It had been a difficult two weeks for Herman and Gustav Kutnow. Ever since the story of Henry Barnet’s death broke, their business had fallen off dramatically. To stem the damage, they had issued a string of reassuring statements, declaring that no toxic chemicals were used in the making of their product, an all-natural “pleasant-tasting effervescent salt” derived from the Carlsbad mineral springs. But their efforts had made little impression on a public exposed to daily graphic descriptions of a healthy thirty-two-year-old clubman who had suffered a miserable death after taking a dose of their medicine.
“The fact that the murderer employed a bottle of our powder as an instrument in his design against Barnet has given our preparation the most undesirable kind of advertising,” Herman Kutnow told one reporter in mid-January. By then, sales of the once-popular patent medicine were essentially “at a standstill.”1
Desperate to see the case resolved, the Kutnows posted a $500 reward “for the conviction of the poisoner.” “We make the offer,” Herman explained, “to stimulate the detectives to exercise their greatest efforts.”2 They also let it be known that they were eager to assist the investigation in any way possible. And so, when Arthur Carey showed up at the Kutnows’ Astor Place office, the brothers were ready to give the detective whatever help he needed.
Carey had brought along the little tin from which Barnet had taken the fatal dose. Examining it, Gustav Kutnow confirmed that it was one of the company’s free samples. Stuck to the bottom was a label that warned: “Any person selling or exposing for sale this sample at any time will be liable to all the punishments and penalties of the law.”3 The company had only begun attaching this notice to its samples in July 1898, six months earlier.
How, Carey wanted to know, were the samples distributed?
There were three ways, explained Kutnow. During the previous summer, he had spent a week in Asbury Park, New Jersey, handing them out from a booth on the boardwalk. People could also receive a sample by coming to the Kutnow brothers’ office and asking for one.
The vast majority of the little tins, however, were distributed through the mail as the result of the company’s newspaper ads. Anyone sending in a letter with his name and address would receive a free sample by return mail.4
Carey asked if the Kutnows kept records of the people who wrote in for samples.
Indeed they did, said Gustav. In fact, they carefully preserved the actual letters in order to compile a mailing list of potential customers.
This was good news to Carey, who was eager to find any piece of physical evidence that would link the suspect to the Barnet murder.
The bad news was that, during the six-month period in question, the Kutnows had received approximately 100,000 of these letters.5
Beginning that day, Carey—seated in his shirtsleeves at a desk in the Kutnow brothers’ office—methodically went through stack after stack of the letters. In this task he was assisted by two of his colleagues, Detectives Herlihy and McCafferty, along with the Kutnows’ bookkeeper, a young woman named Elsie Gray. To help her identify the letter he was looking for, Carey gave her a facsimile of the handwriting on the poison package received by Harry Cornish.
Exactly one week after the search began, as the four of them were huddled at the desk, Miss Gray let out a little gasp. “I think I’ve found it,” she said. Feeling a jolt of excitement, Carey reached out and took the sheet of paper from her hands. Even at a glance, he could see that the penmanship bore a striking resemblance to the writing on the poison package. But as he read the letter, his excitement gave way to confusion.
The one-line request for “a sample of salt” was written on a sheet of what was obviously expensive stationery. The paper was eggshell blue in color and embossed with a distinctive silver crest, consisting of three small interlinked crescents. Only a man of hopelessly snobbish habits, thought Carey, would use such fancy stationery for his everyday communications. A man like Roland Molineux.
Like most of his colleagues on the force, Carey felt sure that Molineux was the poisoner. He’d been hoping that, once it turned up, the request for the Kutnow’s Powder would confirm that belief—that it would be signed with Molineux’s name, or have, as a return address, the Morris Herrmann factory or the New York Athletic Club or perhaps even the imposing house on Fort Greene Place.
But the return address supplied by the sender was none of those places. It was 1620 Broadway in Manhattan. And the letter wasn’t signed “Roland Molineux.”
It was signed “H. Cornish.”6