June 17, 1915. Something startled Carman Cornelius, waking him out of a sound sleep. Too sound, in fact, for he had overslept. Carman was a driver in the Wallabout Market and he left home every day by 1 a.m. to go to work. It was already 1:30 a.m. But he lay still, eyes open, listening. There was only the sound of his wife Barbara’s deep breathing next to him.

Then he saw it. The shadow of a man was in the frame of the bedroom window. He was there for an instant, struggling with the wire screen before wrenching it from its fastenings. Then he boosted himself into the Brooklyn bedroom. Cornelius sat up in bed. “I thought I saw a second figure behind the first, but it must have been a shadow,” he said later. “I was not sufficiently strong to attack the man alone and made a rush for the door to call Robert and Lester Jones, who live on the floor above. Before I could reach the door the first shot was fired. I then began to call loudly for help.”

Cornelius ran upstairs to get help. His wife’s French poodle, Toodles, followed him barking ferociously. Carman roused the Jones brothers quickly and the three men ran downstairs together and burst into the Cornelius apartment.

Leslie Jones was the first to enter the room. The intruder was laying on the bed, fully dressed, with a 22-caliber revolver clutched in his right hand. Jones grabbed the gun, shouting, “If you move, I’ll smash out your brains!”

But the man was dead. Beside him was Barbara Cornelius, still curled up in her night gown. She too was dead, shot twice in the left temple. Dr. Fisher, of the Bushwick Hospital, was summoned to the Hopkinson Avenue apartment. He declared that both the man and the woman had died instantly.

Crime scene photo from the Gothamist

The scene was a strange one. The dead man lying on Cornelius’ bed was about 35 years old and well-dressed. His suit was dark gray, made by Alfred Benjamin & Co. and next to him was an Irving panama hat with the initials G.F.M. penciled inside. The same initials were emblazoned on the signet ring he wore on his left hand. He wore a stick pin with the letter G. His pockets contained seventeen cents. The man wore a Knights of Columbus button and, over the bedroom door, a pennant was hung, also from the Knights of Columbus. Cornelius was not a member of the order.

The coroner, Dr. Charles F. Wuest, and Dr. Fisher declared the man had held the gun very close to his temple and had shot himself while in a sitting position. His right hand was smudged with powder smoke and the revolver was still gripped tightly in his hand. Barbara Cornelius was 25 years old. The wounds on her showed that the revolver had been held close although not quite up against her head. The doctors agreed that the woman must have struggled with her assailant before the fatal shots were fired.

Detectives questioned Cornelius for over an hour but he declared he had never seen the man before in his life. He said, “I had not undressed when Barbara came home from her sister’s house but went immediately to bed. She sat sewing for a little while, but had put out the lights and followed me to bed before I went to sleep.”

Barbara was his second wife. His first wife divorced him three years earlier and named Miss Barbara Sellein as the corespondent, meaning the woman with whom she believed her husband to be having an affair. Cornelius married Barbara soon after, despite the 11-year age gap and the fact his new wife was Catholic and he was Protestant. Despite their differences, the couple was happy, Cornelius insisted. “We never quarreled.”

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