The Crime
1947 was a tumultuous year. England lost its status as a colonial power when India became independent and was partitioned into India and Pakistan. Palestinians and Jews rejected the British plan to divide Palestine, leaving the matter to the UN. China was in the process of being taken over by the Communists under Mao Tse-tung. Ho Chi Minh was laying the foundation for a new Vietnamese socialist state, leading to military intervention by the French and ultimately by the Americans. America was hysterical with anti-communist fervor, fed by the ranting of the House Un-American Activities Committee and its freshman member, Richard Nixon. After food rationing had ended in 1946, our left-over ration books had been stashed on top of a cupboard in our little kitchen, but by the fall of 1947, there was a global food supply emergency. A government program of “Meatless Tuesdays” was announced, along with many food conservation measures.
In September, Kitty had just turned 3 and I had just turned 6 and started first grade at St. Leo Grammar School. My father was working the second shift at the Johnson & Johnson plant in Clearing on the west side of Chicago. On Tuesday, September 30th, the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers played the first game of the World Series, with both teams led by Italian-American stars: Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto for the Yankees and Carl Furillo for the Dodgers, backed up by Jackie Robinson in his first year as the first black major league player. The first game was also the first World Series game to be televised. It was that night that a 15 year old boy who lived 3 blocks south of us, broke into our apartment, threatened to kill Kitty and me, slashed my mother with a knife, ripped her clothes off, and sodomized her.
The following day, October 1st, the Chicago Daily News ran a front page story about the crime, stating that my mother, who was forced to “commit a sexual act under threat of death to her 2 children,” was not able to identify the assailant from certain photos shown to her. The following day, however, there was no longer any mystery as to the identity of the attacker who, it turned out, had stabbed another woman to death in a parking lot near 63rd and Halsted Streets. The Daily News ran a full page banner headline “BOY’S OWN STORY OF SLAYING.” The story was accompanied by a three column photograph of the attacker, James Hartmann, surrounded by Chicago detectives. A separate story about Hartmann’s actions in our home appeared on page 2. It included the following:
The detectives had questioned 200 neighbors in the vicinity of the home of Mrs. Mary Clausen, 25, of 7303 S. Emerald av., who was slashed on the wrist before she finally submitted to an intruder Tuesday.
. . .
At the station [Hartmann] said he intended only to commit burglary at the Clausen home. However, he unexpectedly found Mrs. Clausen at home lying on a bed clothed, and he made an indecent proposal.
He admitted ripping her clothes off and then forcing her to submit to him. He denied threatening Mrs. Clausen’s two children, 6 and 3, with the brown-handled, five inch blade knife he carried.
At the police station last night [Hartmann] was viewed by four witnesses to the Bush slaying, and by Mrs. Clausen.
Mrs. Clausen was near collapse after identifying him. . . A brother of Mrs. Mrs. Clausen leaped up from his chair, lunged toward the boy, and missed a haymaker. A half-dozen police restrained the man.
The same day, a photograph of my mother appeared on page 2 of The Chicago Daily Tribune, accompanying the following that appeared as the lead story on the front page of the paper under the 5 column banner headline “KNIFE KILLER, 15, CONFESSES.”
SOUGHT TO ROB PASTOR’S WIFE, SLAYER SAYS
_________
Admits Sex Attack on Young Mother
________
(Pictures on page 2 and back page; map on page 2)
James Hartmann, 15, of 710 W. 76th Street, pupil in the Chicago Vocational School, confessed last night that he stabbed to death Mrs. Gracelyn Bush, 32, wife of a minister, in an attempted robbery in the parking lot near 63rdand Green Sts.
He told the slaying story after acknowledging, upon being seized for questioning, that he committed a sex crime against Mrs. Mary Clausen, 25, of 7303 S. Emerald Avenue, Tuesday night. Mrs. Clausen’s wrist was slashed with a knife and she was dragged out of the bed in her basement apartment where she had been sleeping with her two small children.
. . .
Police Captain Patrick Collins of Englewood Station said Detectives Leo Crotty, Arthur Olsen, William Ward and William Nolan arrested Hartmann after an all night study of police records. Hartmann was in custody in January, 1947, for three purse thefts and a burglary. At that time a Juvenile Court psychiatrist reported “absolutely nothing wrong with this boy.” Police, in checking his record, found he fitted the description of Mrs. Bush’s slayer and of the criminal who forced Mrs. Clausen to submit to an unnatural act.
Hartmann, described by his stepfather, Le Roy Hartmann, a bartender, and his mother, Kathleen, as an average boy who kept regular hours and had nice friends, told Captain Collins that “he didn’t mean to kill Mrs. Bush.”
