Draft:Murder of Edwin L. Burdick

Edwin L. Burdick (1863-1903) was an American businessman and the victim of a mysterious and brutal murder in Buffalo, New York.

Burdick was a man from humble beginnings who began as a stenographer at the Buffalo Envelope Company and eventually worked his way up to purchase the company and become a co-owner with Charles Parke. Ed was well-liked and popular. He was known for his generosity and friends said he was "a gentleman in every sense of the word."

Ed married Alice Hull in 1885 and the couple had three daughters. They bought a spacious home in the elite Elmwood Village neighborhood at 101 Ashland Avenue. Alice's parents moved in with them, and they hired live-in servants who occupied the third floor. Alice's father died in 1899, but her mother remained with the family and often cared for the girls while Alice and Ed attended social events.

Life in Buffalo
The Burdicks were active in the local dancing club and the neighborhood golf club, of which Ed was the honorary president. The local gentry were a tight-knit group, dubbed the Elmwood Avenue set. They were rich and glamorous, but a faint note of seediness accompanied them. There was no proof of untoward behavior, only rumors.

Ed and Alice were particularly close to J.B. and Helen Warren and Arthur and Carrie Pennell. When the Warrens moved to Cleveland, Ohio, they spent more time with the Pennells, attending local events and occasionally vacationing together. The Pennells were the godparents of the Burdicks' children.

On New Year's Day 1901, Carrie Pennell took Ed Burdick aside at a house party and informed him that Arthur was having an affair with Alice. Ed did not believe the story and laughed it off. It bothered him though and, later that evening, he told his wife what Carrie said. He was shocked when she refused to categorically deny the story. Alice later said her husband grabbed her by the throat during their argument. After discovering some passionate love letters Arthur had written to his wife, Ed left on an extended business trip the next day.

Alice pleaded with him to come home and eventually managed to persuade him to return. Even after he did, matters between the couple were strained and Ed was increasingly suspicious of his wife. Still, the outside world remained in the dark until May 1901 when Alice was suddenly moved to Atlantic City.

The scandal rippled across Buffalo. Arthur Pennell pleaded Alice's case, swearing there was no affair. Alice's friends begged Ed to let her return. But Ed remained stoic, living quietly in the Ashland Avenue home with his mother-in-law and three daughters. Alice returned home to Buffalo in June 1901. Despite her presence, all was not well with the couple. Ed periodically left for long, unnecessary business trips. In late 1902, Alice was forced to leave again. This time Ed had a significant amount of evidence against her. He had hired a detective to trail his wife and had more than enough evidence to justify a divorce from her.

In mid-January 1903, Ed followed through on his long-standing threat and filed for a divorce from Alice. This threw matters into a different light. A scandal would ruin everyone attached to it. Alice wouldn't be the only one who suffered. The whole Burdick family, including the girls, would be smeared with the scandal, as would the Pennells.

Carrie Pennell wrote a letter to Ed, pleading with him to take his wife back: "[Alice] wants to come back and she is a good mother to the children. No one knows! Your honor and hers will be saved and the children will be spared. If she wants to return and you refuse, the responsibility for the shame and the disgrace that fall upon the children is yours. I appeal to you to take their mother back!"

Alice pleaded with her husband from her hotel in Atlantic City, begging him to give her another chance. When that failed, she hired Arthur Pennell to represent her and they launched a countersuit, alleging Ed was unfaithful with three women, including Mrs. Helen Warren. The timing was bad: the Warrens were also divorcing and, thanks to Alice's lawsuit, people began to speculate whether Ed was the reason. Adding to the rumors was the fact that J.B. Warren was very bitter toward Ed.

Nevertheless, Ed held firm. He refused to give Alice another chance. If she wished to contest the divorce, he said, the details of her lurid affair with Arthur Pennell would be public property. One way or another, on March 3, 1903, the Burdicks would no longer be married.

