Mystery novelist S. S. Van Dine, author of the Philo Vance mysteries, never seemed to learn not to play Jessica Fletcher and get involved in real life crime. It never went well for him.
However, unlike some of his contemporaries, his meddling didn't seem to cause any real damage and he was smart enough cut out the amatuer detecting and call in the professionals when things got serious.
But it didn't stop the newspapers of the day from giving him a good ribbing.
Case in point is the 1929 Neptune City pajama factory case.
Van Dine, under his real name of Willard Huntington Wright, was made Police Commissioner of the New Jersey community of Bradley Beach because of his fame as the creater of "The American Sherlock Holmes" Philo Vance. The post was pretty much honorary and there doesn't really seem to be much of a police force to be commissioner of. The whole appointment took place during a chess gathering at the Mayor's home.
When he realized he was in over his head, Van Dine tried to resign, but the local mayor talked him out of it.
After all, Van Dine said, didn't he once bring a murderer in and hold him for two days at a San Francisco newspaper office?
Van Dine, although his early career seemed to be more as an arts critic than as a hardened beat reporter, did start his career as a cub reporter for the Los Angeles Times and was briefly a columnist based in San Francisco.
In August 1929, a Bradley Beach bank messenger carrying the payroll of a pajama factory in the adjoining burg of Neptune City was shot down in the street by armed robbers who made off with the factory payroll.
As police commissioner, Van Dine leaped into action, made a few deductions and quickly backed out of the investigation on the grounds that it took place just outside his jurisdiction.
That didn't stop various newspaper wags from needling him about it. After all, Van Dine was not only his pen name, but the first person narrator of the Philo Vance novels.
While Van Dine is not an easy person to like, he seemed to come in for some sharper satire than the circumstances warranted. He had managed to alienate many of his former colleagues because he was, quite frankly, a jerk. He also supported Germany in the run up to World War I. At one point he was blacklisted from journalism for a couple of years.
And then he gets filthy stinking rich by writing novels that even he thought were beneath him.
So some of the viterol directed towards him in the press may be more personal than professional.
United Press writer Sam Love seems to have a particular ax to grind, never letting his readers forget that the S. S. in Wright's nome de plume really does stand for Steam Ship. Love was a New York journalist who in 1930 started a knock off of O. O. McIntyre's popular New York Day By Day column called New York Inside Out. Love's column even had a similar header to the one McIntyre made famous.
In any case, Van Dine's involvement in the case didn't really matter, The county hired a real private detective, the disgraced former chief of detectives of the New York City Police, John D. Coughlin, who was quickly able to trace the gang and make his arrests.
Some of Sam Love's interest in the case probably stems from Coughlin's involvement. Love had written about the New York Police Commissioner Grover Whalen's criticism of the NYPD as being old fashioned and needing smarter, better educated officers to catch modern criminals.
Whalen had come to his position after the previous commissioner had failed to solve the gangland slaying of Arnold "Mr. Big" Rothstein and was under pressure to reform the NYPD.
Coughlin was the epitome of the old fashioned police officer, something that Love emphasized in his reporting. Van Dine stood in for the more intellectual crime solver that was supposed to replace Coughlin.
Coughlin, using old fashioned leg-work, managed to round up the entire gang in short order while Van Dine returned to work on his latest best-selling novel.
And no, I haven't been able to find the facts behind Van Dine's claim he held a murderer for two days in a San Francisco newspaper office.
As some background, here's some of the coverage of the case, including some by Love.
Oakland Tribune, Aug. 4, 1929
Detective of Fiction to Seek Slayers of Bank Aide
Author-Police Commissioner Gets to Work on Murder and Robbery
BY UNITED PRESS
LEASED WIRE TO TRIBUNE
BRADLEY BEACH, N. J. Aug. 3. - Bandits today shot and killed George Danielson, 63-year-old bank messenger, escaped with a $7100 payroll and left their crime for Philo Vance himself to solve.
Willard Huntington Wright is police commissioner here. He also writes detective stories under the name S. S. Van Dine with Vance as his principal character and super-sleuth.
Danielson, employed by the First National bank, was shot down by two men who had been following him, as he was about to enter the factory of Steiner & Sons with the payroll.
