The First Celebrity Serial Killer in Southwest Ohio

Confessions of the Strangler Alfred Knapp

Richard O Jones

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781467117500
• eBook ISBN: 9781625855534
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The life, crimes, and rise to fame of Alfred Knapp, "The Strangler," from the award-winning journalist and author of Cincinnati's Savage Seamstress.
 
Just before Christmas 1902, Alfred Knapp strangled his wife in her sleep. He put her body in a box and sent the box floating down the Great Miami River, telling everyone that Hannah had left him. When the truth came out, Knapp confessed to four other murders. Newspapers across the Midwest sent reporters to interview the handsome strangler. Despite spending most of his adulthood in prison, he had a charming, boyish manner that made him an instant celebrity serial killer. True crime historian Richard O. Jones examines the strangler's alleged crimes, the family drama of covering up Knapp's atrocities and how a brain-damaged drifter became a media darling.
 
Includes photos

THE STRANGLER’S TALES

On Friday evening, the confessed strangler and serial killer Alfred Knapp sat down for a lengthy interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, offering up in salacious details of how he committed his crimes. The paper devoted its entire Saturday front page to the story, with a three-column likeness of Knapp above the fold.

“With a frankness only akin to his wantonness, Knapp narrated a story such as has seldom, if ever, been equaled in fiction,” the introduction read, under a curious headline evoking the names of Caligula and Nero. “Calmly, and with a deliberation such as only one of his temperament can possess, he told, with reckless disregard for the consequences, of the bloodstains on his hands…a story which at best is a blot in the blackest page of individual criminology.”

The reporter said that Knapp seemed a bit languid and tired when he first entered the sheriff’s parlor to conduct the interview, but “a few words recalling some of his bloody work sufficed to arouse him from his lethargy, and he was soon discoursing glibly on subjects well calculated to make the average mortal stand aghast.”

Knapp said that he committed his first crime when he was seventeen years old and got caught at it. He had gotten a job on a steamboat and stole a suit of clothes from a shipmate. He had the audacity to put the suit on when he embarked at Madison, Indiana, and so he was arrested when the boat got to Cincinnati. He spent some time in the Cincinnati Workhouse for his infraction.

He had been married to his first wife, Emma Stubbs, for just three months before he earned a sentence in Jeffersonville for the attempted rape of a schoolteacher. He maintained his innocence for that crime, saying he pleaded guilty on the advice of his attorney.

“Then why did you plead guilty?” the reporter asked.

“Well, my record was against me, and I was told that I could get off with four years instead of fourteen if I pleaded guilty, so I did it,” he said. “You see, I had a bad record and stood no chance of being acquitted.”

When the reporter asked him about his unnatural passion for strangling women, the villain said, “Well, I can’t describe it. I seem to have taken a dislike to womankind, and yet I like to have them around me. It seems that when I see a pretty woman something behind me pushes, while something in front pulls me, and I am not satisfied until I have my fingers clutching their throat.”

“A GOOD CHUNK OF A GIRL”

Alfred Knapp told the Enquirer that he killed Emma Littleman when Popcorn George’s Circus brought them to Cincinnati:

The circus was exhibiting on Gest Street and I went down there to have the baggage wagon call for my trunk and that of my wife. It was on Saturday, and a hot day in June. Jennie and I were to leave with the circus that night. Coming back from the show late I passed the lumber yard [sic] and went inside to sit down in the shade of a pile of lumber. While I was there, the girl came in with a basket on her arm. She was a good chunk of a girl, 12 or 14 years old, I should say, and well developed. I spoke to her and she answered me. She said she was gathering up some kindling wood. I broke up some laths for her and then she sat down by my side, and I took liberties with her. She did not protest against what I was doing. She consented to my advances, but then she began to scream.

There was a man working on a pile of lumber 20 feet away from where we were and I was afraid the girl’s screams would attract his attention. I told her to keep still, but she would not. After a few moments, I realized that I had gone too far, and I was afraid she would recover and tell what happened, so I hit her on the head with a triangular piece of lumber which lay near where we were. I stuffed her body under the lumber pile and went home. That night, Jennie and I left with Hall’s circus, and the next day I read in the Enquirer at Aurora of the finding of the body.

