Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class William J. Sharkey’s Not-so-great Escape About this episode William J. Sharkey was a pickpocket, a con man, a politician, and a murderer, though whether or not that murder was an accident became the question at the center of a case that gripped New York for months. And then, he vanished. Sort of.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Holly Frey? This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do
0:43 Holly Frey? we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.
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2:29 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.
2:32 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:34 Holly Frey? So this was going to be an episode about several escaped criminals that have never been found. You know, one of our little smorgasbordy potpourri episodes.
2:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, we have a Six Impossibles on jailbreaks from a few years ago.
2:49 Holly Frey? Yeah, and this was kind of similar. But then I got to reading about William J. Sharkey's case. And then I was like, well, this is going to be a whole thing on its own, because it's got some fun drama. Also, frankly, I'm in the middle of a lot of travel, and I wanted to do something that would be really fun and engaging that I didn't have to like, learn telemetry or something for. And I can talk about, you know, crime without having to do that. So for context, William J. Sharkey was a pickpocket, a con man, a politician, and a murderer. Although whether or not that murder was an accident became the question at the center of a case that gripped New York for months. And then he vanished, sort of.
3:35 Tracy V. Wilson? So in 1879, the Sun newspaper of New York described William J. Sharkey this way, quote, "Sharkey was the son of respected residents of the 9th Ward, but he went astray early in life. And after a brilliantly notorious career of the crooked sort, bloomed out into a successful political adventurer. He was a power in the 8th Ward primaries, had a club named after him, and belonged to every influential political organization in the 5th Congressional District."
4:08 Holly Frey? Sharkey, who was born sometime in the late 1840s, got into theft at an early age. And he actually became known as an expert pickpocket specializing in stealing fine jewelry right off of people as they were wearing it. He got arrested after stealing a pocketbook, but that didn't sway him from a life as a career criminal. And then he got involved with Tammany Hall as William Boss Tweed was rising to power, and Sharkey rose right along with him. As the New York Times put it, quote, "The Tammany Ring was seeking a suitable servant in the Eighth Ward, and Sharkey was selected as the man." But eventually, Sharkey fell out of favor as a politician.
4:51 Holly Frey? There is some indication that Tweed used him as a pawn in Eighth Ward politics until his defeat when running for Assistant Alderman. And then he was kind of discarded and went back to his criminal enterprises.
5:04 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1872, Sharkey arrived in Buffalo. He wanted to drum up a gambling opportunity. He started a game called Pharaoh Bank. Pharaoh Bank, sometimes just called Pharaoh, is a card game that was hugely popular in Europe and the United States at the time. It's one of the oldest card games intended for gambling. In this game, the player bets against the house or bank, and Sharkey lost a lot of money in Buffalo, a reported $4,000 over the course of just five days.
5:38 Holly Frey? Yeah, Pharaoh Bank is kind of interesting to me. It's spelled F-A-R-O. It is meant to sound like Pharaoh, as in Egyptian Pharaoh, because apparently the French cards originally used for it had Egyptian iconography on them. I'm just fascinated by the way card games come and go. That one fell out of favor, like, in the early 1920s, kind of never to return again in terms of its popularity in the US.
6:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Until now, when people hear about it on our podcast and stage a revival.
6:09 Holly Frey? Now, a revival of Pharaoh. After this big series of losses in Buffalo, though, Sharkey went back to New York City. And although he had lost a lot of money in Buffalo, he still thought gambling offered plenty of opportunity, and he actually got involved in the startup of another game of Pharaoh Bank in Buffalo, this time through a friend and associate of him. So Sharkey gave a man named Robert Dunn $600 to start up and run the new Pharaoh game, hoping that this one would be more successful and would generate some cash. Dunn theoretically knew a lot about money. He worked at the New York City Controller's Office.
6:48 Tracy V. Wilson? But Dunn's thorough operation went the same way as Sharkey's earlier effort. He lost the $600 seed money, which he had promised to repay Sharkey and lost some more money. Besides that, the two men met up again at a funeral of an associate named James Riley on September 1st, 1872. And after the funeral, they went to a saloon on Hudson Street called The Place. They had a drink. Sharkey demanded repayment of his money. And when Dunn could not produce that money, Sharkey shot and killed him. Sharkey just left The Place. He was caught and arrested a few hours later at a private residence and charged with first
7:33 Tracy V. Wilson? degree murder.