The robbers escaped, presumably with a confederate or two, in a sedan later found abandoned. A panama hat was discovered in the car, as were two Pennsylvania license plates.
Two young women, Pauline Miholich and Eleanor Lanning, looked out of a Steiner factory window and saw the two well-dressed young men, one with a small mustache, fire at the messenger. He dropped, and as he did so the men snatched up the payroll in a canvas sack and ran to the car.
George B. Bennett, passerby, ran to Danielson, who gasped "they got me and the payroll both. Get them." The messenger died soon afterward.
Van Dine, or Wright, believed the bandits, after abandoning their car, might have mingled with the beach crowds, perhaps swimming. He requested a thorough search of all beach resorts and boardwalks in New Jersey.
Van Dine accepted the post of police commissioner as a lark. Latter her tried to withdraw from the post but Mayor Burden held him to his acceptance.
"All right," Van Dine said then, and he recalled that once he marched a murderer into a San Francisco newspaper office and kept him there two days before turning him over to police.
The Danielson murder will cause Van Dine---and by the same token, Philo Vance---some inconvenience. It will hold up work on the new Van Dine detective novel, "Scarab," in which the fictional Philo exceeds all his previous exploits.
The Klamath News, August 6, 1929 (Unsigned but has the hallmarks of a Sam Love article.)
AUTHOR QUITS MURDER CASE
Detective of Old School on Job; Payroll Robbery Is Involved
BRADLEY BEACH, N. J., Aug. 5 (UP) -S. S. Van Dine, creator of "The American Sherlock Holmes," bowed himself gracefully out of his first real murder mystery today to make room for a chewed cigar, a pair of snub-toed No. 10 shoes and a black derby hat.
The latter, accessories of the former chief inspector, John D. Coughlin of the New York police department, went to work on a methodical way to get hold of somebody who would tell him who shot and killed George Danielson, 67-year-old messenger, last Saturday and ran away with the $7,280 payroll of a Neptune City pajama factory.
Attoney General William A. Stevens authorized payment of county funds to retain Coughlin. Prosecutor John J. Quinn, of Monmouth county asked for the appropriation, giving as a reason that the community was anxious to catch the merderers. No mention was made of Van Dine in the announcement. The later, whose real name is Willard Huntington Wright, was made an officer by the police commission of Bradley Beach recently in honor on the exploits of his fiction detective, Philo Vance.
Coughlin is a crook-hunter of the old school and he went to work, iron hat, frayed perfecto, and all, on a couple of the most prosaic clues left by four young men who shot Danielson.
The holdup men, it seems, had a girl confederate who worked two days ath the pajama factory and asked questions concerning the method of payroll delivery.
Coughlin dispatched several policement to find the girl. The holdup men also had an automobile with Pennsylvania license plates. Coughlin assigned another crony or two to learn all possible about the car.
He then chewed his cigar and conversed affably with Prosecutor Quinn and others. You can't get everything done in a minute.
Van Dine said merely that because the shooting occurred across the creek it was thus within the boundaries of Neptune City, and out of his jurisdiction. Besides, he is deep in the writing of a new story.
Arizona Republic, Aug. 6, 1929
'Steamship' Van Dine Does Everything But Solve Mystery
BY SAM LOVE
BRADLEY BEACH, N. Y., Aug 5. ---(UP)---On account of this not being the last chapter, and for other reasons, Philo Vance, alias S. S. (Steamship) Van Dine, alias Willard Huntington Wright, detective story author, allowed the sun to set last night without solving the mystery of who shot Old Man George Danielson yesterday, and took the $7,263 payroll he was carrying.
Like the rest of the public and police, Mr. Steamship Van Dine is temporarily baffled. There is the old man, neatly drilled through the stomach with two revolver bullets, nicely laid out in the morgue. There is the missing payroll, and the employees of the pajama factory stalling off the butcher until another one can be assembled by the Neptune City industry of Steiner & Sons. And there are the four bandits, seen very fleetingly by the Misses Pauline Mihalich and Eleanor Lanning, who stuck their heads out of a window when they heard the shots. There is the abandoned car, the old felt hat and the paper wrappings of the loot.
