The Story of a Deplorable Judicial Blunder.
Brief on appeal to the high court of public opinion.
The Crime.
On the morning of Thursday, the 19th day of January, 1911, Miss Nettie Palma, employee of Theodore B. Dale, a ladies' tailor who conducted his business at 71 West 45th Street, heard the street door bell ring. She opened the door and saw a man who announced himself as "he telephone man." She admitted him and went upstairs to the second floor, where the dress-making work was done. A little while later she was called downstairs by her employer, and there was the man, whom she had admitted, at bay. He was trying to leave the place, but Dale would not permit it. Dale called the colored maid, Anna Hart, and told her to stand at the door and prevent the man from leaving. The man drew a revolver, and pointing it at Dale, threatened to shoot. He turned and threatened Anna Hart also, who then let him open the door and go. As soon as he reached the street he ran, with Dale and Anna Hart pursuing him and calling for help.
Theodore B. Dale was a successful ladies' tailor who had amassed considerable money through his business, and who was well-known in certain circles in New York City. It is well that, in order to understand all that follows, the reader should at once be apprised of the fact that Dale — who appears to have been a shrewd man of business and is said to have been otherwise quite mentally active, for he is reported to have read widely — was an unfortunate degenerate and moral lunatic. It has been amply proved that for years he belonged to the unhappy class of creatures dealt with by Krafft-Ebbing in his "Psychopathia Sexualis." It has been established that he was a practitioner of unnatural sexual practices for fully twenty years. The writer has spoken to detectives and 'men about town,' who, while insisting on the suppression of their names and demanding a promise that they be not called upon to give evidence in the case, have assured him that Dale was one of the recognized leaders of an infamous coterie of evil-doers who have for years infested New York, and whose practices have given this city a reputation for moral vileness of which respectable New Yorkers will be ashamed to learn.
That Dale's practices must have been known to the detectives and plain-clothes men of our Police Force it is impossible to doubt. All this is emphasized at this point to account for the statement that what happened on the morning of January 19th in Dale's house cannot be definitely told, for Dale was alone with the pretended telephone man for a period of at least ten minutes, and we have only Dale's story as to what occurred. As will be seen shortly. Dale had very strong reasons for giving an untruthful account of what happened between him and the visitor. No reliance may be placed on his uncorroborated statement.
From the evidence of Miss Nora Murphy, another employee of Dale, whose duty is was to attend to telephone calls, it appears that someone had called up Dale's house over the telephone on the day before and stated that a telephone was to be put into the house next door, and that the company would have to cut off Mr. Dale's service for an hour in the morning....