. . .
Sobs “I Did It, Dad.”
The elder Hartmann was about to leave for work in a tavern at 70th and Halsted streets when the detective appeared. Crotty said they were going to take the boy to the station for questioning about the Clausen case. Young Hartmann went into a bedroom to get a jacket and his stepfather followed him.
“Did you do it?”, the elder Hartmann asked. Young Hartmann lowered his head and began to cry, Crotty said. Then, he said, “I did it, Dad.”
When young Hartmann finished his statement at the police station regarding his assault on Mrs. Clausen, Captain Collins said:
“If you mistreated Mrs. Clausen, you must have done some other things. You look a lot like the young man who killed Mrs. Bush.”
“Yes, I killed her” Hartmann replied. “Get your typewriter and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
. . .
Signs Two Confessions
Hartmann once refused to answer questions until given a sandwich and pie. He signed confessions in both cases after hesitating for some minutes and demanding that newspaper men in an adjoining room be sent away.
Mrs. Clausen identified Hartmann. Afterwards she fainted and was assisted out of the room by her husband and detectives. While Hartmann was being taken to another office through a corridor, a spectator said to be a relative of Mrs. Clausen lunged at him. Hartmann fought the detectives holding him in an effort to retaliate.
. . .
The Chicago Sun, predecessor of the Sun Times, ran a full page banner headline, Boy Confesses Stab Murder!including the news that “Mrs. Clausen was “robbed and slashed in her home at 7303 S. Emerald Avenue [and was] forced to submit to indignities.” The Daily News filled the entire back page of the paper with photos of Hartmann with Chicago detectives obviously straining to be included in the news photos. One showed a detective pointing to the knife Hartmann used on Mrs. Bush and the one he used on my mother. The photos and map below appeared in the Tribune.
The following day, October 3, the Tribune carried a follow-up story, also on the front page, with the headline KNIFE SLAYER, 15, FACES QUIZ IN 4 MURDERS.
Speed Stabbing, Sex Attack Trials
_________
(Picture on page 5)
Prosecution officials yesterday planned a speedy trial for James Hartmann, 15, of 710 W. 76th Street, for the murder of Mrs. Gracelyn Bush, 32, and for a sex crime against Mrs. Mary Clausen, 25.
. . .
Hartmann will be charged with robbery and a crime against nature for his offense against Mrs. Clausen, 7303 Emerald Avenue, whom he pulled out of bed and mistreated in her home Tuesday night. He robbed her before fleeing.
. . .
The Daily News that day had a page 1 story under the headline, BOY KNIFE SLAYER BEGINS TO CRACK. The following day’s paper had yet another page 1 story: CRIES SELF TO SLEEP: Boy Slayer Plays Cards and Reads Bible in Cell.”
The Chicago Sun ran another front page story, with a photograph of Hartmann being comforted by his step-father.
Remorseless and alert, Jimmy Hartmann scrawled his signature to two confessions in which he told in detail of the knife murder of Mrs. Gracelyn Bush, 35, on September 24 and the sex torture and robbery of Mrs. Mary Clausen, 25, last Tuesday night.”
. . .
After reading the two confessions, [State’s Attorney] Touhy released to newspapers the youth’s story of the Bush murder but withheld the statement on the Clausen case.
2nd Statement Shocking
It was one of the most shocking I have ever read,” the prosecutor said. “It is too appalling, too atrocious to be read by the public. Considerations of Mrs. Clausen would also require that it be withheld.”
A Tribune story on October 4th, headlined “Knife Slayer’s Shadow Clouds Parents’ Lives,” quoted Hartmann’s mother:
“My mother came in and said “O my God, the gossip is that the baby-faced boy with the bicycle did that to that woman,” said Mrs. Hartmann of the day that Mrs. Clausen was the victim. “Jimmy came in and said “How’s my best girl?” I said something terrible had happened and he said he didn’t know anything about it. “Do you know about sex?” I asked. “Is there anything I should tell you?” He said “No, I learned about that in the Juvenile Home.”
The slayer, meanwhile, chewed gum placidly when he appeared before a coroner’s jury and in Criminal Court yesterday. Between times, he played solitaire, smoked an occasional cigarette, and read comic books.
On Monday, October 6th, the Daily News ran a page 1, full page banner headline “YANKEES WORLD CHAMPIONS.” Immediately under the headline was another: BOY SLAYER NAMED IN 3 TRUE BILLS, with a 2 column photo of Hartmann, seated, being hugged by his mother and held by his stepfather. The caption read: “An anguished mother sobs “Jimmy, what happened?” as she fondles James Hartmann, held for the slayings of Mrs. Gracelyn Bush. His stepfather, Leroy Hartmann, attempt to console the pair in the jail meeting.