There is, in fact, about everything except who shot Old Man Danielson---aged 67---and took the money and departed; it is a case for Philo Vance (alias S. S. Van Dine) to sit down and smoke a pipe over, an get out of the way of more important cases. This sort of case has always been duck soup for Philo Vance, and not worth writing a book about. Some surprise was expressed in police circles tonight that it is still filed away under "unfinished business" and seemed likely to stay there until somebody "squealed."
The bandits just drove up, polished off Old Man Danielson, grabbed his money, drove away and abandoned the car.
"They got me and the payroll both Get them," Old Man Danielson said when George R. Bennett, who lives near the pajama factory heard the shots and ran up.
With this lucid and simple injunction, the old man, who had just returned to his job of janitoring and delivering the factory payroll after a month of jury service, lost consciousness because of the pressure of blood in his abdomen.
It was the first real murder case S. S. Van Dine (alias W. H. Wright) has been called upon to solve. He was appointed honorary police comisioner of Bradley Beach about a month ago by Mayor Borden as a kind of friendly gesture to top off the international chess congress.
"Hmmm!" was Vance's first remark after viewing the scene of the crime. Vance's next discovery was that, although the money was being transported from the Bradley Beach bank, the shooting was across the line in Neptune City, and thus out of his jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the fiction detective gallantly consented to serve in an advisory capacity.
Twenty-four hours after the murder, Philo had made a number of deductions which elimated ministers, professional men, whalers and passengers aboard the Graf Zeppelin as possible suspects.
"It is my theorgy that the murder was committed by a novice," he said. "This is based on the fact that no professional criminal would take a chance on death in the electric chair for a $7,263 payroll."
Detective Vance also deduced that the criminal was young; that he probably was not addicted to narcotics, and that he and his accomplices did not go far from the scene of the crime---at first. Detective Vance hazarded that the criminals probably went swimming after the shooting, as this would be about the smartest thing they could do, the ocean being near and crowded.
The old felt hat found in the abandoned car he discarded ad just one of those things that put the public on the wrong track and make them suspect the butler, whereas it was the gardener's son who did the dirty work.
"That old felt hat might have been under the rear seat of the car for weeks," he said.
State troopers and others working on the case were unable to check the beach crowds because they all dressed and went home when it got cool. They were searching for a young woman who was employed by the pajama factory last Tuesday, and who threw up her job last Thursday after making explicit inquiries about the method employed in delivering the payroll. They were so busy looking for her that they forgot to tell Philo Vance what they were doing.
The Pittsburgh Press Sun, Aug. 11, 1929
OUSTED SLEUTH TRAPS BANDIT
Man Fired by Whalen Nabs Payroll Holdup Artist.
By The United Press.
BRADLEY BEACH, N. J., Aug. 10. ---John Coughlin, who was ousted as chief of detectives of New York city because Police Commissioner Grover Whalen was dissatisfied with his work, has proved himself an even greater detective than the redoubtable Philo Vance of fiction fame.
Coughlin, now a private detective, has obtained a confession from Robert Tully of Audubon, N. Y., who was involved in a payroll holdup at Neptune City, N. J. in which George Danielson, a bank messenger, was slain.
S. S. Van Dine (Willard Huntington Wright), author of the Philo Vance stories, is honorary police chief of Bradley Beach. He consented to examine facts in the payroll robbery, but said he was "too busy" to get out and look for clues. Van Dine, in the best manner of fictional sleuths, sat in his home and confined himself to metaphysical considerations of the case.
Coughlin went after clues.
Using the means employed by ordinary policemen, Colughlin decided to seek Tully. He found him in a Camden, N. J., rooming house. A water-soaked wallet, found in a ditch near Danielson's body was the clue on which Coughlin worked. The wallet bore the name "Robert Arrowsmith," and the detective ascertained that Tully sometimes used that name.
While Van Dine was pondering the case, Coughlin questioned Tully in an automobile, around which a crowd had gathered. The detective shrewdly surrounded himself with a number of people so the prisoner could not contend later that his confession was false or that it had been obtained by third-degree methods.
Tully said he drove the bandit car, but denied firing any shots. County Police today were said to be closing in on Tully's accomplices. Coughlin was called into the case by police here.
