Greed: A True Story of Malice and Murder

By Timothy V. Tousey

It was called the crime of the decade. Newspapers from across the country told of the mysterious death of the wealthy and eccentric Margretta Todd in 1905. In her younger years, Margretta had been the mistress of Napoleon III in Paris and was a favorite in the emperor's court. Later, she built an upscale apartment building in Manhattan at 29 W. Twenty-Sixth Street called the Von-Hoffmann Arms. The building still stands there today. Following Margretta's death, it would become the backdrop for deception and legal battles.

Margretta's daughter, Rosalie, married the wealthy Frank Tousey, who owned one of the largest publishing companies in the country. They lived a charmed life until Frank's untimely death in 1902, which left Rosalie on her own for the first time in her life.

The ensuing years would be filled with unscrupulous men plotting to control the estates of both mother and daughter. Two adversarial lawyers, Ingersoll Lockwood and George Hastings, would stop at nothing, including murder, in order to get their hands on the Todd and Tousey estates. One man succeeded.

This is the story of how that happened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798885053280

Book preview

GREED

A True Story of Malice and Murder

TIMOTHY V. TOUSEY

Copyright © 2022 Timothy V. Tousey

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2022

ISBN 979-8-88505-327-3 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88505-947-3 (hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-88505-328-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Preface

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

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26

27

28

29

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37

PREFACE

Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.

—Janwillem van de Wetering

This is a true story that revolves around the mysterious death of seventy-six-year-old Mrs. Margretta Todd on October 27, 1905. The characters herein are real people who lived the events that are portrayed in these pages, as unbelievable as some of it may seem. The quotes are taken from newspaper articles, letters, or court testimony. The New York Times was an invaluable resource in researching this story. I wish I could give credit to the reporters by name, but it was a time before the reporter was part of the story. They were simply referred to as "a Times reporter," or the like.

The New York Public Library provided copies of Dr. Gustav Scholer’s personal papers as they related to this case. Dr. Scholer was the coroner of New York at the time. He led the New York investigation and performed the autopsy on Mrs. Todd.

Mrs. Margretta Todd was a wealthy heiress, the one-time mistress of Louis Napoleon III, and the owner of several Manhattan properties, including an upscale apartment building called the Von-Hoffmann Arms, which still stands today at 29 West Twenty-Sixth Street in Manhattan, New York. She was quite well known in Manhattan, especially after she was caught up in the Tammany Hall conspiracy that ultimately led to the arrest and conviction of William Boss Tweed in 1877.

In the three months following Mrs. Todd’s death, the New York Times ran daily articles about new developments in the case, and the stories were picked up by news outlets as far away as San Francisco. The plot to control Mrs. Todd’s wealth would slowly unfold in the courts and in newspapers for the next decade.

Mrs. Todd’s daughter, Rosalie, married Frank Tousey when she was only sixteen years old, and he was ten years her senior. He owned the Frank Tousey Publishing Company, which was one of the largest publishers in the country at the time. He specialized in the publication of ten-cent novels for young boys and was the first to feature Jesse James in one of his publications. Frank also published Judge, a political satire periodical that ridiculed many of the Democratic politicians of Tammany Hall, several of whom were said to be intimately acquainted with Margretta Todd.

Needless to say, this created some tension between Mrs. Todd and her son-in-law, Frank Tousey. Margretta was determined to protect her estate from Frank Tousey and his publishing company at all costs, son-in-law or not. In court years later, Ingersoll Lockwood, her attorney, testified that it was a monomania of hers, as way of an explanation for his suspicious legal solutions to Mrs. Todd’s perceived problems.

At the time of her death in 1905, Margretta Todd’s fortune was believed to be worth anywhere from $500,000 to $1,000,000. Likewise, Frank Tousey Publishing was making hundreds of thousands of dollars each year and in no need of Margretta Todd’s financial assistance.

After nearly a decade of murders, suicides, mysterious deaths, and bitter court battles, one person would systematically seize control of both the Todd and Tousey fortunes. This is the story of how that happened.

1

October 27, 1905

Fairmount Park, Philadelphia

Harry Felker, a flagman for the Reading Railroad, skillfully walked the tracks near the Spring Garden water works in Fairmount Park. It was 10:00 p.m. on that Friday night when he first became aware of the obstruction on the tracks. The moon was nearly full, so it was clear that something unusual lay ahead, but there was still a distance of six boxcars between Mr. Felker and the…thing. It was impossible to make out any detail from that distance.