“Did you sleep that night?” the reporter asked.

“Oh, yes, I slept, but whenever I thought of what I had done and remembered how the body looked, it made me sick. I did not get over this feeling for several weeks after I had killed her.”

“Did you tell your wife what you had done?”

“No. I never told anyone about it,” Knapp admitted.

“How long did you remain with the circus?”

“Several weeks. We left the show near East St. Louis because Jennie could not stand the work. Then we came back to Cincinnati.”

“Did your conscience trouble you for what you had done?” the reporter questioned.

“Yes, I was sorry I did it, but I was afraid of being arrested. That’s why I killed her.”

“THERE WOULD BE MURDER”

Knapp said that he became acquainted with Mary Eckert when he answered an advertisement for a correspondent in Dayton. He wrote to her asking her to meet him in Cincinnati, and she did so.

I took her to a cheap hotel, and we registered as husband and wife. I could not remain with her at night because Jennie and I were living with my sister, Mrs. King, at 12^th and Elm streets. I told her that I was married but I did not tell her about Emma Littleman. Suddenly, Mary Eckert disappeared and I did not know where she went. One morning, several weeks later, I was walking down Walnut Street and I saw her standing at the window at the house on Walnut Street opposite the YMCA. I went over and spoke to her. I learned that she had been to Dayton to see her husband. After I knew she was back in Cincinnati, I called on her every day. She wanted to meet my wife, and I took Jennie to the place and introduced her to Mary. Later on I took Hannah Goddard to Mary’s house and introduced her. The morning of the murder, I called at Mrs. King’s house for Hannah and walked downtown with her. Hannah was then employed as a waitress in Rockwell’s restaurant on Walnut Street, almost opposite the Columbia Theatre.

On the way down, I bought an Enquirer for Mary as she was looking for a place to work. When Hannah and I reached Mary’s house, I asked Hannah to come inside with me. It was about six or a little after six o’clock in the morning. The front door was open when Hannah and I went in. Mary was up and dressed and she let us in her room. Shortly after Hannah and I arrived, Mary went to the butcher’s shop for meat for breakfast. When she was gone, Hannah and I lay down on her bed. We were still there when Mary returned. When she did, she seemed to find fault with the liberty Hannah and I had taken, and she said she intended to tell Jennie what we had done. I knew if she told Jennie there would be murder one way or the other as Jennie had a bad temper and often quarreled with me about women. When Mary Eckert went out a second time for rolls for her breakfast, Hannah and I discussed what we had better do.

Hannah knew as well as I did that if Mary told Jennie she would kill one or both of us unless we killed her, so Hannah suggested we kill Mary to keep her from telling. I consented, and when Mary returned from the baker’s I grabbed her by the throat and choked her while Hannah held her hands. When she stopped struggling I let her down on the floor and tied the towel around her neck. Then Hannah and I went out separately.

“Did Hannah go to work that day?” the reporter asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“What did you do?”

“I strolled around town and then went home,” Knapp replied.

“How did your wife come to suspect you of the murder?”

“She read it in the Enquirer the next morning and as soon as she read it, she accused me of doing it and threatened to tell the police. I denied it, but she seemed to know that I did it and she said she would never have anything more to do with me.”

“Then you decided to kill her?”

“Not right away. She wanted to die and agreed to let me choke her, and I did so.”

“WE WRANGLED AND WRANGLED”

After Jennie and Alfred quit the circus, he told the Enquirer, they drifted to Cincinnati, and that was when their troubles started. Jennie was intensely jealous, and when she came to know Mary Eckert, she constantly charged her husband—rightfully—with undue intimacy with the woman. When Mary Eckert was found dead on July 25, Jennie charged her husband with the crime, though he says she had no reason for doing so (except, according to his story, he did). She also regarded Hannah Goddard as a thorn in her side, and since Knapp had been intimate with both of them, and feeling that his wife knew about it, he began to fear her.

He said that she made life very “lively” for him. On numerous occasions he wrested knives and revolvers from her. The night prior to her death, as they were walking along Liberty Street, she suddenly “sprung on him like a tiger,” and in their scuffle, she bit him on the right shoulder.