7:34 Holly Frey? It was almost 10 months before Sharkey's trial began in June of the following year. And when the court date finally arrived, Sharkey's three brothers were in attendance, as was Robert Dunn's widow. Although there were two eyewitnesses willing to testify that they had seen William Sharkey purposely shoot Dunn in the chest at short range, the defense's story was that it had all been an accident. And as the testimony played out, it's not that different from one side to the other. The only major difference that keeps coming up is kind of the perception of intent.
8:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Per the opening statement on June 20th, which was made by one of the defense attorneys, Charles Brook, Sharkey was speaking to another friend. And when he leaned forward with his arm on the counter as he was showing, quote, "what he would have done for the deceased," the gun accidentally discharged. Seems safe to assume that if he was kind of waving a gun around, talking about what he was willing to do for Dunn, that still does not characterize Sharkey in an especially favorable light. This is not a safe way to handle a firearm.
8:46 Holly Frey? Or to make your point.
8:47 Tracy V. Wilson? Right. This was the foundation of the case, though. The defense also stated that Sharkey did not believe the shooting had resulted in a serious wound, and that's why he had left.
9:00 Holly Frey? So as I hinted to you a moment ago, the testimony of witnesses on both sides of this case kind of paint pictures that are not identical to either the prosecution or the defense's version of the story. They sort of fall in shades in between. The one that most closely matched their account was given by a man named William Welsh. And according to his version, when he got to the saloon at about 8:00 PM, Sharkey was pacing around waving a pistol and calling Dunn names. Welsh stated that he said to Sharkey, "Billy, put that away. It might go off and shoot somebody." But Sharkey continued to argue with Dunn, and Welsh once again urged him to put the
9:40 Holly Frey? gun down, saying, "Billy, don't hold the pistol that way. It might go off." And then Sharkey asked Welsh if he was willing to make good on Dunn's debts, to which Welsh said no. This is when Sharkey supposedly made that statement about what he was willing to do for Dunn. If that sounded weird to you, this will be illustrative. He told Welsh, "There was a time I would go into a butcher shop and let a butcher take a cleaver and cut that arm off for that son of a bee." That is actually exactly how the paper wrote it up, which I find amusing. And then he attempted to illustrate that loyalty and devotion he had for Dunn in their friendship at that point by kind of gesturing to his arm. And it was as he said that, that the
10:24 Holly Frey? gun went off. And according to Welsh, Sharkey was not looking at Dunn when this happened.
10:31 Tracy V. Wilson? This witness would have really helped Sharkey's case had it not been for the fact that on cross-examination, it became apparent that he may have attempted to tamper with the prosecution's main witnesses in the case. They were named Betts and Klein. When he was asked directly if he had offered Betts and Klein money not to testify, Welsh refused to answer.
10:57 Holly Frey? Yeah, the court date had actually been initially set to start earlier than it did. And those two witnesses had kind of gotten cold feet for a minute, and so it had had to be postponed. And they think that Welsh might have been the problem there. But even one of the witnesses for the prosecution, a local from the neighborhood who often drank at the place, more or less supported that accidental discharge story. He backed up the account that Sharkey was telling people he would have had a hand cut off for Dunn at one time in their friendship. This witness, William Holly, also indicated that Sharkey was not looking at Dunn when the gun went off, but was looking down at his own arm as he dropped the hand down dramatically to demonstrate his point.
11:42 Holly Frey? On cross-examination, Holly also added that Sharkey appeared to be intoxicated when the shooting took place.
11:50 Tracy V. Wilson? There was also testimony from other bar patrons that Sharkey had loudly said that Robert Dunn had made $1,500 in his gambling setup, so he could easily afford to pay Sharkey back if he wanted to. But Dunn denied that he had been successful with Pharaoh. One particularly damning piece of testimony was that Sharkey had said, quote, "Make good for yourself. There's only two feet between us." So that's a clear threat. According to one witness, he also challenged Dunn to a pistol duel, which was something that Dunn did not want to do. One reason that these various testimonies all offer different accounts of things that were said and done
12:34 Tracy V. Wilson? is just they witnessed different phases of this altercation. When it came down to the moment that Dunn was shot, there's actually a lot of corroboration. And several different people all said that they had known both men for years, that they had a good friendship. And often, according to the coverage of the trial that was published in the New York Times, quote, "We're in the habit of joking and larking together."