Arizona Republic, Aug. 11, 1029
MYSTERY IS SOLVED
Flat-Foot Goes To Work Methodically
WITHOUT VAN DINE AID
BY SAM LOVE
BRADLEY BEACH, N. J., Aug. 10.---(UP)---Maybe in his next detective story, S. S. Van Dine, author and honorary police commissioner of Bradley Beach, will not be so hard on Sergeant Heath, his fiction character who is a big flat-foot from the homicide bureau.
A big flat-foot from a homicide bureau yesterday solved a murder for him that had Philo Vance nailed to the wall with no last chapter in sight.
The big flat-foot was John D. Coughlin, former chief police inspector of New York City. Assisted only by a large, black, impressive cigar, a large, black, impressive derby, and a large, black, impressive pair of No. 10 shoes, ex-inspector John D. Coughlin has four people in jail and a confession in the "pajama murder case."
"The pajama murder case" is the case in which George Danielson, 67-year-old handyman of the Steiner Pajama factory of Neptune City, N. J., who was shot and killed by bandits who last Saturday coveted successfully the $7,280 payroll the old man was toting.
Common decency compels recording of the fact that Philo Vance (alias Steamship Van Dine, alias Willard Huntington Wright---which latter is his real name)---was dragged into this really-truly murder with an honest-to-goodness bleeding corpse and several other sordid features, against his probable good judgement and finer sensibilities. Van Dine, Van Dyke whiskers and all, was made honorary police commissioner a month ago at an innocent dinner for chess players and he thought it was just a joke until he woke up next morning and was confronted by a delegation waiting to swear him in.
Then old man Danielson was murdered. Philo Vance, Van Dine's fiction detective, first deduced tghat the murderer was "a novice" and then discovered that the murder was out of his jurisdiction anyhow, being across the creek in Neptune City.
The county authorities heard this and went into a huddle and decided to hire a big flat-foot, namely Coughlin, who was fired in New York by Police Commissioner Grover Whalen. Coughlin had failed to solve the Rothstein case, which had certain delicate angles making it hard to solve.
A whole-hearted confession at Camden today by one of the flatfoot's various suspects named Robert Tully, 30, crystallized the policy of the Bradley Beach authorities to give honors to fiction dectectives and pay out county money to flat-footers.
In his confession Tully said that he had driven the automobile used by the robbers. He added that the others had double-crossed him and that he didn't know a murder had been committed. He have the quizing flat-foot names and dates and pedigrees, including his own alias, which created the suspicion that he was no novice.
The way the frayed-cigar-and-iron hat detective traced Tully is so commonplace as to be hardly worth mentioning. Coughlin ascertained that the highwaymen had a woman accomplice, who had been detailed to work a couple of days at the pajama factory and learned the manner in which the payroll was delivered. He also had an idea that somebody must have stayed at a hotel somewhere nearby while the robbery was being planned. He also was interested in the license plate of the get-away car.
As a result of these simple mental exedrcises, a Miss Rose Goldberg, of New York, is locked up in default of $40,000 bail as a material witness. Also locked up in default of $40,000 is Tully's brother, Walter, who is said to be a graduate of West Point and who is also said to have supplied the license plates for the holdup car.
Robert Tully was taken in a rooming house in Camden, just across the river from Philadelphia. He was putting a leg out a window when it was suggested by a voice below that he go back and wait peaceably and unperforated until somebody knocked on the door. With him in the room was Alex George. To the consternation of the flat-footers, they found a fully loaded revolver in GEorge's hip pocket---they said.
That is about all, according to Coughlin, who hopes to get back to New York soon.
However, unlike some of his contemporaries, his meddling didn't seem to cause any real damage and he was smart enough cut out the amatuer detecting and call in the professionals when things got serious.
But it didn't stop the newspapers of the day from giving him a good ribbing.
Case in point is the 1929 Neptune City pajama factory case.
Van Dine, under his real name of Willard Huntington Wright, was made Police Commissioner of the New Jersey community of Bradley Beach because of his fame as the creater of "The American Sherlock Holmes" Philo Vance. The post was pretty much honorary and there doesn't really seem to be much of a police force to be commissioner of. The whole appointment took place during a chess gathering at the Mayor's home.
