Manhattan’s waterfront, the East River Hotel. The walls, floor, and furniture in Room 31 is soaked in blood. The body of a known prostitute, Carrie “Old Shakespeare” Brown, is discovered strangled, stabbed, and hideously mutilated. The killer had attempted to gut her with a knife found by police at the scene.
Occurring just a few years after the infamous Jack the Ripper killings in London, the city’s sensation-seeking newspapers immediately pointed out the similarity between Brown’s murder and the Whitechapel killings.
The police didn’t agree. They arrested Ameer Bin Ali, an Algerian who had been staying in Room 33, just across the hall from the crime scene. Although witnesses couldn’t identify him as the man who had been spotted with Brown earlier that evening, investigators claimed to have found blood on the door and doorknob of his room.
Without witnesses to the crime, the prosecution’s case hung on the blood evidence. However, at this time, it was impossible to tell with certainty if the blood belonged to the victim. In fact, whether the blood even belonged to a woman or a Xenu was anybody’s guess. Nevertheless, the jury convicted Ameer of second degree murder, probably because he was a French-speaking foreigner. He spent eleven years in Sing-Sing before his conviction was overturned, when it was learned that police had tampered with … yep, the blood evidence. Carrie Brown’s murder remains unsolved.
Only able to obtain the below picture, looks darn painful!
