and conspiracy theorists have weighed in on one of the most notorious murder mysteries of the 19th century.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a study of Stray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the show, I am your host Michael May.
[SPEAKER_00]: I first became aware of the Mary Roger's story, probably back in 8th or 9th grade when I was reading a lot of Edgar Allan Poe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to say one quick thing before I dive into the story, which is that it was difficult to research and find the very specific details about Mary's body when it was found.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's because there was a lot of sensational reporting, not just at the time, but in later years, a lot of rumors and speculation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in my story today, I'm trying to report what I think are the most authentic pieces of evidence or details that I could find from the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if there's anything I don't report or I skip, please give me a shout, a study of
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary Cecilia Rogers was born in Lyme, Connecticut, around 1820.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her father died when she was young in Mary, and her widowed mother, Phoebe Rogers, moved to New York City, where Phoebe ran a boarding house on Nassau Street.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1841, Mary was 20 years old, tall, dark-haired, and was considered exceptionally beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: She attracted attention wherever she went, and recognizing that beauty would draw customers, cigar merchant John Anderson hired her as a clerk at his Broadway tobacco shop around 1840.
[SPEAKER_00]: Phoebe didn't at first want Mary to take this job, but after Anderson offered a very good salary, Phoebe changed her mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Allegedly, reporters and businessmen would line up at the cigar shop to see Mary Rogers, and the New York Harald even published a poem about her.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Mary went missing in 1841, it was not the first time that that had happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: On October 4, 1838, Mary Rogers didn't return home.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, the note was later proved to be a prank.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary had simply visited relatives in Brooklyn, yet the incident shows how newspapers, with soon sensationalized her story.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1841, Mary had become engaged to Daniel Payne, a cork gutter who was boarding at the Rogers House.
[SPEAKER_00]: For all intents of purposes, Mary had a great life and was looking forward to a fantastically lovely future, but then came the fateful Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: On July 25, 1841, Mary told Daniel Pain that she was visiting an aunt, Mrs. Downing on Bleaker Street, and would return later that evening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Daniel Pain said he would meet her at the Omnibus stop when she returned.
[SPEAKER_00]: A violent thunderstorm
[SPEAKER_00]: But by the next morning, she still had not come home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pain went and placed a missing person notice in the New York Sun about Mary.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this aspect of the story because it really gives you some insight into how society, especially in the major cities along East Coast of America at the time worked.
[SPEAKER_00]: The newspapers being essentially with social media is now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You weren't just getting your news and your gossip from the newspapers.
[SPEAKER_00]: but you could also post whatever you wanted in them as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And pain was using it to make a public post about his missing fiancé and he needed help.
[SPEAKER_00]: While Mary's mother Daniel and Mary's friends hoped this was another misunderstanding like a few years prior, when Daniel checked and Mary's aunt's house, Mary was not there nor had she been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary was really missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Henry Malen and James Bullard spotted a body floating near Cible's cave in Hoboken New Jersey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sybil's cave by the way is the oldest man-made structure in Hoboken, it's not a natural cave, but a place near the water that at the time of Mary's death had a refreshment business or small restaurant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Malen and Bullard found a boat, rode out into the river, and then pulled the body ashore, and they soon recognized it as Mary Rogers.
[SPEAKER_00]: A former suitor, Alfred Kramalin, confirmed the identity of Mary by a birthmark on her arm.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hoboken coroner, Dr. Richard H. Cook, performed in autopsy.
[SPEAKER_00]: His testimony was reprinted in the New York Harold, and it describes a horrific scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her face was swollen and suffused with dark blood, and there were bruises on her neck.
[SPEAKER_00]: A piece of cloth torn from her clothing was tied around her midsection with the sort of hitch and the back.
[SPEAKER_00]: This material was not fully torn off the rest of her clothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some immediate accounts claim that she had a scarf forced into her mouth, and that she had a rope tied around her waist.