A lantern flickered in Harry’s right hand as he raised it at arm’s length in front of him. He squinted into the night, hoping he would be able to identify the anomaly from this safe distance. He stepped cautiously along the uneven surface of the tracks, still holding the lantern outstretched in front of him. As he neared the obstruction, a combination of the moonlight and his lantern revealed something that was vibrant yellow and muted reds. What the… he muttered to himself as he spat on the tracks.

Harry moved forward until there was no mistaking the sight before him. To his dismay, his lamp revealed the lifeless body of an elderly woman, lying perpendicular across the tracks. There was lace at the collar of her Victorian-style yellow dress and a diamond broach pinned over her throat. A red wig, which had once covered a wispy tuft of white hair, was now partially covering the right side of her face. The left side of her head was misshapen and covered with blood. Both eyes were partially open and stared at him with the veiled look of death.

The bottom hem of her silk dress was also splattered with blood. Both legs had been severed below the knee by a passing train. Expensive leather shoes still adorned the foot of each dismembered leg. As he approached and stood over the body, Harry was dazzled by the diamond and ruby rings on each of her fingers. He returned his focus to the sickening sight of the old woman’s mangled face. It was obvious that nothing could be done to help her. She was dead.

He slowly surveyed the area. Lamp still outstretched, he wondered how this old woman could possibly end up in that deep cut of track running through the park. To the left of the tracks was a steep embankment, overgrown with brambles and high grass. To the right was a wall that couldn’t easily be climbed by a strong man, much less a rather portly, elderly woman.

Mr. Felker yelled into the night for somebody to help him, but nobody heard. The park was desolate and eerily quiet, especially by the tracks at that time of night. After being unable to attract attention, he decided to run to the depot for help. He ordered a fellow railroad employee to wake coroner Dugan and to have him meet the woman’s body at the morgue. With the help of three other railroad workers, Mr. Felker placed the woman’s body on a stretcher, along with the severed legs, and carried it by carriage to the morgue. The coroner arrived shortly after the mangled passenger of the railroad carriage.

Coroner Dugan asked Harry Felker where he had found the body. He wondered if she could have mistakenly wandered onto the tracks.

At that point, Felker explained, there are four tracks. On one side of the tracks is a high stone wall, the other side being enclosed by a high embankment. To the west of the track, several freight cars were on a siding. He said the embankment and stone wall extended for some distance, and he didn’t think it was likely that the elderly woman walked down the tracks. Coroner Dugan wondered if she could have fallen from a train and then been subsequently hit by another. Many questions would need to be answered before this mystery was solved, but his first point of business would be to determine the identity of the peculiar woman.

As coroner Dugan started his examination, he noted that on the old woman’s fingers were seven diamond and ruby rings, along with two more found in a handbag she had carried. Also found in the bag was a card bearing the name of Mrs. M. Todd, 29 West Twenty-Sixth Street, New York; a letter addressed to W. S. Heal, in care of Mrs. Todd, at the same address; a $5 check, to the order of Augusta W. Fisch; and $1.95 in cash. The woman’s yellow dress, which was more ornate than the usual worn at the time, was remarkably unsoiled, with the exception of bloodstains at the hem. Her expensive shoes, being free of any scuffs or soil, showed no signs of having walked down a steep embankment or on the tracks. The body was indeed a gruesome sight, but she looked surprisingly intact for having fallen from a train and subsequently hit by another. In the coroner’s opinion, this woman did not find her way onto the tracks willingly. The body would eventually be sent to New York to be autopsied. Coroner Dugan would join New York coroner Dr. Scholer in the inquiry.

The following morning, coroner Dugan summoned Detective Walter Hoover, aged thirty-five, of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. He directed the detective to trace Mrs. Todd’s steps from the time she left New York to the hour when the body was found on the tracks. It didn’t take Mr. Hoover long to realize that everybody on the train had noticed her. According to the New York Times, Mrs. Todd never appeared in public, or in her drawing room at the Von-Hoffmann Arms…without being literally ablaze with diamonds. Pair that with her yellow dress and red wig, she was easily traced from Manhattan to Philadelphia.

The detective tracked down James Lyons, a night carriage agent of the Union Transfer Company in the Reading Terminal, who said he was quite certain that Mrs. Todd was the aged woman whom he saw walking away from the station Friday evening. He was asked to positively identify the body of Mrs. Margretta Todd at the morgue, which he reluctantly did. Detective Hoover also took Mr. Lyons’s statement at that time.

