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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries. Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical tragedies
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Hey, Paul. Hey, Kate. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I think you're busy is what the rumor is. I am quite busy. You know, my paperback just came out and it's unmasked, you know, my life-solving America's Cold Cases. But we added a chapter, you know, so it has new content in it. It's another case that's
But I am now having to bounce around the country, you know, doing book tour type of events. Do you ever get tired? And the correct answer is no, you never get tired of meeting with fans and listeners and readers. But secretly, you can just tell me, does it get tiring doing all the traveling that you do? Because I don't even do a quarter of what you do, and it's exhausting for me. There's no question that travel beats me up. And book tours are especially onerous because I'm having to be in a different city every
you know, every other day. So I'm on a plane every other day, at an airport every other day, you know, changing hotels. The events are fun. Meeting the fans are fun, but I'm an introvert. And so like when I now, in addition to being, you know, in front of 500 people, and then now I have 500 people who are coming up and getting their books signed and we're talking,
I'm exhausted by the end of those days. I go home and I curl up into a fetal position and I just crash. This is your second book tour, right? Because this is your first book. This is my first book. So I did, you know, when the hardcover was released, I did a book tour then and I didn't realize it. But the publisher said, oh, by the way, you're doing a book tour when the paperback gets released. So it's essentially the same book, but my second book tour.
So is there going to be another book in the works? Do you have another lifetime worth of stories in you? Paul Holes is what everyone wants to know. You know, there has been some discussion. There was a fair amount of material that was written that never made it into Unmasked. And that's where, you know, there is at least some already written material that we could start a second book on.
But as you know, Kate, writing a book is hard. It's time consuming. It is? Oh, no. It may be a bit before, you know, a second book is even really in earnest being talked about. But there's a possibility. If I had my druthers, I'd be out in the field visiting a crime scene. You know what I mean? I know. We're trying to get you in the field, Paul. I'm trying my best. It's hard. Yeah.
It's hard when they're set in 1885 like this story coming up is. Well, you know, I'll go out and visit the crime scene even if it's just this big metropolitan area today and it was a field back then. It's still informative. Okay, we're on. Well, this is set in Gilded Age, New York, which is just my favorite time period ever. I know it sounds like I say that with every single conversation.
case we have. This is the best one. No, this is the best one. But Gilded Age New York is what I've written about a lot. So this is going to be a really interesting case. So this will require some travel, but it's the best kind of travel because we're just going to go back in time and talk about a really great story. Oh, time travel. I like it. Oh, wait, don't we do that every time? I think you have to pack. No, no. We do do that every time. Okay, let's go ahead and set the scene.
So this is in the SoHo section of New York in the Gilded Age, just a few blocks from Chinatown. As I always try to do, let me explain what the dynamics are of the neighborhood and where all the action is here. This story for me is a good old story about good old-fashioned police work and really following the witnesses. So you'll have a lot of questions that many of the witnesses will be able to answer.
There's not a ton of forensics in here. It's a nice little mystery, and it is another unsolved case. I told you I was going to try to get more of these for you despite my resistance to unsolved cases. I want to try to get some more in there because I know you like them.
Well, yeah, that's what I did my entire career. And I think the fascinating aspect about the unsolved case is really the puzzle solving, you know, and trying to lay out, okay, these are the facts, then this is how to, how you can take those facts, how you can take the, you know, the hunches that as an investigator you have.
and start developing the leads that you want to pursue or forming opinions as to what suspect or what type of suspect pool we should be looking at.
And whether these cases are solved or unsolved, I still walk away from every episode learning a little bit more about crime and crime prevention and investigation and victimology and crime profiling and forensics. And that all is just so helpful for me and what I do, even outside of these podcasts with books and everything else. So I'm excited about this case. So as I mentioned, we're in Soho. This is 1885 New York.
And this is happening in a basement restaurant, which is really interesting. So this is on the corner of Spring and Worcester streets. And here's what the area is like. In the 1880s, Soho was going through a lot of change. There is now a textile industry that's swooping into Soho. And all of these brick buildings that were beautiful are now being rebuilt.
are torn down and made way for factories and lofts. And over the next few decades, the area really starts to decline. And unfortunately, what that means in New York is when I say decline, it usually means lots of crime. And the immigration community that moves in is getting the brunt of it.