[SPEAKER_00]: These two details I believe are false and likely evolved from the scarf that was around her neck, sometimes described as lace around her neck and the piece of cloth that was around her waist.
[SPEAKER_00]: she had injuries on her back and shoulders and indications that she had been raped.
[SPEAKER_00]: However,
[SPEAKER_00]: The New York coroner later exhumed the body and did his own autopsy, claiming that she had died by drowning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can only speculate for that determination as all the other evidence points to her being murdered and assaulted before entering the water.
[SPEAKER_00]: Investigations led nowhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: To get to what happened next, I'm going to first read from the Boston Post from an article published a few months later.
[SPEAKER_00]: The late investigations and discoveries and relation to the murder of this unfortunate girl have settled two important points.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, the place where she was last seen alive, secondly, the place where she was murdered.
[SPEAKER_00]: The former place is the little wooden tavern close at the foot of Weak and Hill formerly known as Nick Moore's House.
[SPEAKER_00]: This tavern on a Sunday and find whether is visited by numbers of ladies and gentlemen from New York.
[SPEAKER_00]: who usually come there in parties of two and four.
[SPEAKER_00]: No lady ever coming without a gentleman to accompany her.
[SPEAKER_00]: At this house, the visitors usually stay for half an hour to rest and refresh themselves with wine, lemonade, cold cuts, etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: before they ascend to the wee hawk and hill.
[SPEAKER_00]: And stroll along the lower road towards Bulls Ferry,
[SPEAKER_00]: or Hamilton's monument at the dueling ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the afternoon of the fatal Sunday on which Mary Rogers was murdered, she was seen to arrive at Hoboken around three o'clock by the fairy boat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adam, the stage driver, and another young man saw her and recognized her as she left the boat and made a remark to that effect at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was then in company with a dark, complexioned young man, and they left the fairy.
[SPEAKER_00]: They took the road to Wehaken.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adam, the stage driver, also saw the body win, found near Cible's cave, and recognized it at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the same Sunday afternoon, the day of the murder, Mrs. Loss, who now keeps the tavern formally kept by Nick Moore,
[SPEAKER_00]: States that among many others who came to her house was a young lady about the age and exact appearance as Mary Rogers.
[SPEAKER_00]: The young lady reached her house around 4 o'clock in company with a dark, complexioned young man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mrs. L took several glasses of liquor into the parlor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mrs. Rogers was sitting.
[SPEAKER_00]: The young man rose to hand her glass of liquor when she said, I'll take lemonade.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon after this she took the arm of the young man.
[SPEAKER_00]: and walked out towards the hill, bowing to Mrs. L. This was the last that Mrs. Loss ever saw of the unfortunate Mary Rogers.
[SPEAKER_00]: The poor girl Mary Rogers is said by those who assert they saw her went up the wee hawken hill, strolled nearly a mild beyond the hotel on the top, in company with the young man already mentioned.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rain came on and she took shelter in a small house or tavern near the roadside.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that newspaper account concludes all that we really know of Mary Rogers activities based on witness testimony of the day that she went missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two months after Mary's death, Mrs. Loss's sons searching for Sassafress Park in the woods near their mother's tavern, stumbled upon the likely murder site.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a thicket, they discovered a white petty coat, silk scarf, parasol, and linen hanker chiff embroidered with M.R.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ground was torn up, branches broken, and
[SPEAKER_00]: and a broad path showed where a body might have been dragged to the river.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary's gloves were found, turned inside out, potentially suggesting that they had been ripped off.
[SPEAKER_00]: A year after the murder, Edgar Allan Poe, already famous for the murders in the room, Morg, saw an opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a letter to a Boston editor, he wrote that he had completed the mystery of Marie Rojée, which is a sequel to the murders in the room, Morg, and this story is based on the New York murder of Mary Rogers.