13:01 Holly Frey? Yeah, it's unclear if they're trying to hint like, oh, they got into fights like this from time to time and that was the dynamic of their friendship. Or if they're trying to hint that people were thinking they may not be as angry as they appeared in some points in time. This may have come up as an issue because some people were asking questions about why did no one try to stop this? The barkeep, Henry Klein, one of those witnesses we mentioned earlier, gave what reads as the clearest explanation, in my opinion, of this accidental firing and what exactly Sharkey was doing in the moments leading up to it. So according to Klein, Sharkey was holding the pistol in his right hand.
13:41 Holly Frey? And with that hand, as he talked about his willingness to lose a hand or arm for Robert Dunn, he was making what seemed like a chopping motion repeatedly to his left arm. And on the third time, he dropped his hand to make this chop, the gun went off. The other witness that we mentioned earlier, John D. Betts, completely backed up Klein's version of events.
14:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Last, a police officer testified about how he learned of the shooting and that word had reached the police station that Sharkey was willing to give himself up. The closing remarks from the defense were that it was clear that this had been an accident and that Sharkey had no actual intention to shoot Dunn. The prosecution felt as though the behavior Sharkey had exhibited was in line with an intent to kill. The prosecution also tried to throw additional blame on the other patrons of the saloon for not doing more to end Sharkey's tirade while he was brandishing a gun, something I feel is understandable considering that he was brandishing a gun.
14:49 Holly Frey? Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of like, in the newspaper accounts, there's a lot of intimation of like, you guys all clearly knew this guy, why didn't you disarm him? And it's like, he's angry and he has a gun.
15:02 Tracy V. Wilson? And waving a gun around.
15:04 Holly Frey? We are going to talk about what happened with the jury after we pause for a sponsor break.
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17:20 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
18:02 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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19:05 Speaker 04 This new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
19:23 Holly Frey? As the jury was given instructions on what would qualify as murder in the first degree versus finding Sharkey guilty of manslaughter, one of the notes to them was actually about the intoxication aspect of the defendant's demeanor on the night of the murder. The judge said, quote, "Voluntary intoxication can furnish no excuse or immunity to crimes, and so long as the offender is capable of conceiving a design, he will be presumed in the absence of contrary proofs to have intended the natural consequences of his own acts." Throughout all of this, all of the closing remarks and discussion and instructions
20:04 Holly Frey? to the jury, The New York Times described Sharkey's behavior this way, quote, "The prisoner was bent forward during the delivery of the recorder's address and listened breathlessly to every word, his face occasionally twitching nervously as allusions were made to his character and career."
20:22 Tracy V. Wilson? The jury deliberated for 40 minutes. During that time, they asked to have Sharkey's gun brought to the room for examination, but the defense objected. The jury returned to the courtroom, but it was not to deliver a verdict. They had questions about the gun. They wanted, quote, "to know how hard it went off." This actually became an issue of debate in the courtroom. Sharkey's defense attorneys argued that the gun had been sitting in evidence for 10 months. There was no way to guarantee that it was in the same condition as it had been the night that it fired the fatal shot into Dunn's chest. The prosecution thought the jury should get to handle the pistol, but the judge agreed with the defense.
21:06 Tracy V. Wilson? The jury once again retired from the courtroom to deliberate. After another 50 minutes, the jury returned. William Sharkey was found guilty of murder in the first degree with a recommendation for mercy in sentencing.
21:21 Holly Frey? Sharkey's defense wanted the jury to be asked why they had added that recommendation for a merciful sentence. It seemed like the defense team was trying to see if the jury was actually not fully convinced of intent, which would give the defense some ammunition to pursue a mistrial or fuel an appeal in the case. But this request, after much deliberation in the courtroom, was denied. The defense noted that it was going to start immediately pursuing a new trial on the ground of, quote, "misdirection of the jury by the court." When the press approached the jury foreman to ask about the unusual request for mercy for the defendant, the foreman stated that the jury had taken an oath, quote, "not to divulge what took place in the jury room."
22:07 Holly Frey? Another juror stated that even if the judge had asked them to explain, they would not because of those oaths to one another.
22:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Sharkey had worked hard to seem indifferent publicly, but according to press accounts, when he got back to his cell at the tombs, he, quote, "broke down completely." He had very clearly not expected to be found guilty of first degree murder. Aside from his closest friends and family and his lawyers, Sharkey refused to speak to anyone.
