Gilded Rage: Madness and Murder

By Dr. Monty Helfgott

A story born within America's twentieth-century Gilded Age.

High times for the outrageous superrich.

A razzmatazz, anything-goes decade--the Roaring Twenties.

Mansion owners drenched with slow-burning madness and murder.

Terror abounds, lurking within the abandoned, old Gothic mansion resurrected in early twenty-first century.

With its long violent history, evil forces begin to haunt twenty-first-century owners. Its evil past watching, influencing, and connecting a century later.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662483394

Book preview

cover.jpg

Gilded Rage

Madness and Murder

Dr. Monty Helfgott

Copyright © 2022 Dr. Monty Helfgott

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8342-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8339-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Special Thanks

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Part 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

About the Author

Special Thanks

For Jon Weiman, dedication to my graphic artist and friend. Your creative abilities have highlighted covers of many novels, including my own.

Winner of three consecutive years—2019, 2020, and 2021—of American Graphic Design Award. Many thanks for your steadfast dedication to your craft.

December 2021

*****

For Ingrid, the wind beneath my sails and the steady rudder of my life.

December 2021

*****

Special thanks to Jara Milman. Your insights proved significantly helpful to story content.

December 2021

Chapter 1

Gilded Rage: Madness and Murder

May 2010

Pulling a cell phone from his back pocket, the excavation foreman places a call to the jobsite contractor.

Mac, we've got a problem. There is a moment of silence. A very unusual problem. We're about a quarter mile deep into the woodland property from where we left you talking with the new homeowners.

What's the problem, Jimmy? Did one of the men get hurt?

No, nothing like that.

Well, then what? A disquieting silence hangs between them, reconnecting when the foreman says, We stumbled upon an unmarked, shallow grave hidden under thick, foliage-tangled, thorny bushes and all.

A grave! Who the hell would bury someone out there? It's been private property for over a hundred years—part of the old, decaying Worthington mansion.

That's the mystery, Mac. One of my crew noticed a depression shaped in the form of a rectangle located a few yards away from where we were sitting around, taking a break. He became curious and began clearing away the undergrowth. Digging with his hands, the other men helped to remove dirt a couple of inches deep. That's when we saw what was buried there. And then…then—

Then what, Jimmy? Silence again hangs suspended between them. What then?

I'll tell you what then. A human skull stared up, scaring the living shit out of us. The gaping position of its jaw made it look like the scariest Halloween mask you ever laid your eyes on. The jaw was wide open and locked frozen by death's chilled fingers. The skull's ghastly appearance was someone dying horribly with pain written all over it. Whoever died died screaming.

Earlier that morning

Rumbling excavation is machinery spewing diesel fumes into the air while the crew awaits the signal to drive into the woods, thinning out thirty acres of overgrown property part of a crumbling palatial Gilded Age Gothic mansion. The backhoe driver and chainsaw operators glance up at the old monstrosity, casting dark shadows over men and machinery—a symbol of opulence still in existence beyond the twentieth century.

In its heyday, the lower Hudson Valley boasted with colossal estate homes built near Southern Westchester County towns such as Yonkers, Irvington, and Tarrytown. Located a mere twenty miles north of New York City, opulent millionaires competed with each other constructing massive estate homes, overlooking wide swatches of the Hudson River. Gigantic mansions, the essence of Gilded Age wealth and power.

By late morning, the crew breaks for lunch, resting under a towering oak. One crew member spots a shallow depression a few feet away. Meanwhile, still talking in front of the mansion, the general contractor answers his signaling phone. Hearing brief details from his excavation foreman, he informs the new property owners, Bill and Kelly Lancaster, about the gruesome find. Before driving to the discovery site, Bill convinces his wife and their ten-year-old son, Michael, to stay behind until clarity of the situation is firmly established.

Jumping aboard an open-topped jeep, the contractor and owner drive the short distance, approaching the site in question. While the five-man crew waits, they went ahead, sweeping away more loose dirt partially exposing the entire skull and a small segment of chest cavity. Unearthed on one side of the exposed skull, they become aware of a small ornate metal box. The five-man crew waits for arrival of the general contractor and homeowner, resisting further excavation, cautious not to disturb what may turn out to be a long-ago crime scene.