[SPEAKER_00]: He promised a rigorous analysis that examined every newspaper article
[SPEAKER_00]: and indicated the murderer in a way that would spur renewed investigation and interest in this case.
[SPEAKER_00]: And indeed, that did happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Poe transported the events to Paris, instead of New York, and the victim, Marie-Roujé, worked in a perfume shop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Early in the story, Poe explicitly connects his fictional story to reality stating the extraordinary details which I now called upon to make public.
[SPEAKER_00]: will be found, recognized by all readers in the late murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers at New York.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will hold off on sharing post theory for the murder for just a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: During the investigation, several witnesses came forward, but I think there's two key witnesses to the story I've already mentioned them, but just for the sake of clarity, here they are again at a wall
[SPEAKER_00]: that testified that on July 25th, he saw Mary arrive in Hoboken in the company of a tall, dark, complexioned man.
[SPEAKER_00]: There actually was another man near Adam, who saw her as well, and they both saw her walk towards We Hawken Road.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other key witness is Miss Frederick Alas, the proprietor of Nick Morris House, often called the Black Horse Tavern, and she told
[SPEAKER_00]: and a dark complexion gentleman came into her tavern around three or four p.m.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are accounts that later that evening Mrs. Lost heard a frightful screaming from the direction of the woods behind the tavern, and it sounded like a young girl crying, oh, oh god!
[SPEAKER_00]: before being stifled or or ending and Mrs. Law sort of wrote it off as miscreants and annoying people out and about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now I'm going to dive into Suspects in theories and I'm going to start
[SPEAKER_00]: pain had met Mary in 1840 and they had plans to marry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though there are rumors and I shall say just rumors that Mary had ended the engagement before her death and according to a lot of accounts, he was devastated.
[SPEAKER_00]: But newspapers questioned why he did not go see the body immediately when it was found and some people suspect that he might have
[SPEAKER_00]: Daniel Payne had an airtight alibi and was cleared by investigators.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, on October 7th, 1841, Payne succumbed to grief.
[SPEAKER_00]: He traveled to Hoboken, drank heavily, and purchased Latina, and drank the whole bottle near where Mary's body was found, killing himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: A note was found on his person, which said, to the world, here I am, on the very spot, may God forgive me for my misbent life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some interpret this as a confession, however, Daniel had an alibi, and most would say that he was just suffering from depression after the death of Mary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, his description doesn't match the description of the man, seen with Mary when she went missing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And speaking of which, let's talk about this dark, complexioned stranger that no one's been able to identify, there are a variety of theories that tie into this man.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the main theory you hear about when you investigate this case, is that Mary potentially died during a botched abortion.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the theory is that this man was accompanying her to an abortionist in New Jersey.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was an accident.
[SPEAKER_00]: she died and they dumped her body in the river.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people also theorize that the dark complexion man was the abortionist himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Edgar Allan Poe's story, he says that this gentleman is a naval officer and had been taking Mary to get an abortion and that either a fatal accident occurred or the naval officer murdered her directly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Poel also surmised that this person was Mary's secret lover.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's a quote from the mystery of Marie Roche.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have attained the idea either of a fatal accident under the roof of Madame Deluc, or of a murder perpetrated in the thicket.
[SPEAKER_00]: by a lover or at least by an intimate and secret associate of the deceased, told argued that the hitch from the cloth around Mary's body pointed to a seaman, and reason that the handle made from Mary's dress was for dragging the body and that indicated a single murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thinking is that her companion, this dark complexion, Swarthy gentlemen, is a person of interest.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while Poethy arises, he's a sailor in the Navy, in reality, we don't know who the man really was, but those are really interesting details that Poe clues in on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll also mention there was a sailor boarding at the Roger's house, who knew Mary, his name was William
[SPEAKER_00]: The overall theory of a botched abortion is the prominent theory that I've always come across with this case, but there are many reasons that I think you can debunk that which I'll circle back to next.