22:39 Holly Frey? That was very unlike him. He often was perfectly happy to socialize with the press and any other visitors. But in the meantime, his defense did file a motion for a new trial, but that motion was denied. And their primary argument was based on something that the judge had told the jury, that there was no question that Sharkey had killed Dunn. And this wasn't really a matter of question. Sharkey and his defense team had been operating with this as an established truth, and their case had been focused on establishing the shooting as accidental. But the claim in the motion for a new trial was that in stating explicitly to the jury that there was no question as to whether Sharkey had killed Dunn, the judge had taken
23:23 Holly Frey? away the option of the jury to acquit. And Sharkey's counsel had stated in his brief that, quote, "In felonies, the prisoner has no power to admit anything." But the judge stated later at sentencing, quote, "I am not furnished with any case in support of this proposition, and all the clementary books and decisions go the other way."
23:44 Tracy V. Wilson? On July 3rd, the sentence was handed down. Leading up to the announcement, Sharkey was reportedly in good spirits. He seemed to have believed that the jury's request for mercy in his sentencing would be honored. The New York Times reported that he was joking and chatting with the court staff while they waited for the judge and the lawyers to get there. But then, once the sentence was read, things got serious in a hurry.
24:11 Holly Frey? Regarding that recommendation of mercy, the judge's statement was this, quote, "This recommendation was not and cannot be made a legal part of the verdict. The latter can only be guilty or not guilty." Even had the jurors presented affidavits explanatory of the technical verdict of guilty, I am of the opinion it would become the duty of the judge not to award weight to them.
24:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Then came the sentencing, quote, "In Sharkey's case, my reviewing judgment concurs with the jury. I have reread all the testimony, all the requests of the counsel, and my charge in the spirit with which both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals must necessarily review hereafter." Sharkey was given a death sentence, and his execution was to be carried out by hanging that was initially scheduled for August 15th.
25:04 Holly Frey? Once again, his lawyers, Charles W. Brooks and Peter Mitchell, pursued other options. And they started by filing for a stay of execution with the Supreme Court of New York a few weeks later. Because while the judge in the initial case believed that he had done nothing wrong, the defendant's counsel wanted to take their questions of jury handling and some other issues to a higher court. The bill of exceptions they filed stated the following, quote, "That the recorder erred in charging the jury that he could not perceive how they could acquit the prisoner. That he erred in commenting on the language used by the prisoner and saying that a man who would use such language as the prisoner used and which was testified in the case would be almost unfit to live.
25:48 Holly Frey? That the statement of the recorders was calculated to mislead and prejudice the jury coming from the judge." That bill of exceptions also mentions the judge dismissing intoxication as a mitigating factor, mentioning that anyone who picks up a gun can't not intend to do harm, incorrectly repeating a detail of distance in the crime scene. Like, when it came up, he had said that Sharkey was closer to Robert Dunn than he actually had been, and then incorrectly explaining other possible guilty verdicts that the jury could have found Sharkey guilty on, such as murder in the second degree instead of the first.
26:28 Tracy V. Wilson? While he waited, Sharkey was imprisoned in the Manhattan House of Detention, known colloquially as the Tombs, which is what we called it earlier. As an aside, this jail is said to have gotten that nickname because the exterior, designed by architect John Haviland in the 1830s, was inspired by the style of Egyptian tombs. Maggie Jordan was Sharkey's girlfriend, or maybe his wife. There are apparently some police records that suggest the two of them were married. Maggie kind of gets held up as an almost tropey instance of a woman from a good family who had a predilection for a life of crime and
27:07 Tracy V. Wilson? for criminal men. Sharkey was not her first paramour to be involved in some kind of illicit activity, but she seemed genuinely devoted to William Sharkey. She went to visit him every day, spent hours at a time at the jail, sitting in front of his cell, or going with him on walks in the building when he was allowed to stretch his legs. That might sound a little odd, but at this point, the Tombs, like a lot of municipal services in New York, was run with a pretty lackadaisical attitude. Corruption was rampant in the city government. The political organization known as Tammany Hall was directing a lot of New York's government,
27:48 Tracy V. Wilson? and if you were in good with Tammany Hall, you did not serve time in the way that another incarcerated person would. Sharkey had Tammany ties, so he was staying in a section of the jail that sounds more like a hotel than a prison. Because of that death sentence, he could not leave the premises, but he could often just walk around. Maggie made sure that he had all the comforts of home in his cell, including fine furnishings, a pet canary, and the latest magazines.
28:20 Holly Frey? We will talk about how William J. Sharkey just strolled right out of prison one day after we pause for a sponsor break.
28:32 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
29:14 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
29:34 Speaker 04 Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.