Arriving at the unmarked grave site, the homeowner, Dr. William Lancaster, steps from the vehicle. Staring at the exposed skull and upper chest cavity was Lancaster, a renowned and highly respected New York thoracic surgeon, who occasionally participated with members of Westchester County's forensic department. Placing a call to the county's criminal investigative team, the Lancasters' request is quickly accommodated.

Two forensic team members, Harvey Prescott and Ben Gold, both well known to Dr. Lancaster, arrive at the site within an hour. The men initially discovering the grave are requested to assist the on-sight forensic team. Carefully, they proceed, exposing the entire skeleton. Total unearthing shakes everyone to their core.

Chapter 2

Enigma

The corpse, at or before time of burial, had been surgically sliced in half, separating the upper portion of the body from the waist down. Whoever carried out the heinous splitting of the body completely in half must have possessed at least a modicum of medical training or had considerable ability with the use of knives, the medical examiner explains, staring down at gruesome remains.

This was a murder. No doubt about it. I can only guess why the killer, or killers, chose such extensive mutilation. Possibly, they wanted to make a personal statement, a terrible statement, teeming with rage at whoever is buried here.

Remains are exhumed, then transferred to a Westchester County morgue for DNA analysis. A week later, results are documented in a confidential report. Dr. Lancaster is asked to meet privately with two forensic team members in order to review details about what had been discovered.

Bill, let's start with the object buried next to the skull. That's the easiest piece of the puzzle. Identified as an ornate art deco jewelry box, its design is quite common during the late Gilded Age—probably purchased sometime within the span of the 1920s. I'm guessing it belonged to a woman residing in the old mansion you and Kelly recently purchased. What the connection might have been between the owner of the jewelry box and whoever's buried on the property, I've no idea and no evidence—at least not yet. Now the mystery deepens based on three objects identified inside the box; a pair of ruby earrings and a rag doll's head minus the body. The third concealed object, this one is a real mystery and undeniably bizarre. The lab could not identify what it was at first. But after subjecting it to DNA analysis, a shriveled, leather-like specimen was identified as human skin—human genitalia skin, specifically male genitalia. For a few moments, an uncomfortable troubling silence hung between them.

And there's something else we identified using advanced bone-analysis technics—identification of the race belonging to the skeleton. Bill Lancaster's eyes widen with anticipation—anxious to hear the answer.

*****

Whatever now walks within its menacing spaces and upon its land walks alone within darkness. The uncanny appeal of empty, monstrous mansions and the persistent—however illogical—impression that a house continues to think, feel, and ponder over its past long after it's been left behind by human inhabitants.

Chapter 3

Prelude

The effect of terror is easily produced by abandoned, old mansions, suffering decay over decades of neglect. Terror generated by their intolerable ugliness are captured within bleak darkness of old Gothic estates. Stare at one from a distance, then peek through dark windows and one becomes conscious of a striking resemblance between fractured exterior walls and crumbling interiors. No human eye can fully capture the ruin portrayed as evil in the face of such a house fallen into a state of despair. Eye and mind may well become aware the house somehow projects its awake with creepy watchfulness staring out from dark screaming windows—a house drenched with the stain of madness, asleep yet always vigilant, its evil past deprived of redemption.

Deftly capturing a supernatural appeal of a once-magnificent home, it finds itself within present circumstance totally abandoned. Watching its ponderous footprint upon surrounding acreage, one conjures up an impression that the deserted dwelling, consumed with memories, lurks ghostlike impregnated with recollections of past sufferings abandoned by the living or the dead—a bridge between the living and the dead where ghostly encounters may still prevail.

Grandview Heights, one abandoned estate's immortal name, stood isolated, teetering not far from the edge of a sheer drop cliff. Over years of neglect, it suffered dark ruin, dominating its interior. Silence, ever vigilant, has the ability to position itself deep within hollow rooms built of wood, brick, marble, and slate.

Chapter 4

The Estate House

1896

Clément J. Worthington arrives in the Gilded Age, joining the richest men in the country. He is a baron—one of the elites within the nation's industrial, financial, and commercial enterprise—who successfully amassed a great fortune in banking and investment.

Thirty pristine acres of forestland, his property, is located in Southern Westchester County, terminating at a cliffside vantage point, overlooking the Hudson River. His center of financial power is located in New York City, a short thirty minutes away.