When he realized he was in over his head, Van Dine tried to resign, but the local mayor talked him out of it.
After all, Van Dine said, didn't he once bring a murderer in and hold him for two days at a San Francisco newspaper office?
Van Dine, although his early career seemed to be more as an arts critic than as a hardened beat reporter, did start his career as a cub reporter for the Los Angeles Times and was briefly a columnist based in San Francisco.
In August 1929, a Bradley Beach bank messenger carrying the payroll of a pajama factory in the adjoining burg of Neptune City was shot down in the street by armed robbers who made off with the factory payroll.
As police commissioner, Van Dine leaped into action, made a few deductions and quickly backed out of the investigation on the grounds that it took place just outside his jurisdiction.
That didn't stop various newspaper wags from needling him about it. After all, Van Dine was not only his pen name, but the first person narrator of the Philo Vance novels.
While Van Dine is not an easy person to like, he seemed to come in for some sharper satire than the circumstances warranted. He had managed to alienate many of his former colleagues because he was, quite frankly, a jerk. He also supported Germany in the run up to World War I. At one point he was blacklisted from journalism for a couple of years.
And then he gets filthy stinking rich by writing novels that even he thought were beneath him.
So some of the viterol directed towards him in the press may be more personal than professional.
United Press writer Sam Love seems to have a particular ax to grind, never letting his readers forget that the S. S. in Wright's nome de plume really does stand for Steam Ship. Love was a New York journalist who in 1930 started a knock off of O. O. McIntyre's popular New York Day By Day column called New York Inside Out. Love's column even had a similar header to the one McIntyre made famous.
In any case, Van Dine's involvement in the case didn't really matter, The county hired a real private detective, the disgraced former chief of detectives of the New York City Police, John D. Coughlin, who was quickly able to trace the gang and make his arrests.
Some of Sam Love's interest in the case probably stems from Coughlin's involvement. Love had written about the New York Police Commissioner Grover Whalen's criticism of the NYPD as being old fashioned and needing smarter, better educated officers to catch modern criminals.
Whalen had come to his position after the previous commissioner had failed to solve the gangland slaying of Arnold "Mr. Big" Rothstein and was under pressure to reform the NYPD.
Coughlin was the epitome of the old fashioned police officer, something that Love emphasized in his reporting. Van Dine stood in for the more intellectual crime solver that was supposed to replace Coughlin.
Coughlin, using old fashioned leg-work, managed to round up the entire gang in short order while Van Dine returned to work on his latest best-selling novel.
And no, I haven't been able to find the facts behind Van Dine's claim he held a murderer for two days in a San Francisco newspaper office.
As some background, here's some of the coverage of the case, including some by Love.
Oakland Tribune, Aug. 4, 1929
Detective of Fiction to Seek Slayers of Bank Aide
Author-Police Commissioner Gets to Work on Murder and Robbery
BY UNITED PRESS
LEASED WIRE TO TRIBUNE
BRADLEY BEACH, N. J. Aug. 3. - Bandits today shot and killed George Danielson, 63-year-old bank messenger, escaped with a $7100 payroll and left their crime for Philo Vance himself to solve.
Willard Huntington Wright is police commissioner here. He also writes detective stories under the name S. S. Van Dine with Vance as his principal character and super-sleuth.
Danielson, employed by the First National bank, was shot down by two men who had been following him, as he was about to enter the factory of Steiner & Sons with the payroll.
The robbers escaped, presumably with a confederate or two, in a sedan later found abandoned. A panama hat was discovered in the car, as were two Pennsylvania license plates.
PAIR ESCAPE IN CROWD ON BEACH
George B. Bennett, passerby, ran to Danielson, who gasped "they got me and the payroll both. Get them." The messenger died soon afterward.
Van Dine, or Wright, believed the bandits, after abandoning their car, might have mingled with the beach crowds, perhaps swimming. He requested a thorough search of all beach resorts and boardwalks in New Jersey.
BROUGHT MURDERER TO S. F. NEWSPAPER
"All right," Van Dine said then, and he recalled that once he marched a murderer into a San Francisco newspaper office and kept him there two days before turning him over to police.
