MURDER IN THE MOONLIGHT: THE KILLINGS OF GEORGE TRUSSELL AND WILLIAM MCKEEVER, CHICAGO 1866
George Trussell went to the track
for some drinking and gambling on the Tuesday Mollie Cosgriff shot him dead.
September 4, 1866, was supposed
to have been a big day for Trussell, but not that big. He was half-owner of Dexter, one of the most
famous and successful horses in America during its time, and the racer was
scheduled to run in the Chicago Driving Park’s feature event that day, a $5,000
match against two of his biggest equine rivals—General Butler and George M.
Patchen, Jr. But thunderstorms drenched
the city in the morning and the race was postponed.
Kinney Brothers Tobacco
N231, American Trotters, 1889-1890 Dexter.
Not just for baseball
players, tobacco cards also featured other popular sports and subjects.
Trussell knew his horses, and he knew
his gambling, too. He made a fortune
running one of Chicago’s biggest faro houses in the mid-1860s.
It was also said that Trussell
knew his drinking. One Chicago newspaper
called the tall, slim 32-year-old a considerable addict to the spirits.
So it wasn’t a surprise that
Trussell went to Seneca Wright’s tavern on Randolph Street around 10 p.m. for a
nightcap and a song after an earlier tour of downtown bars with some of his
sporting friends.
What was a surprise, was when
Mollie Cosgriff showed up at the saloon, wanting a word or two with
George. She looked, according to one
newspaper, as if she had just come from a dancing party, wearing a striking
white moire dress to the occasion, a shawl draped over her shoulders, drunk,
and carrying a revolver in a pocket.
Mollie was no stranger to the
tavern side of life. She ran a
well-known house of ill-repute on Fourth Avenue.
Mollie Cosgriff. Aka Mollie Cosgrove, aka Mollie Trussell.
Image:
Dedmon, Emmett, Fabulous Chicago, 1953, page 95
George and Mollie were no
strangers to each other. Mollie had
fallen into the demi-monde in Chicago after moving to the city from her home in
Ohio. Her attractive figure and
alluring beauty naturally gained the attention and affection of Chicago’s fast
young men, and George was no exception.
An affair evolved, and a child by Mollie’s calculations. The romance ended from George’s point of
view, but Mollie never lost her devotion to the man and commonly used his last
name as her own.
The lingering feelings were not
reciprocal. George didn’t feel much like
talking with Mollie that night, and he tried to push her out the front door of the
tavern. Seneca Wright came from behind
the bar and briefly separated the two.
Wright returned to his bartending.
Pushing and shoving resumed. One
witness said George struck Mollie. Others
said he didn’t. Mollie pulled her gun
and shot George in the left chest
George lurched back toward the
center of the saloon. Mollie followed,
and fired again, the bullet striking him in the back. George stumbled toward a side door of the
saloon. Mollie shot him a third
time. He staggered out the door, into
the entrance of Price’s livery stable, and collapsed.
As if just coming out of a
trance, Mollie raced out of the saloon and threw herself on her former lover’s
body, shrieking frantically, “O my George!
My George! He is dead.”
A notorious gambler and owner of a famous horse, killed in his prime. A jilted lover, a keeper of a lewd house, a drunken murderess. Newspapers across the Northeast quarter of the country followed the story with salacious glee. It was a sensation, pure and simple, and it seemed like it would be a tough act to follow. But Chicago was a tough town.
Racing resumed in the Windy City. Dexter beat George M. Patchen, Jr. in the
postponed $5,000 race. General Butler returned
to Chicago after a short absence, and a reporter for the Tribune took
notice.
Lithograph
(reproduction). General Butler, Silas
Rich, Bashaw Jr.
“There is great excitement in
sporting circles,” the paper declared on Friday morning, September 21, 1866, “about
the great race…between General Butler and Cooley, for a purse of five thousand
dollars a side, and set for tomorrow on the track of the Chicago Driving Park
Association.”
General Butler was a popular harness
horse whose career overlapped the Civil War.
His likeness circulated on Currier & Ives and other lithographs.
Cooley was a black gelding and a
favorite on Chicago race tracks. Locally
owned, the fast trotter was described as “a big little horse” with “an eye full
of intelligence and kindness.”
In 1865, Cooley and a consort
Princess raced two runners from the Seneca Indian tribe named Deerfoot and
Stevens for a purse of $1,000 at the Chicago Driving Park. To even the duel, the horses were to run four
miles; the Senecas two miles and twenty rods.
Cooley and Princess finished the relay in a total of 10 minutes and 53
seconds. Deerfoot and Stevens completed
their course 38 seconds ahead of the horses to rounds of cheers from the crowd.
Heavy betting underscored the
excitement for the sulky race between General Butler and Cooley. “The knowing ones seem to be about equally
divided in opinion as far as odds are concerned,” the Tribune computed,
“though the majority seem to think the General stands the best chance.”