Her appearance was dazzling, said Lyons. I could see that she wore a wig and that her face was massaged. A man wearing a light coat and stiff-brimmed hat held her lightly by the arm and was leaning over her, as though he was talking to her. I only had a glimpse of them and didn’t pay any attention to the man. I noticed that the woman had lots of rings on her fingers and a breast pin at her neck which blazed with diamonds. I was much occupied at the time and did not notice whether the man and woman entered a cab, but I think not, he continued. My impression is that they walked westward in Market Street. He said he last saw Mrs. Todd at approximately 6:00 p.m. That’s where the trail went cold, as if she had disappeared.

Less than four hours later, she would be found dead on the tracks. Detective Hoover began the task of filling in the missing pieces, which would prove to be more difficult than he could imagine.

The case of Margretta Todd’s gruesome death would captivate the entire country for months. The story unfolded in newspapers from New York to California. Details of the eccentric old woman, and the apparent plot against her, slowly came to light with each new article.

2

Who Was Margretta Todd?

Margretta Todd was born into a wealthy Baltimore family as Margaret Von Hoffmann. For her entire life, she enjoyed more than her fair share of attention. Margaret had a beauty and charm that, along with her wealth, served her well as she rubbed elbows with high society. Her long red hair and green eyes were striking and made her popular with the young men, but Margaret was not interested in the boys of Baltimore. She set her sights a bit higher.

On her eighteenth birthday, Margaret Von Hoffmann sailed to Paris, where Louis Napoleon III was at the height of his power. Margaret’s refinement and beauty caught his eye. Her flowing red hair and her dazzling green eyes made her a fast favorite in the inner circle of the emperor’s court. She was called Margretta by Napoleon. Liking the exotic sound of it, she adopted the new moniker for the remainder of her life. Margretta enjoyed the personal attention and adulation of the emperor for nearly twenty years in Paris. During that time, she witnessed the modernization of France through investment in schools, hospitals, parks, and roads. Public works projects were of the utmost importance to Louis Napoleon, and he even solicited Margretta’s opinion while considering designs of the Bois de Vincennes, one of the most famous parks in Paris. She saw how the investment in infrastructure had a positive impact on the people of France, and it would leave a lasting impression. In 1860, a state ball was given where it was said of Margretta: she danced a conspicuous number of times with Napoleon. She was belle of the ball that night, but that would be her last time in the spotlight. She was thirty-one years old, and Napoleon’s eye was more frequently being caught by younger suitors. Not to mention that he had been married to Eugenie de Montijo since before he ever laid eyes on the young and beautiful Margretta Von Hoffman.

In 1861, when it was clear to Margretta that Napoleon was not interested in making her his empress, she sailed back to the United States and settled in New York. With her, she brought the airs of an imperial court and the conviction to modernize New York the same way Louis Napoleon had in Paris. She adopted the autocratic mentality of her ex-lover and proceeded to rule from her throne, albeit imaginary.

Now calling herself Madame Margretta Von Hoffmann, she moved to a house on Irving Place. Margretta learned that William Tweed was head of Tammany Hall and the leading figure involved in New York public works projects. She decided to seek him out. Her delusions of grandeur convinced Margretta that Mr. Tweed would be eager to hear her suggestions. After all, in her mind, she had been instrumental in revitalizing Paris. Boss Tweed was perceptive enough to realize that a wealthy Margretta Von Hoffmann would be a valued ally, so he invited her into his inner circle.

Margretta’s home soon became a favorite rendezvous of the Tammany Hall politicians, and she was "intimately acquainted" with most of the members of the Tweed ring. She required all visitors to bow and kiss her ring. It was quite a spectacle to see these powerful men, bowing to the eccentric and beautiful woman, behaving as if they were in an imperial court. Her sitting room, and sometimes her bedroom, saw the hatchings of many a shady deal. She had a front-row seat for the Tammany Hall corruption and saw herself as something of a power.

Late in 1861, Margretta met a jewelry dealer named Abraham Andrews, a widower raising a five-year-old daughter, Julia. A courtship soon began, and they were married the following year. It was quite a lifestyle change for the worldly Margretta, but she got along well with little Julia and decided she might like to have a child of her own.

In May of 1863, Margretta gave birth to Rosalie, whom she called Rosa. Abraham had visions of a normal home life, with his wife raising the two girls and he financially supporting the family. Unfortunately for Mr. Andrews, motherhood did very little to curb Margretta’s social and political engagements. Most of the child-rearing duties fell to the nanny, while Margretta continued to carry on as if she was neither a wife nor a mother. Mr. Andrews lavished Margretta with jewels and tried to keep her happy, but she was more trouble than the humble man could handle. The news of Boss Tweed’s arrest in 1877 and Margretta’s previous involvement in shady political deals hit the newspapers and caused Mr. Andrews quite a bit of embarrassment. They were divorced soon after.