Arthur Pennell became verbally abusive toward Ed, defying him to divorce Alice. He went to the Buffalo Envelope Company to confront his former friend, and swore he would kill Ed, Alice, and himself if Burdick followed through on the divorce suit.

Ed's friends were concerned about him. His business partner, Parke, suggested Ed should kill Pennell, but Burdick brushed the suggestion aside as absurd. He maintained he was not afraid of Pennell at all. The man was really a coward, he said, adding, "I do not think Pennell will live long. It would not surprise me to hear any day that he had committed suicide."

Ed was afraid of someone though. He purchased a revolver in December 1902 that he carried with him everywhere.

The Murder
On Thursday, February 26, Ed spent the day at work and ate dinner with his daughters and Mrs. Hull in the evening. It was Maggie the cook's evening out, and when she returned around 10 p.m., she saw Burdick was awake. At the sound of someone in the house, Ed had hurried into the hall to see who was there but retired into his den when he saw it was Maggie. The cook hurried upstairs to go to sleep. She was the last person to see Burdick alive.

The following morning, Maggie awoke to a very cold house. When she went downstairs, she noticed the front door standing open, letting in the freezing February air. The kitchen window was standing open too. In a fright, she ran to Ed Burdick's bedroom and knocked on the door urgently. But Burdick did not answer.

The Burdicks' family doctor, William Marcy, was summoned and told that Ed was believed to be ill in his den. Marcy discovered Ed's naked body which was covered by rugs and pillows. His head was wrapped in a blanket. Dr. Marcy summoned the coroner, Dr. John Howland, to the scene. When Howland arrived, Marcy pleaded with him to classify the death as a suicide "to save the family any more scandal." He noted that Burdick being naked and alcohol being present were sure to cause talk, as would Mrs. Burdick's absence. Howland said he would examine the body. After a few minutes, he returned to Dr. Marcy and refused to classify it as a suicide. The deceased was beaten to death and his head was wrapped in a blanket afterwards. "No one would entertain the idea of suicide," he told Dr. Marcy. Howland then summoned the police to the house. When the police arrived, they immediately suspected the scene had been staged. It looked as though Ed had a female guest that evening. A bottle of cocktails and some snacks had been left half-eaten on the table. Ed, the family and servants assured police, never ate in the den unless he had guests.

On the other hand, the den also looked like the scene of a robbery. It had been ransacked, with books and papers lying everywhere. Nothing was missing though, despite several valuables being in plain sight. Burdick's wallet, which contained a two-week-old newspaper clipping about the divorce of the Warrens, was left untouched. His loaded gun was also found at the scene. It had not been fired. The police found no murder weapon. In the snow beneath the open kitchen window, presumably the point of entry, there were no footprints.

When they were interviewed, neither the family nor the servants could account for the murder. Burdick had appeared normal the evening before and they heard nothing after they retired to their rooms that evening.

The Investigation
It was evident at once that no stranger murdered Ed Burdick. "The case is one of the most mysterious that I have ever known. It is completely surrounded in mystery and we have no one under suspicion. We have too many clues," DA Coatsworth told reporters. "All point to one [social] circle. It may be that the crime grew out of the divorce proceedings and that someone directly or indirectly interested in that case knows something about it. If not someone who was connected. [then] someone who thought he or she would be connected, or should be connected."

The circle Coatsworth alluded to was, of course, the Elmwood Avenue set.

Alice was immediately ruled out as a suspect. She was in Atlantic City when the murder happened, and had been spotted there, reading a book on the evening of the murder. She couldn't have gotten to Buffalo in time to kill her husband. In the days after the murder, Alice returned home to 101 Ashland Avenue.

Other suspects were tracked down and disregarded. Arthur Pennell was a natural suspect, but he claimed to have been at home on the night of the murder, asleep with his wife. The police searched his home but found nothing to connect the attorney to the murder. Pennell and his wife were questioned separately and answered all the questions put to them openly. When he was located, J.B. Warren, the now ex-husband of Helen Warren, gave a more hostile take, saying angrily, "Burdick got what he deserved." Warren, however, was never a suspect, as he was known to be in Missouri at the time of the murder.

