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In commissioning Harlan P. Halsey’s daughter to produce a mystery story based on the Adams-Barnet case, Hearst’s paper was not simply offering its readers a bit of weekend diversion but taking a swipe at the New York City police. “The detectives of real life have studied, guessed, and theorized and arrived at no solution of the mysterious poisoning of Henry C. Barnet and Mrs. Kate Adams,” the editors explained in a prefatory note. “The letters from ‘Blanche,’ the relations of Roland Burnham Molineux and his wife with Barnet, the bottles of poison, the addresses on the wrappers, and a dozen other interesting discoveries have apparently led to nothing. The Journal has therefore asked ‘Old Sleuth,’ the famous detective of fiction, to take the facts as known to the public and work out a solution to the mystery.”¹ The message couldn’t have been clearer: even a make-believe detective could do a better job than the city’s so-called professionals.

As the days passed without an arrest, the yellow papers became increasingly harsh in their criticism of the detective bureau. The Journal was especially nasty. In one jeering cartoon, a fox labeled “Poisoner” runs circles around a big lumbering dog with a police helmet and the face of Captain McCluskey. In another, a hapless police bloodhound sniffs the air for clues, completely oblivious of the big wooden sign directly above his head that points to the solution of the poisoning case.

In its relentless persecution of McCluskey, the paper described a half dozen murder mysteries that his bureau had failed to “unravel,” from the strangling of a young woman named Margaret Clarkson Crowley in March 1898 to the Christmas Eve stabbing of an “old florist” named Jean Baptiste Colin in his West Twenty-eighth Street tenement. MUST THE ADAMS CASE GO ON THIS FAILURE LIST? the headline demanded.²

The paper was even more scathing on its editorial page, accusing the police not merely of incompetence but of corruption. “It will be time to credit the police having an honest intention in this matter when they have accomplished something,” one editorial thundered. “So far, they have only muddled the case, and have added to their customary stupidity the criminal offense of premeditated indifference.”³

A few days later, Hearst leveled even more damning charges against McCluskey and his men:

The same old farce is being played in the poisoning case. No arrests and no possibility of any. The police keep up a semblance of activity but they are very careful not to take any positive step.

In the handling of this important case they have failed to demonstrate the slightest ability. No clew of value has been discovered by them. They have blundered at every point.

With a stupidity that must have behind it the incentive of an authoritative suggestion, the police have avoided confirming suspicions that might reveal the identity of the murderer. They have applied neither energy nor skill to the work, leaving to others the task of bringing the offense to justice.

The public cannot be deceived by a pretense of eagerness. The promises of the police are valueless. They are only part of the carefully planned scheme to conceal the most brazen exhibition of official negligence that even the Police Department of New York has been guilty of.⁴

To incite his readers to an even higher pitch of outrage, Hearst argued that the failure of the police to bring the poisoner to justice was worse than reprehensible; it was an active threat to the well-being of the public. POLICE TIE-UP IN THE ADAMS MYSTERY BREEDS NEW POISONINGS, blared one of the Journal’s more inflammatory headlines.⁵ According to the article, the poisoner’s success in eluding capture had emboldened other killers to emulate him, setting off a rash of copycat crimes.

In Paducah, Kentucky, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Raab were poisoned “with a deadly drug in their breakfast.” William Bauer, a little boy from Sandusky, Ohio, “ate some candy which was given to him and died.” Poisoned tea was the culprit in the case of C. A. Glesner, a farmer from Carlinville, Illinois, who found a package of pekoe in his buggy, took it home, and drank a fatal cup with dinner. Pearl Holmes, “a little colored girl” from Annapolis, Maryland, perished after eating oatmeal spiked with arsenic, though “who would want to poison the little one is a mystery.” And in New York City, a young hairdresser named Marie Appell fell violently ill after eating an arsenic-laced “chocolate drop” from a box ostensibly sent to her by an unknown admirer.

All of these cases and more—so many as to amount to a veritable “poison epidemic”—were directly inspired by the Adams-Barnet case, at least according to the yellow papers. The situation had grown so dire that, as a public service, Hearst’s Evening Journalbegan running a graphic front-page warning: a drawing of a box of bonbons with a death’s head superimposed on it and a caption reading: “Don’t Accept Presents of Candy Unless You Know Who Sent Them!”⁶

Hearst’s attack on the police was, of course, perfectly in keeping with his self-appointed role as fearless defender of the common man. If the murderer of Katherine Adams and Henry Barnet had been a common criminal, the Journal maintained, he would have been arrested long ago. The man believed guilty of the crimes, however, had extraordinary advantages. Thanks to his family’s “financial resources,” he had the finest “legal and expert assistance” available. He was also being shielded by friends of his father, who were exerting “powerful influence of a political character” to keep the authorities from doing their job. “The Police Will Have to Be Unraveled Before They Can Unravel the Poison Mystery,” read the caption of one editorial cartoon, which showed a uniformed officer being trussed up and gagged by a pair of powerful hands labeled “Politician.”⁷

That influential friends of General Edward Leslie Molineux had intervened in the case was not beyond the realm of possibility. A politician described as a “power in Tammany Hall” had reportedly paid a visit to police headquarters, where he “delivered an ultimatum from his superiors which has effectively tied the hands of the police.”⁸ And the district attorney, Colonel Asa Bird Gardiner, was known to be an old friend and battlefield comrade of the General’s who had socialized with him many times at the city’s innumerable veterans’ functions.⁹

Confronted with such charges, Gardiner vehemently denied that the suspect was being shielded by powerful friends. The police, he asserted, were conducting their investigation in precisely “the right way.” “This will take time,” he stressed. “It is only proper that the police should proceed carefully and have matters in shape before any definite action is taken. There are still missing links in the chain of evidence that make it impossible to take a decisive step at this time.”¹⁰ McCluskey, too, scoffed at the notion that his men were “being held back by some potent influence.” “It is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous,” he replied when confronted by a group of reporters. “Since I have had charge of this office I’ve been permitted to investigate every case without the slightest interference. The statement that my hands are tied and that I’m being prevented from making an arrest is absolutely without foundation. It’s almost funny.”¹¹

And indeed, even as the yellow papers were accusing the detectives of deliberately dragging their feet, McCluskey’s men were pursuing a significant new clue—one that would cause Hearst himself to revise his low opinion of their efforts and lead to what his paper would call “a startling new chapter in the Great Poisoning Mystery.”¹²