So, a lot of people with Italian heritage, Sicilian heritage, Irish, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and there are more immigrants from Asian countries. So, this is truly a melting pot. Soho is a melting pot.
But it is often also filled with people who are in tenements and row houses who are blue collar workers, much less income, more crime. There's a lot happening in Soho in this time. Just so you know kind of where we're coming from. Have you been to Soho before in New York? Believe it or not, I have. What?
You know, I had never been to New York City, or in particular Manhattan, up until literally the day after I retired. I got pulled out to New York, was so impressed, you know, just by the immensity of the city and the history. But I did...
I've been to Soho a couple of times. Well, let's start with the main character here. He's a restaurant owner, and his name is Antonio Saloa, and he's from Cuba. He lived in Cuba. He's from Cuba. And in Soho,
in November of 1885, he's 40 years old. When he was in Cuba, he made a living by rolling cigars. And when he comes to Manhattan, he does that there too until he decides he wants to own a restaurant. So he bought a restaurant which was called Restaurant Cubana. And
It was also where he lived, and this would have been very common. This is a small joint. My mom is a huge fan of really kind of tiny home feeling, and that was this place. This is very small, less than 1,000 square feet, which included not only the restaurant, but where he slept. So he slept in a 60-square-feet area, and the kitchen was about 50 square feet, and the
And the kitchen and Antonio's sleeping area were kind of crudely partitioned off from the dining room with tall walls. But this was his pride and joy, this restaurant. And this is an immigrant who came in and is trying to create out of nothing a really nice business. And it's a popular place.
Well, yeah, I'll tell you, I haven't had much Cuban food. Here you have, you know, authentic Cuban food being served at this restaurant. And guess what my favorite sandwich is? The Cuban. I did not know that. A good Cuban cannot be beat.
So, you know, I learn all this forensics and everything at the end of the episode. And I do learn a little nugget about Paul Holes by the end of every episode. Okay, so I didn't know that. Wait, so what is it? Is that ham? What is that? You know, I think it's several different meats, including ham. But, you know, for me, it's just that combination with the cheese, the sauce, the fact that it's been cooked.
kind of pressed and grilled. You got the mustard, the pickle. That's great. Leave it to you to wax poetic about a sandwich, but I'm glad you're perky because this story becomes pretty unpleasant pretty quickly. So Antonio is a thriving restaurant owner. He lives at this place. It's in a basement. It's in an area that's thriving, but also struggling at the same time.
He really tries hard to make this a nice restaurant. It's adorned with pictures of George and Martha Washington. There was a birdcage that was there hanging from the ceiling. You know, there were only four tables there.
but they could total seat about 30 people. They could squeeze 30 people into this restaurant. And there was a large water jug by the restaurant's front entrance for people who were thirsty. There was a stove that couldn't even fit in the kitchen. They had to put it in the center of the dining area. And then in the corner, there's a drawer that Antonio used as a cash register. So this is a very tight restaurant that turns into a very small crime scene, which makes it even more interesting for me.
So this is when the murder takes place. Sometime between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. on November 2nd, 1885. Between 2 and 3, there's a vegetable vendor named Thomas Daly who arrives at the restaurant and
And he goes downstairs into this basement restaurant to see if Antonio needed to place an order for vegetables, which is likely because it's a popular restaurant. There's all sorts of people who come in and out. And most of them are from the Cuban-American population.
So when Thomas Daly goes downstairs, he's shocked to see the scene. So Antonio is lying on the restaurant's floor. He has been brutally beaten. You know, the police come and they identify him pretty quickly from the neighbors. Let me tell you what the injuries were like.
He was so severely beaten that his face was like jelly, quote unquote, and his left eye had been knocked out of its socket, lying in his long, blood-soaked hair, and he had been stabbed 10 times. I want you to pay attention to these injuries. Not that you wouldn't normally, but pay attention because I need to know about blood and the likelihood that the offender would have a lot of blood on him because we've talked about this before. But before you talk about that,
You know, this is somebody who's been beaten. He's been stabbed 10 times. If I, as a layperson, were looking at this, I would say this is overkill, right? And I would say this has to be personal, not a professional hit or not a robbery. Am I wrong in making that assumption? And I know that you will probably say there's always exceptions to everything, but does this spell personal to you? Stabbed 10 times and beaten so bad that his eyeball is popped out.