On October 6th another Tribune story appeared stating that Hartmann forced my mother “to commit a sex act when he threatened to kill her child.” Two days later yet another story revealed how it was the police were able to focus so quickly on Hartmann. It related that he had been discovered on January 19th of that year in the bathroom of the home of a 19 year old mother of a 2 month old baby at 7605 S. Peoria Avenue, a few blocks from our apartment. Police arrested him at the apartment. He had also broken into the home of one of his 7th grade classmates two nights before and rifled her purse.
By Tuesday, October 7, the story was becoming old news. The Daily News ran a short piece on page 5 with no photo: BOY SLAYER FACES COURT TOMORROW, but the story was back on page 1 the next day under the headline BOY SLAYER PLEADS NOT GUILTY.
Over the next few months, the Chicago newspapers carried many stories about Hartmann and his murder of Mrs. Bush and sexual assault on my mother. The Chicago Sun seemed to take particular delight in the story, running many, many photographs of Hartmann day after day, one with his visiting parents in the office of the warden at the Cook County Jail, one with his lawyer, another with his step-father, even one of Hartmann resting on his bed in his jail cell, with an accompanying story about his crying in his cell and being bothered that he wasn’t the focus of attention of reporters and photographers. The text of the news stories referred to Hartmann as a “sex pervert” who confessed to “a degenerate attack” and “a fiendish attack” on my mother, but the photos all seemed calculated to generate sympathy for “pudgy” 15 year old and his family, with nary a word about the families of Gracelyn Bush and Mary Clausen.
Paul Harvey, then 29 years old, reported the crime against my mother on his radio show on WENR, with the spin “Wife of young Marine, veteran of Iwo Jima . . .” My mother’s name, address, and photograph and the nature of the crime against her were publicized to everyone in Chicago who could read a newspaper.
Hartmann was referred to four psychiatrists for sanity assessments. On December 2nd, the Tribune reported that all four (two for the prosecution, two for the defense) agreed that Hartmann had a “psychopathic personality” but was legally sane. On January 20, 1948, a jury found him guilty of murder of Mrs. Bush and, notwithstanding the prosecutor’s plea for the death penalty, he was sentenced to 25 years incarceration. The news of the verdict was carried on a banner headline across the entire front page of the Tribune: “25 Years For Boy Killer.” With ‘good time,’ he could be paroled in 13 years and 9 months. Toward the end of the story, it was reported that he would be tried later for the assault on my mother and “for looting her apartment.” The March 9th edition of the paper carried the story that Hartmann had pleaded guilty to burglary and a crime against nature and ‘thrown himself on the mercy of the court.’ He received a sentence of one to ten years for breaking into our apartment, dragging my mother out of her bed, slashing her wrist, tearing her clothes off, threatening to kill her child or children, sodomizing her and looting her apartment.
My mother was 25 years old when she was slashed, sodomized, and otherwise brutalized by Hartmann. The crime occurred just after ‘birthday season’ in our family. My father had turned 27 three weeks before the attack, Kitty and I had just turned 3 and 6 a few weeks before. I remember hearing the name “Hartmann” when I was a child and thought I remembered hearing of his being captured in the Wieboldt’s parking lot in the 63rd and Halsted Streets shopping district. As the Tribune story reveals, however, my memory was faulty. That parking lot was where he killed Mrs. Bush a week before breaking into our apartment and attacking my mother. The crime was never mentioned around me or Kitty as we grew up.
I first learned the nature of the crime in 1963. Your mother and I were living in a small apartment in Stafford, Virginia, while I attended the Officers Basic School at Quantico. We had no telephone. Our next door neighbors were Tom Devitt, one of my former roommates at Marquette, and his wife Ronnie. They had a telephone and were our link with ‘the outside world.’ My mother called me at the Devitts’ and told me she was on a jury panel in the Cook County Circuit Court, in a rape trial. The judge asked if any potential juror, or member of his or her family, had been a victim of sexual assault. She told me a little bit of the Hartmann crime and said she didn’t want to have it come out in open court. I advised her to tell the bailiff she wanted to talk to the judge in chambers, which she did. There would be no further mention of this crime for 40 years, long after my mother had died.