30:17 Speaker 04 This new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
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31:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter,
32:22 Tracy V. Wilson? and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
32:46 Holly Frey? November 19th, 1873 was a day seemingly like any other when Sharkey had his usual visit from Maggie. She arrived at 10 a.m. and she was given a pass instantly as she was a regular. All the guards knew her. Maggie stayed until 1 p.m. And then another visitor to the tombs named Mrs. Wesley Allen came to the prison at 12:30. She was there to visit a man named Flood, so her time there overlapped Maggie's by about half an hour. And in fact, she was a friend of Maggie's. She stopped to chat with Maggie and Sharkey briefly before continuing on to visit Flood. Mrs. Allen had requested and was given a
33:26 Holly Frey? pass at the check-in. When Maggie exited the building at 1 p.m., it was kind of noted it as odd because she normally stayed much later than that.
33:36 Tracy V. Wilson? At 1:30 p.m., an unnamed woman who was described as peculiar-looking left the jail and turned in her pass at the gate as she left. She was dressed all in black with a winter bonnet and a green veil over her face. She crossed the street and waited a few moments before boarding a street car as it came by.
33:57 Holly Frey? Then, at 2:05 p.m., Mrs. Allen came out. She was stopped on her way out of the prison by a guard named Johnson who asked for her pass, but she couldn't find it. And she told the guard she must have lost it. This seemed suspicious, so Johnson detained Mrs. Allen and then ordered a walk-through and inspection of the prison by the guards on duty. And that was when they realized that Sharkey had escaped.
34:23 Tracy V. Wilson? It did not take long for them to piece together that Sharkey was the peculiar-looking woman who had exited the building at 1:30. In his cell, they found remnants of his mustache, which he had shaved off, and his clothes were strewn about uncharacteristically.
34:42 Tracy V. Wilson? After Sharkey had vanished, the guards recalled that Maggie's skirts had looked extra bulky when she got there, but they assumed that she had been wearing an extra petticoat or two to help keep out the November chill. They realized that she had brought him a dress hidden under her own dress.
35:00 Holly Frey? Mrs. Allen was arrested, but she was soon released because the only thing that was known conclusively was that she didn't have her pass anymore. She never wavered in her claim that it had simply been lost. But Maggie was soon arrested at her mother's house.
35:17 Tracy V. Wilson? At first, reports of the escape were met with disbelief. It seemed so preposterous and even humorous. I, in fact, laughed out loud when I first read about him shaving off the mustache. A lot of people rejected it as just nonsense. But a rumor had also started to circulate almost instantly that Sharkey had learned from his lawyers two weeks earlier that they had exhausted all legal means of freeing him and that at that time Maggie had decided she would plan an escape. According to this rumor, she'd been sneaking in in his disguise a piece at a time in the weeks that had followed that
35:57 Tracy V. Wilson? decision. Maggie was tried for aiding in Sharkey's escape, but unlike in Sharkey's case, the jury never reached an agreement about her guilt or innocence. She was ultimately released on bail.
36:10 Holly Frey? A reward for Sharkey was offered by the city, $2,000, dead or alive. No one ever claimed it. Sharkey was never again taken into custody in New York, and according to a 1931 New Yorker account of the events of his life, after the escape, he hid out in New York for three weeks before boarding a schooner bound for Cuba. After landing in Baracoa, which sits near the eastern tip of the island, he made his way west to Havana. Although his location was known, and we'll talk more about that in a minute, in the 1870s, Cuba was still a colony of Spain. That status did not change until 1898, when the US gained control of Cuba as a territory, although that did not remain the status quo.
36:55 Holly Frey? But at this point, Spain and the US didn't have an extradition treaty, so Sharkey was theoretically beyond the reach of US law.
37:03 Tracy V. Wilson? As for Maggie, she joined Sharkey in Cuba after her trial. They only stayed together in Cuba for a couple of months, though. Sharkey reportedly broke up with her. And then she returned to New York, although an article in the New York Sun that came out in 1875 makes it sound like she might have just gotten fed up with him and left. A little trigger here, it hints that he was probably abusive with her. The account also gives significant updates to Sharkey's life in Cuba.
37:37 Holly Frey? And that write-up states, quote, "Private detective Harry Davies of Davies and Company's Agency returned from Havana on the steamer city of Havana on Monday. In a stay of many weeks in Havana, Mr. Davies was frequently thrown into the company of William J. Sharkey, the escaped murderer, and learned much of his habits and mode of life. As a rule, Mr. Davies says Sharkey is not as boisterous and violent in his cuffs as he was wont to be in New York. While Maggie Jordan remained with him, he always had a safe and convenient outlet for his natural cuss-iness, for he knew that she would never complain of him. But since her flight, he has had to bottle up some of his passion for want of a fitting
38:20 Holly Frey? object to exercise it upon safely. Sharkey has more respect for the authorities in Havana than he ever showed for the police in New York and carefully represses himself when there is the slightest danger. All the money he has is sent to him by his brothers in New York, and although the allowance is liberal, it is not sufficient to enable the escaped convict to cut the figure he did in his native city."