In June of 1878, fifteen-year-old Rosalie Andrews was walking with a friend in Washington Square Park when she literally bumped into Frank Tousey, a wealthy publisher of dime novels for young boys. His attention was on a New York Times article, so he didn’t notice the two girls approaching him as they giggled and jostled each other. Frank apologized to the much younger girl, tipped his hat, and introduced himself. Despite the ten years’ difference in age, a romance soon began. After a short engagement, Frank Tousey and Rosa Andrews were married on May 22, 1879. He was twenty-six years old, and she was sixteen.

When Frank Tousey was eleven, he went to work for his uncle, Sinclair, who founded the American News Company in 1864. The company grew rapidly with the ending of the Civil War. By 1869, ANC was distributing newspapers and periodicals from coast to coast on the continental rail service. Legislation passed by Congress required the railroads to transport newspapers and periodicals as second-class bulk mail at a special low subsidized rate of one cent per pound for any distance between news agencies so that a bundle of New York newspapers could be shipped anywhere in the United States for one low price. ANC exploited the availability of cheap rail transport to expand its distribution network across the continent. ANC established periodical depots in every city along the rail system. The distribution system was so far ahead of the competition that they effectively shut any possible rivals out of the market. With a near-total control of newspaper and book distribution in the United States and Canada, Sinclair became the richest and most powerful man in American publishing.

Frank hoped to follow his uncle’s example in business and in life. In 1872, at the age of nineteen, he ventured out on his own to start Frank Tousey Publishing. While still working for his uncle, he noticed that blood and thunder stories for boys were becoming very popular. The stories were full of impossible adventures of young men in the Wild West. So Frank decided to start publishing what he called cheap juvenile literature and used the same railroad distribution system that made his uncle a wealthy man. His success was virtually guaranteed. He was the first publisher to issue dime novels featuring Jesse James. They became widely distributed and reached more than a hundred thousand readers. The company began to expand and turned a large profit over the next several years.

In 1881, Frank Tousey Publishing started printing a new magazine called Judge, a political satire that poked fun of the very politicians his mother-in-law supported. The rift between Frank and Margretta grew stronger, but Rosalie had no interest in politics or publishing. She did her best to remain neutral in such matters involving her husband and mother.

Frank was publishing his dime novels, Boys of New York, Young Men of America, and The Arm Chair, when he made the mistake of crossing the Typographical Union by supporting a 15 percent reduction in wages for unionized printers. The union, along with the cooperation of newsagents across the country, boycotted his business for allegedly discharging union men and refusing to reinstate them. The boycott lasted from February 1 to March 21, 1885, ending with a completely unionized shop and costing Frank a considerable amount of money.

On March 15, 1885, in the midst of the boycott, Anthony Comstock had Frank arrested and thrown in jail for publishing G. W. M. Reynolds’s Mysteries of the Court of London.

In 1873, Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public. Later that year, Comstock successfully influenced the United States Congress to pass the Comstock Law, which made illegal the delivery or transportation of obscene, lewd, or lascivious material as well as any methods of, or information pertaining to, birth control and venereal disease. Comstock’s definition of obscenity was quite broad, even making it possible for some anatomy textbooks to be banned during the height of his power. Frank’s defense against Comstock’s charges, that the Mysteries of the Court had been in constant publication for over thirty years, was ignored. His lawyer claimed the raid was in retaliation for caricatures of Comstock in Judge, which was a valid explanation. Frank also had reason to suspect that his mother-in-law had a hand in his misfortunes.

Whatever the case, Frank was bailed out of jail by his wealthy uncle Sinclair for $10,000, and the prosecution was dropped when he promised to destroy the printing plates for that particular publication. On the same day of his arrest, the New York Times printed the following headline:

Failure of a Publisher: Frank Tousey Makes An Assignment for the Benefit of His Creditors

Frank told a reporter that one or two of his creditors had pushed him hard for money, so he thought it fairer to all of them to make a general assignment. The company debts were reorganized, payments were arranged, and his creditors were made whole in a short time. The company continued to publish Boys of New York, along with very entertaining how-to booklets for years.

After Frank and Rosa were married, Margretta moved to 17 W. Twenty-Sixth Street. This happened to be next door to the Astor estate offices. She rented a furnished apartment in the house and attracted a fair amount of attention due to her beauty and wealth. Soon after her move, Margretta married James Weatherhead. Rosa was shocked that her mother would marry so quickly and was not shy about voicing her disapproval. Fortunately, for all involved, Mr. Weatherhead lived less than a year after the wedding, which saved them both the trouble of another inevitable divorce.

Louis L. Todd rented a room in