The Tribune had its doubts
whether the best-of-five heats showdown between the horses could actually
happen. Torrential rains had drenched
the city, washing away railroad bridges, uprooting trees and costing a month’s
wages to the city’s carpenters, bricklayers and other laborers. The paper worried that the track would be too
wet for the race.
Keeping an eye on the sky, the Tribune
predicted the match would be one of the most exciting contests ever witnessed
in the West if better weather held.
On Saturday, the soggy ground
that troubled the Tribune prevented the city’s Excelsior and Atlantic base
ball clubs from playing a trophy match to cap an Illinois tournament. But by mid-afternoon, the cinder track at the
Driving Park was dry enough to run. And,
unfortunately, the Tribune’s prophecy came true.
The match between the horses was
also a match between the drivers of the sulkies they pulled. Manager Bill Riley drove Cooley. Two men would steer General Butler that
afternoon—jockey Samuel Crooks for the first two races, and quarter-owner William
McKeever the remainder of the way.
McKeever was a cool customer, and
a good enough athlete to have played for two of New York City’s premier base
ball clubs. He began as an infielder
with the Gotham club in 1859 before taking on pitching duties for the rough and
tumble Mutual club in 1863.
American Archives,
Origins of Baseball (1994). Fields of
Play.
Top: Card 7,
Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, the ancestral grounds of the game.
Bottom: Card 18.
Brooklyn versus Philadelphia.
The Origins of
Baseball is a 100-card boxed collection that covers the sport from a woodcut of
the game of Rounders dated to 1744 to its mythical creation by Abner Doubleday in
1839 through sixty years of development to 1899. The cards are excellently researched by
Jonathan A. Mork and the set includes a special bibliography card. Images are carefully balanced between
players, teams and playing fields. Individual
cards can be found on ebay. One recent
full box set was priced at less than $25.
It’s a steal of home for the price.
Pitching was hard work in the
brand of game played during the Civil War years. Thrown underhand with the task of placing the
ball over the center of the plate for the batter’s convenience, hurlers might
throw hundreds of pitches during the course of a game. Batters could wait for dozens to go by before
selecting one to swing at.
The great base
ball clubs of Brooklyn.
Top: Card 16, The
Atlantic Base Ball Club was considered the best team of the Civil War
period.
Bottom: Card 9. The
Eckfords were just a step behind.
In 1861, McKeever pitched for New
York against Brooklyn and the great Jim Creighton in the famous Clipper Silver
Ball Match. Creighton outpitched McKeever
that day in Hoboken, but Creighton isn’t called great without a reason.
Now nearing 30, McKeever had
traded away the mound work for the less taxing pursuits of harness racing and
gambling. A half-hour delay after the
scheduled start of the Driving Park match drew the disapproval of the crowd of thousands
in attendance. Odds favored Cooley 25 to
10 when the match finally began at 3:30 p.m.
General Butler pulled ahead in
the first heat, building a five-length lead at the half-mile post but the
horses were equal at the final turn. A
late surge by Cooley earned the win by a neck.
Cooley won the second heat by 15
lengths. Bettors on General Butler,
suspicious of the slow times turned in by Crooks and on the verge of seeing
their wagers wiped out, begged McKeever to make a switch. As the odds climbed to 100 to 25 on Cooley, McKeever
took the lines for the third heat. The move
paid off with a win by 20 lengths for General Butler and the odds reversed
themselves.
Trouble began in the fourth heat. McKeever appeared to cause six false starts
in the handling of his horse and a half-an-hour was lost in fits and starts and
ill-words between the drivers. With
darkness rapidly falling, the heat finally reached its start. Two hundred yards into the race, McKeever
suddenly swerved in front of Riley’s buggy, scraping Cooley’s nose. General Butler won the race by a half-length. Many in the crowd argued that the foul should
have resulted in a dead heat, or the award of the race to Cooley. Disarray
prevailed when the track judges stuck with the win for General Butler.
By the time order was resolved,
night had fully fallen and only moonlight illuminated the racing grounds.
More argument ensued, with half
the crowd for the race to be called off due to darkness, and the other half
demanding it continue. A start was made
despite the conditions. General Butler
broke in front along the rail as the horses disappeared in the darkness.
In due course, Cooley returned to
view, heading down the home stretch toward the winning line. General Butler careened behind, without a
driver. A search quickly located
McKeever, bloody and unconscious, face down in the cinders on the back stretch. He was quickly carried to the home of J. R.
Gore, a physician who lived nearby on Michigan Avenue.
Examination revealed extensive
fractures to McKeever’s skull, with particular injury to the left temple, as if
McKeever had been struck in the head by a hard object. Gore extracted three broken pieces of the
cranium. Hopes were raised that the
procedure would relieve pressure on the brain and allow McKeever to regain
consciousness. It soon became apparent
that the patient could not recover from the injury.