38:46 Tracy V. Wilson? So if that account is accurate, it seems like Sharkey might have been really altered by his trial, sentencing, and prison time, even if he did have more privileges than the average person who was incarcerated in the tombs. It could also simply have been that he did not want to risk Cuba sending him back to the United States to face the gallows. This also mentions that he was living under the name Frank Campbell, and he continued to assert that Dunn's death was an accident. Incidentally, that same write-up says at the very end that Sharkey actually got arrested in Cuba right before the publication for threatening to kill the captain and purser of a ship.
39:28 Holly Frey? The month after that account was published, The New York Times ran an update that opened with, quote, "It was learned by a telegram received from Havana dated the 20th that William J. Sharkey, the murderer who escaped from the tombs in November last, was arrested on that day in Santiago de Cuba, where he had gone for the purpose of embarking for South America, and that he would be returned to the United States."
39:54 Tracy V. Wilson? But from here, the story gets really fuzzy. Nobody seemed to know exactly where Sharkey was, but he didn't ever arrive in New York. An account in The Evening World in March of 1900 indicated that he had run from Cuba and landed in Europe. After that, there are a lot of sightings claimed, but no real evidence for any of them. There were people who said he had joined the Spanish military and others saying that he died in Italy. That 1900 write-up was prompted by a businessman saying that he had seen Sharkey in Europe working as a guide for tourists. His ultimate fate remains unknown.
40:35 Holly Frey? Maggie Jordan, meanwhile, had married actor William J. Scanlon, although this is not a happy ending either. Scanlon was declared insane and sent to live in Bloomingdale Asylum in 1892. Maggie became a widow in 1898 when Scanlon died.
40:53 Holly Frey? Mysteries abound.
40:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. Do you have listener mail?
40:57 Holly Frey? I do. It's not mysterious in the least. It's delightful. And it's about an episode that you worked on, but about a thing I said. So this is from our listener Helena or Helena. I don't know. But they write, Dear Holly and Tracy, after loving your podcast for many years, I finally have to write to you. I listened to the ballpoint pen episode last night while making dinner and my ears perked up when you mentioned Marie Antoinette's ink splotch on her marriage certificate. That caught my attention because I thought I had seen that certificate and did not notice a stain. But it turns out I was mistaken and it's the marriage contract, not the marriage certificate that I had seen. Apparently she was less nervous or had a better
41:39 Holly Frey? pen when she signed that. The marriage contract is kept at the library where I work and I was pretty blown away when it casually showed up on my desk a few years ago. We were digitizing a large collection of autographs and while it contained many very famous people's signatures, Marie Antoinette's marriage contract, as well as some sketches from Leonardo da Vinci, really took the cake. And then there's a link to where they are. As pet tax, I attached two pictures of the late Ernestine, who was fearless, nosey and opinionated, especially about proper bedtimes for her human, and filled my life with so much joy every day she lived with me. I still miss her. Many thanks for the wonderful work you do. I hope you never get sick of it. I sure won't. Kind regards from Switzerland, Helena.
42:25 Holly Frey? This is such a fun story. And also, like, I think I would pass out if I had
42:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
42:31 Holly Frey? A Marie Antoinette signed document on my desk. So I'm glad you survived that encounter without apparently losing consciousness.
42:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. This is also an email that I, I, I fished out of our spam filter this morning, which contained a number of legitimate emails. So we have said that, like, we read all the emails, but can't answer all of them. We are seeming to have an uptick in the legitimate ones that wind up in spam for some reason.
43:01 Holly Frey? And Ernestine was indeed an adorable, beautiful baby. So I am glad that she got to live a life of very, very loved. If you would like to write to us, although I don't know what you could tell us that would be more brain breaking than having a document in your hands that Marie Antoinette signed, but you could try, try, try to, try to surprise us. I'm sure you can. It's really not that hard. You can write to us at historypodcast at iHeartRadio.com. You can also find us through the iHeartRadio app and you can subscribe there or anywhere else you listen to your favorite shows.
43:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
43:55 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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