Clément, accompanied by his architect, stands in front of the newly completed Gothic Revival mansion, planting a heavy footprint upon the land. Looking at the two-story structure, it stretches more than two hundred feet in length. Detailing a host of magnificent features, the renowned architectural firm headed by Richard Hartley Morrison describes to the owner his unique creation, boasting a total of fifty-four rooms built with two-foot-thick granite walls. The entire building structure is topped with a red slate roof. Walking inside, Morrison points out a two-story grand floating staircase and arched doorways and windows.

The main floor, Mr. Worthington, presents with a twelve-foot ceiling, featuring a beautiful crystal centerpiece gracefully hanging with drops displaying collections of Tiffany glass. Chills of autumn and winter will never be of concern. Twelve fireplaces are at the ready on both the main and second-floor levels. Flooring throughout the first level, as you can see, is designed with inlaid wood and appointments of terrazzo tile. One spectacular appointment after another continues with the new owner guided into a baronial great hall, a ballroom easily accommodating five hundred guests.

Envisioning its walled interior, Clément Worthington comments, Perfect for my important collection, masterpieces of European art. And I might add, without being too boastful, I own one of the most extensive collections in the country. Morrison nods. An approving smile crosses his face. Your designs became a reality with everything turning out better than I could have expected.

The architect thinks a minute, then shares additional information, Your home is my sixth completed masterpiece of elegant mansions built along five miles of what used to be nothing more than verdant acreage. Clément tilts his head, listening carefully to what the architect intends to share. Large estate mansions are the family's most private and personal space. They represent grandeur and wealth. Yet unfortunately, they grow old, as do its inhabitants. I may sound a bit philosophical, but I believe a man of your tenure would appreciate what I am about to share with you. Houses, no matter how big or small, people connect with a symbiotic relationship—emotionally complex. The house, a static structure, eventually grows old, absorbing a great deal of life lived within its space and possibly death of each occupant, leaving some form of residue behind. The owner ponders the thought, locking it behind closed doors of memory, changing the subject to the present.

Lady Elizabeth, my darling wife, prefers to be addressed as Becky, the shortened version. I assure you, as I wholeheartedly believe, she'll immediately fall in love with everything in our magnificent new home. She would have accompanied us for the grand showing this morning, but she's resting. We're expecting our firstborn in approximately two months.

I congratulate you with everything in your life, Mr. Worthington—your new home and the expected birth.

I bet a thousand it'll be a male child, Clément says, voicing his hope. I've got that premonition. And when he's well educated in Europe, he'll partner with me in the business, then take command when I retire. I've got big plans in mind for him already, and I've decided on a name—Albert, Albert William Worthington. The architect smiles, nodding graciously.

I'm sure all your hopes and dreams, Mr. Worthington, come to glorious fruition. Clément pulls a check from a vest pocket, handing it to Morrison. He looks at the number—overwhelmed. You're too kind, sir.

Not at all. You've earned it far beyond even my expectation—a $25,000 bonus well worth all you've accomplished. Money is a commodity, like everything else. In my financial position today, what I gifted you was not a difficult consideration.

Walking outside together, Clément stops after a few feet, looking up at a tower built atop a small portion of roof.

One lingering question, Morrison. Although I never objected to its construction, what was behind the design—its purpose, its meaning?

The idea of adding a tower room fascinated me as a place designed to provide family members time for solitude. With its height, it grants a mile or so view, reaching well above treetops. From that vantage point, the observer can clearly see the wide, rolling Hudson River. That's the concept I had in mind.

The explanation clarifies the owner's question. Clément gives a moment's consideration to its possibilities, sparking bright thoughts about potential use in the future.

Only one final detail, Mr. Worthington, a detail of your choosing.

And what might that be?

The name. Every mansion along the Hudson Valley has attached to it a name. Have you thought about this detail?

No, not really. But I agree. The magnificence of my estate home requires a very special name. Do you have any suggestions?

Only one name strikes me as fitting: Grandview Heights. But I confess. I did briefly consider one other possibility—the other possibility based on the location of your property with its steep palisades, existing as a terminal boundary. For some reason, when the three-hundred-foot cliff is buffeted by strong gusts of wind, a howling sound can be heard. So I at first thought of the name Howling Heights. It's as simple and as complex as that. But the name conjured up a sort of ominous perception. The name was not right. The owner nods with approval.

I like your suggested name. It sends a powerful message to the world. Grandview Heights it shall be—baptized, so to speak, by fire for eternity.