The Danielson murder will cause Van Dine---and by the same token, Philo Vance---some inconvenience. It will hold up work on the new Van Dine detective novel, "Scarab," in which the fictional Philo exceeds all his previous exploits.
The Klamath News, August 6, 1929 (Unsigned but has the hallmarks of a Sam Love article.)
AUTHOR QUITS MURDER CASE
Detective of Old School on Job; Payroll Robbery Is Involved
BRADLEY BEACH, N. J., Aug. 5 (UP) -S. S. Van Dine, creator of "The American Sherlock Holmes," bowed himself gracefully out of his first real murder mystery today to make room for a chewed cigar, a pair of snub-toed No. 10 shoes and a black derby hat.
The latter, accessories of the former chief inspector, John D. Coughlin of the New York police department, went to work on a methodical way to get hold of somebody who would tell him who shot and killed George Danielson, 67-year-old messenger, last Saturday and ran away with the $7,280 payroll of a Neptune City pajama factory.
Van Dine Out
Coughlin is a crook-hunter of the old school and he went to work, iron hat, frayed perfecto, and all, on a couple of the most prosaic clues left by four young men who shot Danielson.
Real Mystery
Coughlin dispatched several policement to find the girl. The holdup men also had an automobile with Pennsylvania license plates. Coughlin assigned another crony or two to learn all possible about the car.
He then chewed his cigar and conversed affably with Prosecutor Quinn and others. You can't get everything done in a minute.
Van Dine said merely that because the shooting occurred across the creek it was thus within the boundaries of Neptune City, and out of his jurisdiction. Besides, he is deep in the writing of a new story.
Arizona Republic, Aug. 6, 1929
'Steamship' Van Dine Does Everything But Solve Mystery
BY SAM LOVE
BRADLEY BEACH, N. Y., Aug 5. ---(UP)---On account of this not being the last chapter, and for other reasons, Philo Vance, alias S. S. (Steamship) Van Dine, alias Willard Huntington Wright, detective story author, allowed the sun to set last night without solving the mystery of who shot Old Man George Danielson yesterday, and took the $7,263 payroll he was carrying.
Like the rest of the public and police, Mr. Steamship Van Dine is temporarily baffled. There is the old man, neatly drilled through the stomach with two revolver bullets, nicely laid out in the morgue. There is the missing payroll, and the employees of the pajama factory stalling off the butcher until another one can be assembled by the Neptune City industry of Steiner & Sons. And there are the four bandits, seen very fleetingly by the Misses Pauline Mihalich and Eleanor Lanning, who stuck their heads out of a window when they heard the shots. There is the abandoned car, the old felt hat and the paper wrappings of the loot.
All But the Criminal
The bandits just drove up, polished off Old Man Danielson, grabbed his money, drove away and abandoned the car.
"They got me and the payroll both Get them," Old Man Danielson said when George R. Bennett, who lives near the pajama factory heard the shots and ran up.
His First Murder (Real)
It was the first real murder case S. S. Van Dine (alias W. H. Wright) has been called upon to solve. He was appointed honorary police comisioner of Bradley Beach about a month ago by Mayor Borden as a kind of friendly gesture to top off the international chess congress.
"Hmmm!" was Vance's first remark after viewing the scene of the crime. Vance's next discovery was that, although the money was being transported from the Bradley Beach bank, the shooting was across the line in Neptune City, and thus out of his jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the fiction detective gallantly consented to serve in an advisory capacity.
Exempts Graf Passengers.
"It is my theorgy that the murder was committed by a novice," he said. "This is based on the fact that no professional criminal would take a chance on death in the electric chair for a $7,263 payroll."
Detective Vance also deduced that the criminal was young; that he probably was not addicted to narcotics, and that he and his accomplices did not go far from the scene of the crime---at first. Detective Vance hazarded that the criminals probably went swimming after the shooting, as this would be about the smartest thing they could do, the ocean being near and crowded.
Can't Check Crowds
"That old felt hat might have been under the rear seat of the car for weeks," he said.
State troopers and others working on the case were unable to check the beach crowds because they all dressed and went home when it got cool. They were searching for a young woman who was employed by the pajama factory last Tuesday, and who threw up her job last Thursday after making explicit inquiries about the method employed in delivering the payroll. They were so busy looking for her that they forgot to tell Philo Vance what they were doing.