McKeever died Sunday afternoon without
ever coming out of his coma.
The Cook County Coroner opened an
inquest on Monday. The city’s sporting
crowd packed the Central Police Station to view the proceedings. A string of witnesses testified. Two said
they saw Peter Hickey on the track between the fourth and fifth heat. There were other figures in the shadows.
Man about town Seneca Wright said
he heard Riley say in a nearby saloon after the third heat “I will win it or
kill the damn son of a bitch.” Wright
said a man asked Riley in the saloon between the fourth and fifth heats if he
was going to win the final leg. Wright
said Riley told the man “I have it all fixed.”
Horace Yates was a track steward
during the fifth heat. He saw two men
break off a board at the half-mile pole and cross to the inside of the
track. Darkness fell. It was hard to see but Yates said the two men
were still there for the fifth heat.
Yates said when the horses came along, General Butler was ahead by two
or three lengths. Yates saw McKeever
fall. McKeever was dragged 15 or 20 feet
before the lines to the sulky slipped from his fingers. Yates saw McKeever lying on the track,
motionless and insensible.
Some men found pieces of a broken
board on the track about 12 feet long.
The end of one piece had hair and blood on it. Other men found a place in the race track
fence where the board would fit.
On the second day of the inquest,
Joseph Prednone said he was with Riley in the saloon before the fifth
heat. Prednone said Riley was drinking a
good deal and was too drunk to safely drive.
There was bad feeling between Riley and McKeever, Prednone said, and if it
came down to close driving, Prednone thought McKeever would get the worst of
it.
Dr. Gore said the wound in
McKeever’s left temple penetrated two inches into the brain and was the cause
of death. Shown the board, Dr. Gore said
that it would be the most likely weapon to have caused the injury.
One witness said he heard men
warn McKeever before the fifth heat. McKeever replied, “I can take care of
myself.”
Riley sat in front of the jury on Friday night, September 28. He was reminded he had the right to decline to answer any question that might incriminate himself. Oath or not, Riley said he wanted to tell his side of the story.
Not being sworn, Riley described
the fatal moment. Trailing the General
by a length and a half after the turn, the jockey said he heard “a bit of a
crash” and then someone call out, “Aha!
I have got you; you damn son of a bitch.”
Seeing McKeever topple from his
sulky, Riley moved away from the inner fence to avoid running him over.
Riley admitted to drinking before
the heat but denied making any threats against McKeever or anyone else.
“I have never killed anybody,”
Riley said, “and have never intended to.”
Riley denied any knowledge of a
plot to obstruct General Butler during the heat.
“If I had heard of an arrangement
to stop his horse, I would have warned him, and would not have started,” Riley
said.
Riley closed with one
admission. “I did say, ‘If I could win
the race, I would.’”
Tom Hickey denied any knowledge of
the events surrounding McKeever’s death.
The jury returned its verdict on
October, finding that a plot existed among unnamed friends of Cooley to prevent
General Butler from winning the match, and that the result of this plot caused
McKeever’s death.
Riley was released. The Hickeys were charged with assault for
their battle with the police on the night of their arrests.
A later history of the Chicago
Police Department named Tom as the murderer.
On October 10, the Driving Park
Association banned all racing at the track and expelled Bill Riley for gross
misconduct. The owners of Cooley were
also given the boot.
It was too little, too late. The reputation of the park was completely ruined
by the murder. It was sold at auction in
December and soon demolished.
Turf Cigarerets, Card 9, Trotting and Pacing Races (1927)
Mollie Cosgriff went on trial
that same month for the Trussell killing.
The charge was manslaughter, for which a sentence of up to life could be
applied. There was no argument that
Cosgriff killed Trussell. The only argument
was whether she was justified in pulling the trigger, in fear for her own life
when Trussell tried to push her out of Seneca Wright’s tavern. The jury didn’t buy the bill of goods, but
came close. After deliberating just over
three hours, the jury returned with a guilty verdict and the minimum sentence
allowable, a year in the penitentiary.
It might be expected that a woman
of Mollie’s notoriety and profession would have some connections. In prison, she was given a private cell and
allowed to receive visitors and wear her own clothes, but that was just a
nickel ante in a smaller game. Mollie
had bigger cards to play: she was
pardoned by Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby after serving just a month of
her sentence.
In 1869, she was accused of
running a house of prostitution in San Francisco. The next year, she was reported to have gone
insane. Later, to be living among the
Saints in Salt Lake City. A reporter
tracked her down, years later, in South Bend, Indiana, and asked her why she
killed George. Mollie reflected and
answered a larger question. “No mortal
can endure but one hell in the world,” Mollie replied. “That hell I have endured.” Then she stood, took a seat at a piano, and
began to play an aria from Lucrezia Borgia.
The series also included cards of Pocahontas, the Queen of Sheba, Nell Gwyn and other historical and fictional women of beauty and power.
---RUSSELL STREUR
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