Chapter 5

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

1842

Chicago to New York

1899

Rough-and-tumble rawhide days occurred during the late 1890s, a time when huge cattle drives pushed north. Herds of fattened beef steers drive onward toward Chicago stockyards. Rawboned wranglers move their herds, starting from far distant locations, such as Texas and Colorado. Cattle and horse hooves kick up clouds of choking trail dust along every mile. Onward drive the wranglers, advancing toward slaughterhouses, eagerly awaiting butchering of fattened beasts.

After weeks on the trail, ranch owners and hired hand cowboys look forward with boundless anticipation, impatient to end the trek. At last, they'd be free to patronize numerous enticing watering holes: bath houses, saloons and brothels proffering painted ladies, and red-light women with some still in their teens. For those choosing the profession, this is their preferred means for earning a living.

Lulu Burns is undeniably a very attractive young woman graced with stunning wide eyes and goddess-like facial features. Long curls of golden hair hang down across wide shoulders perfectly suited for a young woman towering to heights just shy of six feet. Lulu begins stacking up customers at the tender age of sixteen, a notoriously dangerous business in many ways. Prostitutes most often engage in their profession, operating within small private rooms located above saloons. Occupying one well-appointed, small room, Lulu practices her profession in an upscale house of prostitution. Within this house of ill repute, certainly never considered a seedy brothel. Seedier establishments rarely bring in enough business to sustain hardworking women, and at times, their lives end with suicide, overdosing on opium or laudanum, a narcotic painkiller. And for some unfortunate women, they fall as victims of violence set upon by rowdy, angry, often-drunk customers.

Although employed in a well-run house, Lulu Burns cautions herself ever ready, keeping a sharp eye for potential violent customers. Always vigilant, she prides herself well equipped, avoiding possibility of harm. If confronted by a violent disorderly patron, she is prepared to fend off the rowdy, aggressive customer. Unfortunately for Lulu, several life-changing situations arise, encountering a string of violent incidents. Blame for each saddle upon Lulu's broad shoulders.

The initial episode erupts when a barrage of ear-piercing screams ring through the house bellowed by a stark-naked customer, tumbling down a staircase bloodied with stab wounds. Lulu pursues the man, racing after him. Both land in a downstairs parlor area, an elegantly furnished room for waiting patrons. Prompted by the house madam, two hulking guards lift the bloodied customer, carrying him through a cloud of cigar smoke, where scantily clad comfort women work their way, enticing waiting customers. Lulu, following the soon-to-be tossed-out customer, trails right behind, entering the saloon area stark naked. In one hand, she holds a menacing weapon poised to inflict greater harm had not the customer been quickly dumped into the street. Wiping bloodied blades on a bare thigh, Lulu vows never to be without deadly shears, her effective weapon for protection. Slowly walking back upstairs, heading toward her room of business, she glares over her shoulder at waiting customers, eyeing her every move. Still clutching the bloodied weapon, she sends a message to anyone who might threaten her with harm.

Her deadly weapon, kept intentionally exposed close to her business bed, delivers a visible warning while servicing customers. But not everyone entering her bed heeds the steel-blade warning.

A week later, a second—then quickly followed by a third supposedly unprovoked stabbing—takes place. The third victim is seriously slashed and stabbed about the body—also showing gashes around the groin area. Unconscious, the third bloodied customer is quickly carried from the premises through a back-alley door. For Lulu Burns, the last violent episode terminates her employ. The house madam gives her fifteen minutes to gather personal belongings, then forcibly ejects her from the house of ill repute. Unfortunately, Lulu's violent reputation follows her. She is thereby rejected from working in any other upscale house.

She is reduced to operating in a squalid lodging house located at the very fringes of Chicago, a downtrodden nasty area with an unsavory reputation within which continuing her profession. There, too, Lulu is soon ejected into the street. Living under mounting unfortunate luck, streetwalking is her only resort. Roaming Chicago streets, Lulu earns little more than paltry sums. Over the span of several months, prospects for better business continue to fade—unable to function as a working prostitute. In order to exist, she becomes a homeless nineteen-year-old street beggar—reaching the end of her impoverished line, meager existence, the low point of her life.