Ed's fear in the days leading up to the murder, his edginess, and his apparent need to carry a gun, even to read at night in his den, was a topic that continued to be debated. Ed was clear he wasn't afraid of Pennell---but was that only a bluff?

On the other hand, if Burdick had the revolver within easy reach, why didn't he just kill the intruder?

The police scrutinized the evidence again. They could not rule Pennell out definitively but it seemed increasingly unlikely he was responsible for the murder. Ed Burdick had been accused of causing the Warren's divorce. Mrs. Burdick alleged her husband was unfaithful with three women. Over time, the police were certain that the murderer was a woman.

Rumors of an impending arrest were in the papers daily but none was made. A coroner's inquest was scheduled to take place on March 13, 1903. In the meantime, Ed's body was buried in his hometown of Canastota, in Madison County, New York.

Death of the Pennells
Though not officially under suspicion, Arthur Pennell struggled with the notoriety the case brought. He was humiliated that his affair with Alice was broadcast so publicly.

At 4:30 p.m. on March 11, thirteen days after Ed's murder, Pennell and his wife went out for a drive in their automobile. It was a cold early spring day, and the Pennells drove for hours around the environs of Buffalo, despite the cold rain coming down. Witnesses saw the couple exit the car in the heavy rain and struggle to take the top off. At last they managed to remove the top and set off again. As they neared home, they drove past the Jamerthal quarry and a sharp wind blew Arthur's hat off his head. He turned, reached out to grab it, and the car went off the road into the quarry.

Arthur Pennell was killed instantly. Carrie Pennell was gravely injured but authorities were not without hope that she might regain consciousness long enough to share some answers. However, Mrs. Pennell died the following day.

Immediately questions arose as to whether their deaths were an accident. Pennell's agitation, the couple's strange behavior on the evening their car plunged into the quarry, and the pending inquest into Burdick's murder made suicide a real possibility. Most, however, believed the couple's death was the result of an unfortunate accident. There was nothing on their persons or in the car to suggest the Pennells intended to commit suicide.

The Inquest
The inquest into Ed Burdick's murder began four days after Arthur Pennell's death. Justice Thomas Murphy heard testimony from Alice Burdick, her three daughters, Mrs. Hull, Maggie Murray, the doctors, and the police. Maggie said that Burdick had been clad only in his underwear when she returned home on the evening of the murder, but she thought he was alone. Socialite Gertrude Paine testified as well, to the delight of the reporters. Mrs. Paine testified that during the month before his murder, Burdick was anxious to avoid the Pennells at social events. The judge embarrassed Dr. Marcy by questioning him closely on his plea to the coroner to call Burdick's murder a suicide. Dr. Marcy reiterated that Burdick's body had been discovered in a compromising position that would cause a scandal. The scene looked "shady," and he had asked the coroner to call it a suicide to protect the family name.

Pennell was a convenient suspect. The evidence against him was doubtful but the court felt it necessary to allow gushing love letters from Arthur to Alice were read aloud in court, a circumstance by which Pennell, a shy, reserved man, would likely have mortified. In one of the letters, the attorney had written passionately, "I feel I must kill Ed Burdick!" Alice sat in the witness chair as these missives were read publicly, without a blush. “Mrs. Burdick was frank in the extreme,” the Times Union wrote. “She rehearsed many things that would have disturbed most women, but her eyes never moistened." When D.A. Coatsworth said Ed was a kind and loving husband, Mrs. Burdick agreed. When the D.A. asked why Alice had treated him the way she did, she replied, "I had no love for him." But in the end, the court found no one accountable for Ed's death. Justice Murphy said that if Pennell were alive, a warrant could be issued for his arrest, though the newspapers, officials, and those connected closely to the case disagreed openly with the court's conclusion. The court severely chastised Alice for her treatment of her husband and for her affair with Arthur Pennell, but Mrs. Burdick appeared unruffled.

Ed Burdick's murder is still unsolved.