The Pittsburgh Press Sun, Aug. 11, 1929
OUSTED SLEUTH TRAPS BANDIT
Man Fired by Whalen Nabs Payroll Holdup Artist.
By The United Press.
BRADLEY BEACH, N. J., Aug. 10. ---John Coughlin, who was ousted as chief of detectives of New York city because Police Commissioner Grover Whalen was dissatisfied with his work, has proved himself an even greater detective than the redoubtable Philo Vance of fiction fame.
Coughlin, now a private detective, has obtained a confession from Robert Tully of Audubon, N. Y., who was involved in a payroll holdup at Neptune City, N. J. in which George Danielson, a bank messenger, was slain.
RAN DOWN CLUES.
Coughlin went after clues.
Using the means employed by ordinary policemen, Colughlin decided to seek Tully. He found him in a Camden, N. J., rooming house. A water-soaked wallet, found in a ditch near Danielson's body was the clue on which Coughlin worked. The wallet bore the name "Robert Arrowsmith," and the detective ascertained that Tully sometimes used that name.
QUESTIONS SUSPECT
Tully said he drove the bandit car, but denied firing any shots. County Police today were said to be closing in on Tully's accomplices. Coughlin was called into the case by police here.
Arizona Republic, Aug. 11, 1029
MYSTERY IS SOLVED
Flat-Foot Goes To Work Methodically
WITHOUT VAN DINE AID
BY SAM LOVE
BRADLEY BEACH, N. J., Aug. 10.---(UP)---Maybe in his next detective story, S. S. Van Dine, author and honorary police commissioner of Bradley Beach, will not be so hard on Sergeant Heath, his fiction character who is a big flat-foot from the homicide bureau.
A big flat-foot from a homicide bureau yesterday solved a murder for him that had Philo Vance nailed to the wall with no last chapter in sight.
The big flat-foot was John D. Coughlin, former chief police inspector of New York City. Assisted only by a large, black, impressive cigar, a large, black, impressive derby, and a large, black, impressive pair of No. 10 shoes, ex-inspector John D. Coughlin has four people in jail and a confession in the "pajama murder case."
Killed By Bandits
Common decency compels recording of the fact that Philo Vance (alias Steamship Van Dine, alias Willard Huntington Wright---which latter is his real name)---was dragged into this really-truly murder with an honest-to-goodness bleeding corpse and several other sordid features, against his probable good judgement and finer sensibilities. Van Dine, Van Dyke whiskers and all, was made honorary police commissioner a month ago at an innocent dinner for chess players and he thought it was just a joke until he woke up next morning and was confronted by a delegation waiting to swear him in.
Then old man Danielson was murdered. Philo Vance, Van Dine's fiction detective, first deduced tghat the murderer was "a novice" and then discovered that the murder was out of his jurisdiction anyhow, being across the creek in Neptune City.
Went Into Huddle
A whole-hearted confession at Camden today by one of the flatfoot's various suspects named Robert Tully, 30, crystallized the policy of the Bradley Beach authorities to give honors to fiction dectectives and pay out county money to flat-footers.
In his confession Tully said that he had driven the automobile used by the robbers. He added that the others had double-crossed him and that he didn't know a murder had been committed. He have the quizing flat-foot names and dates and pedigrees, including his own alias, which created the suspicion that he was no novice.
The way the frayed-cigar-and-iron hat detective traced Tully is so commonplace as to be hardly worth mentioning. Coughlin ascertained that the highwaymen had a woman accomplice, who had been detailed to work a couple of days at the pajama factory and learned the manner in which the payroll was delivered. He also had an idea that somebody must have stayed at a hotel somewhere nearby while the robbery was being planned. He also was interested in the license plate of the get-away car.
Girl is Jailed
Robert Tully was taken in a rooming house in Camden, just across the river from Philadelphia. He was putting a leg out a window when it was suggested by a voice below that he go back and wait peaceably and unperforated until somebody knocked on the door. With him in the room was Alex George. To the consternation of the flat-footers, they found a fully loaded revolver in GEorge's hip pocket---they said.
That is about all, according to Coughlin, who hopes to get back to New York soon.
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