Mercifully accepted into a Chicago charity house, food and lodging are provided, enabling her to regain strength, recuperating over a span of several weeks. Counseled by charity house staff, it is suggested she'd be better off picking herself up, leaving Chicago behind. Better prospects, she is advised, may exist elsewhere. Provided with travel money, Lulu leaves the city behind, making her way toward New York. Better prospects, assuring herself, would be found in the big city—the great metropolis of the East Coast. It is a fortuitous time during the turn of the century. And with it, she believes fortunes would turn around for the better.

Arriving in the big city, she is determined to put her troubled past behind. She anticipates reestablishment of her profession among New York's millions rewarded with plentiful bounties exchanged for services rendered. But that was not to be. In addition to unexpected trials and tribulations, she finds herself with child.

Competition is fiercely fought over in bustling midtown Manhattan neighborhoods controlled by handlers/pimps. Long established, they lay claim to designated street corners fought over as private territorial haunts. Often abused and literally kicked from pimp-controlled streets, Lulu Burns resigns herself to live and work the oldest profession within Manhattan's Lower East Side—dubbed the Bowery. It is an area filled with cheap clothing shops, cheap moving-picture shows, cheap lodging houses, cheap eating joints, cheap saloons, and cheap prostitutes. Within this small patch of Lower East Side New York live the down-and-outs.

The neighborhood is crisscrossed by elevated transit trains, called the EL, rumbling above downtrodden inhabitants and darkening Bowery streets. And as well, elevated subway trains, producing earsplitting noise, adds a sense of chaos to all who walk its streets. Adding to poverty-stricken lives, the neighborhood is infested with rats running wild upon filthy streets strewn with uncollected garbage and broken bottle glass. It was populated overwhelmingly, at the time, by stumblebum drunks nicknamed skid row. The streets are ripe with Bowery bums—down-and-out men and women drowning in a sewer of dereliction.

Chapter 6

Childhood Possessed

The birth of Lulu's baby mercifully takes place in a charity hospital, naming the female newborn Lizzie. With few options, Lulu settles herself and the child in a sleazy Bowery hovel of a single basement room apartment in a dilapidated tenement building. Within a minimally furnished and dimly lit living space, Lulu works her profession, servicing bottom-of-the-barrel customers. Though earnings are poor, it provides enough to scrape by.

Once upon a time, Lulu Burns was thought of as a very attractive woman. Now in her early twenties, appearance could not escape the impact of overwhelming poverty. Living in grinding poverty adds to a downward slide for behavioral functioning. Both hardships erode her once-fine appearance. Adding to Lulu's downward spiral, her persistent angry personality pushes away attraction of better paying clients. Of friends, there are few if any. Isolating herself, she is frequently caught up in stormy moods, dumping woes on young Lizzie. Affecting the child, her mother's constant stream of unpredictable fits of moodiness is described as ups and downs. As well, panic attacks trigger outbursts displayed in front of her growing daughter, blaming the child for their difficult predicament. Mother and child live in an unending prison caught within grinding poverty. As years drag by, sanity erodes. Fearful to leave the claustrophobic huddle of a living space, Lulu could never bring herself venturing again into unfamiliar Manhattan neighborhoods.

In vivid contrast to her daily plight, she is never aware of other parts of the city boasted with elegant lifestyle. The invisible barrier separates different parts of the Manhattan borough. A wide swath exists, separating rich from poor—an invisible wall forbidden to be crossed.

Chapter 7

Years Grind By

Lulu Burns, now within midtwenties, continues to struggle, eking out nothing more than subsistence living. As well, daily encounters with ebbing sanity throws her into roller-coaster moods, alternating between rampaging manic highs followed by depressing lows. She is physically abusive to herself and to her growing seven-year-old daughter. Their emotional status is affecting daily life cloistered within the cramped basement apartment. Through ensuing years, life with her growing daughter worsens, triggering by never-ending stress, filling Lulu with dark uncertainty tittering closer and closer to the unending edge of madness.

Within days of dark, Lulu chains herself to the bottle. Out of control, she develops a habitual need to bang her head against a wall.

Lizzie, at the tender age of nine, asks time and time again, Mommy, why do you bang your head against the wall?

Lulu's intoxicated answer produces a stinging slap across the child's face, ending with the words, Shut your mouth, bitch, as trickles of blood run down her forehead.

Unable to slow Lulu's slip into the abyss of burning insanity, the household responsibility is placed upon the shoulders of her ten-year-old daughter. Cooking, cleaning, and laundry all becomes Lizzie's responsibility. Able to take care of everything her mother could not, she accomplishes chores quickly and