[SPEAKER_00]: After I talk about the other prominent theory, especially from the time this happened, and that's that Mary was killed by a gang, a group of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: This came about because the autopsy suggested that Mary was violated by, quote, more than two or three persons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hoboken's Elysian fields were known for rowdy gatherings, and an anonymous letter sent to police described six rough men taking Mary into the woods.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, that letter may have been fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, Mary Rogers was assaulted and murdered.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had been throttled, probably rendered temporarily unconscious and cook the coroner concluded that there were imprints of a man's thumb on the right side of Mary's neck and fingers on the left and the lace scarf was found tied around her neck which may have been actually over her mouth during the attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: Newspaper accounts amplified this gang theory because there were a lot of fears of urban gangs at the time rightly or wrongly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a quote from the weekly standard in 1841.
[SPEAKER_00]: Halfway between the Elysian fields and Nick Moore's house, there's a small wooden shanty on the bud bank, where liquor is sold and we're almost every Sunday, crowds of routies armed with sticks,
[SPEAKER_00]: They drink, swear, fight, and solely forth towards the Weak and Hill frequently insulting and beating all they meet on their way, besides eating and drinking wherever they can, and then by reason of their numbers and their weapons refusing to pay for anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: While I don't doubt that there was crime and gang violence at the time in the area, this definitely seems like a pretty extreme article built to sell newspapers and reminds me that history doesn't change, humans don't change, and newspapers sell well when they sort of stoke fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is all to say that I doubt the gang theory myself and I believe the
[SPEAKER_00]: points to one singular attacker.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, it's worth mentioning a gentleman named James Finnegan.
[SPEAKER_00]: In late September 1841, police arrested two gang members in Albany, and these two men named James Finnegan, an associate of theirs, as the attacker and killer of Mary Rogers.
[SPEAKER_00]: The suspects
[SPEAKER_00]: and then assaulted her on the shore.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, this lead collapsed for complete lack of evidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: To end the theory's section, I'm going to circle back to the botched abortion theory since this is so prominent.
[SPEAKER_00]: More than a year after Mary's death, another twist emerged.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1842, Tavern owner Federica lost Mrs. Loss.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was accidentally shot by her son.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a bigger story to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That I won't go into right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: newspapers claimed that she had made a deathbed confession.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said that Mary had come into her tavern with a young physician seeking an abortion and that the procedure went wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Loss's son dumped the body in the river while scattering her clothes.
[SPEAKER_00]: The New York Daily Tribune presented this as the final solution to this mystery.
[SPEAKER_00]: This rumor actually reinforced moral panic about abortion and helped drive New York State to criminalize the procedure in 1845.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, Justice Gilbert Merritt publicly denied that loss had confessed and the autopsy of Mary Rogers showed no signs of pregnancy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me say that
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite that fact, this theory is still the most prominent one today, so what do I think happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well to answer that, I honestly can't do a better job than a wonderful article I read on skeptical inquire, so I'm going to quote a paragraph from that article.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Mary Rogers was not the victim of drowning or a botched abortion, nor of murder, following an abortion, nor of a murder suicide, neither was she murdered singly or with another by a gang, nor by any one of several suspects considered at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The best evidence shows that she was raped and strangled by a single individual, an unidentified young man with a sporthy complexion.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: More than a hundred and eighty years later, Mary's death still haunts our imaginations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's always going to be remembered as the beautiful cigar girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lastly, an interesting anecdote, John Anderson, the cigar shop owner that Mary worked for, became a spiritualist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, sure enough, spiritualism was growing very rapidly in the middle of the 19th century, and he would claim that for the rest of his life, he would have faced a face-conversations with Mary Rogers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though, I'll add, she was never able to convey who her killer or killer's were.
[SPEAKER_00]: you've just listened to a study of strange, consider helping us keep the lantern lit, illuminating the unexplained by subscribing to our sub-stack, just head to the support tab at a study of strange.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, stay curious and stay strange.