My mother told me that Hartmann had held a knife to my throat and threatened to kill me. I thought she told me that the crime had occurred in an apartment on the first floor of our building, where she was babysitting for our friends, the Baxters, and that the crime had occurred when I was about one year old, which would explain why I have no memory of the event. The Tribune story, on the other hand, reveals that the crime occurred in our own miniscule basement apartment and that I was six years old, not a baby. I had just started the first grade at St. Leo Grammar School.
Reading the newspaper accounts of the attack in the course of preparing these letters set me back on my heels.
My mother was dragged out of the bed on which she was lying with Kitty and me. Her wrist was slashed with Hartmann’s knife. This kind of wound is a defensive wound; she had her arm up to defend herself or Kitty or me or all of us against Hartmann’s knife. The slashing of her wrist and the dragging her out of bed occurred on the bed I was on in our crackerbox of an apartment, where no space was far from any other space. I learned only recently that my father got home from his second shift job at 1 o’clock in the morning to find police cars with flashing lights around our apartment building and many police present. How could I not have awakened and witnessed what happened? How can I have no memory of this?
For years I have had a recurrent nightmare. It is a simple one: it’s the middle of the night and dark and there is someone in the room, a stranger, menacing. When I experience the nightmare, I make a loud moaning sound as if I am trying to scare away the intruder by making scary sounds. Your mother has been awakened by this moaning, as has Geri and my college roommates and perhaps also my tentmates in Vietnam. I never associated this recurring nightmare with anything until I read the Tribune story. What did I see? What did I hear? Was I cowardly? Did I hide under the covers and moan? What did I do?
I told you earlier of my second earliest memory: sitting on the floor of the living room with my father shouting at me. I had always thought that that incident occurred shortly after he returned home from the war. I now believe it occurred after the attack by Hartmann, as we were waiting to be taken to my grandparents’ house on Racine Avenue while he and my mother dealt with the police.
This crime occurred in 1947. We continued to live in that tiny apartment for at least another six or seven years. (Neither Kitty nor I can remember the year when we moved next door.) How could my mother and father have continued to live there? How did they live with the associations that space must have occasioned? I suspect that the answer is that that tiny basement space with the steam pipes overhead and the cockroaches underfoot was all they could afford. It had to be dirt cheap and in those years we were dirt poor.
The family did move to a very small town on the shore of Lake Erie for one summer. Our upstairs neighbors, Eddie and Leona Baxter, had moved to Luna Pier, Michigan, a few miles north of Toledo, Ohio. They invited my mother and dad to live with them and their two daughters who were about the same age as Kitty and me. Eddie got my dad a job on a dredging vessel of some sort working the shoreline. Leona ran a small neighborhood grocery store at the front of the lot where their house was. Leona also carried on with a boarder they put up, a native American. She bore his child, who, according to my father, looked just like his father and not one bit like Eddie. The shabby affair was too much for my father. He insisted on going back to Chicago and we were right back in the basement at 7303 S. Emerald Avenue.
My father says that ‘things were never the same’ between my mother and him after the assault. How much of that was due to my mother’s post traumatic stress and how much was due to his response is impossible to say. It all happened long ago when I was very young and I remember nothing of it though I surely witnessed it. I do remember however that those were the years when my father was an out-of-control alcoholic. If Iwo Jima had not dealt him a knockout punch, the Hartmann crime and its notorious and lurid aftermath did. He was an emotional and psychological and spiritual wreck, and a drunk.
Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work – the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside – the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within – that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up”
How was my mother affected by the slashing of her wrists, the threatening of her children’s lives, the “sexual torture” by a ‘degenerate pervert’? How was she affected by having her name, her photograph, her address, and the fact of her violation spread across the front pages of all the Chicago newspapers? Every member of the family (except we children), every neighbor, every friend, every co-worker, every St. Leo parishioner, every busybody and tale-teller knew of the “indignities” she suffered, the “sex torture” and “crimes against nature” committed on her, the perversions forced upon her. Almost overnight, she had gone from an anonymous young mother of two trying to cope with an emotionally wounded husband home from the war to front page news, from anonymity to notoriety. Anyone in Chicago with 4¢ to buy the Sun or 5¢ to buy the Tribune or the Daily News could ‘read all about it!” It is inconceivable to me that she did not have her own PTSD to deal with, but I have no memory of symptomatic behavior on her part – no alcohol abuse, no emotional withdrawal, none of the behaviors I remember with respect to my father. This is not to say that she did not have symptomatic behaviors; I am quite confident that she must have. I simply do not recall them, just as I do not recall the crime itself, though I was present throughout it. I have blacked it out, as I have blacked out many memories from those days and other painful memories. I remember my father’s behavior only because its worst features were so profound and long-lasting that it has been impossible to forget.
No comments:
Post a Comment