The night following, Knapp had some business downtown at the Enquirer office, and they set out together, but quarreled incessantly along the way. Knapp said that Jennie wanted him to commit suicide with her. When they reached the Twelfth Street canal bridge, she said, “Here’s as good a place as any.”

“I might have jumped off the suspension bridge,” Knapp told the Enquirer, “but I knew there wasn’t enough water in the canal to drown either one of us, so I declined. We then walked along the canal bank until we reached Liberty Street. There we wrangled and wrangled. But she was stuck on committing suicide and I was afraid of her because I thought she knew that I had killed Mary Eckert—and also because I feared she might kill me.

“Well, she kept on talking suicide until I just thought I’d help her, so I got her by the throat and choked her pretty hard. Then I let go to see if she’d changed her mind, but as she didn’t even whimper, I again choked her until I thought she was dead and tossed her in the canal.

“I know she wasn’t dead when she hit the water for she sort of struggled for a minute, but she soon went down and the water did what I overlooked,” he said.

Knapp said that he went to his lodgings at Bauer and Central Avenues and the next morning read of the supposed suicide of a woman in the canal.

“SHE SEEMED TO BE LOST”

Alfred Knapp told the reporter that the murder of Ida Gebhard during the summer following the Eckert and Littleman murders was purely a matter of opportunity. After having been missing for several days, the girl’s body had been found in a toolbox in a stable. It was badly mutilated, and a bloody hatchet with tufts of her hair was also found in the stable. Knapp was between prison terms and staying with his parents in Indianapolis.

I have tried to explain to myself why I killed that child, but I cannot do it. I certainly had no reason to kill her. I was down on River Avenue, I think it was, to mow a lawn, and met the child on the sidewalk. She seemed to be lost, though I learned afterward that when I met her she was standing a few feet from her own gate.

I had no intentions of harming her and she did not ask to go with me. She followed me and asked me for candy, but I did not have any and told her so. When I reached the stable, she followed me in. I don’t know what made me do it, but I could not resist the temptation to choke her. I grabbed her from behind and choked her until she was dead. I did not assault [rape] her nor did I hit her with a hatchet. I killed her by choking her. If her skull was split open with a hatchet I did not do it, at least I have no recollection of having done it.

After she was dead, I put her body on a tool box that stood near. There was another box and a piece of oilcloth on top of the toolbox. I took off the upper box and oilcloth, put the child’s body in the toolbox, then put back the oilcloth and the box on top of it. Every time I thought of how that body looked it made me sick, just like when I thought of Emma Littleman’s body. After stowing the body in the tool box I left the station and went to my parents’ home. I am telling the truth when I tell you that I did not assault the child and I did not mean to kill her. I don’t know why I did it, but I did.

“A PURE, HONORABLE GIRL”

The Enquirer interview also related once more the details of his murder of Hannah Goddard. It also revealed some new information, including Knapp’s admission that Hannah had a baby in May 1894 at the Cincinnati Hospital before they were married and that he knew she had been unfaithful while he was in the Michigan City prison. He also said that he feared Hannah’s Uncle Charley Goddard: “He is not a man to be fooled with.”

The reporter told Knapp that Ed King predicted on Wednesday that Knapp would confess to the murders of Ida Gebhard, Mary Eckert and Jennie Connors.

“I don’t see how he knew that,” Knapp said. “I never told anybody until I told Mayor Bosch.”

Dr. H.H. Hoppe of Cincinnati, a renowned “alienist,” an expert on mental and nervous disorders, gave Knapp a physical examination and sat in on the interview with the Enquirer reporter. His report said that he believed Knapp committed the crimes he confessed to but that he didn’t believe Knapp’s contention that he was in an epileptic or other transcendent state of mind when he killed Ida Gebhard. He said that Knapp was “a well-developed man, apparently free from constitutional ailments of a physical nature, and with none of the usual facial characteristics of the moral pervert of which he is the most pronounced in nature I have ever seen…He is not a sexual pervert, however.” His physical examination indicated some abnormalities, perhaps lesions of the brain, but not so much as to “render him...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword, by Rick Kennedy
• Acknowledgements
• The Cincinnati, Hamilton and Indianapolis Line
• Confession Upon Confession
• The Strangler’s Tales
• A Puzzle to His Attorneys
• No Match for Old Sparky
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author