Yeah, you're wrong. You bastard. There's so much that goes into assessing, like in an unsolved case, what is the motive of the offender? And just the modalities of cause of death, the bludgeoning and the stabbing is not enough to try to discern, is there anything that indicates there's some sort of interpersonal aspect between the offender and the victim? The initial assessment that I'm going to be doing
is going to be, okay, I've got a male victim. Now, is there evidence that there was a struggle between this male and the offender, the victim and the offender? Is this an ongoing struggle? Because now I have maybe two equally capable combatants where this is going to be a prolonged battle between these two individuals.
This is where you start to see greater injuries to the victim. Now, the offender is likely also receiving some sort of injuries during this battle if both combatants are equal. And it's a fair fight. You know, sometimes you'll get the blitz attack where the victim is incapacitated right away.
But also now it's like the focus of the violence. We have bludgeoning to the head. Well, that's how you kill somebody, right? Of course, most bludgeonings are to the head. You don't, if you have, let's say something like a hammer,
You could be beating them all day long in the chest. Chances are you're not going to kill them. You need to be hitting them in the skull. So that's not something that really gives me much information in terms of the relationship between the offender and the victim. The eyeball being out, I mean, I can tell you, I was at a bar shooting, and then I had a deputy who confronted a guy who was just walking by. I go outside, and this guy's eyeball is hanging down by his cheek.
He had just gotten into a fight, you know, several blocks away, and the deputy saw him and going, hey, do you need some help? And then it kind of escalated in terms of guy with eyeball out of his eye socket ends up being arrested. But eyeballs are, you know, that's not really...
real indicative of the force being used. The stabbing is where I would want to evaluate, are the stab wounds anti-mortem? Are they post-mortem? Are they clustered in a particular area? Are they spread around the victim's body like the victim is still struggling and moving as he's being stabbed?
And one of the things that I always, when I train people who are now trying to assess injuries, particularly stabbings, we have so many jail shankings on video. And, you know, people go, well, it's 10 stab wounds. You know, this is just dramatic overkill. It's like, well, no. Watch a shanking in a jail. 10 stab wounds occur in seconds. I have to look at the totality of everything before I could start going, okay,
Yes, I believe that the offender knew the victim, was angry with the victim. That's why there's so much violence. Or was this a situation where they're just incapacitating a victim who's struggling? Or is there an aspect where there's torture, where they're trying to extract information from the victim? It's more complicated than just bludgeoning and stabbing. Well, I think I have a lot of answers for you now. I have so many answers that you need to tell me where you want to go first.
I have the coroner's report from the autopsy. I have whether things were taken, what the possible motive was of, you know, what they find or don't find at the crime scene. And I also have the sheer amount of damage that clearly was like a brawl between these two men inside this tiny restaurant in the middle
of the day in SoHo. Which one of these three things do you want to talk about first? We are going to just implement the way I approach unsolved cases. And the way I approach unsolved cases is first, I want to know what's happened to the victim because that can often be informative and it helps me assess the crime scene. So I do need to know the autopsy first. And this is what I always do when I approach
An unsolved case, I look at the autopsy. I need to know what has happened and what injuries the victim has, and that helps me interpret what I'm seeing at the crime scene. Then I look at the crime scene. Then I look at forensic lab reports. I don't look at investigative stuff or potential suspects until I have formed opinions as to what I think is going on.
And so let's kind of go through this process step by step. Okay. So I'm going to start reading. It's about a paragraph long. There's a lot of detail. I'm sure not enough for you always. I know you want as much detail as possible. Put your hand up if you need me to pause because you need to comment on something. But they go through an awful lot of the injuries here. Okay, you ready? Yep.
Okay, the coroner conducts this autopsy, and he finds that both the frontal and occipital bones were fractured. The upper and lower jaw bones and the nasal bone were crushed.
while from three knife wounds on the left side of the head, portions of the brain were oozing. On the left side of the chest were 10 knife thrusts extending from the third to the eighth rib. All these ribs were cut through. One of these cuts penetrated completely through the heart, while two others went through the lungs and touched the heart.
The diaphragm was severed, and the liver and intestines had been reached by the blade.
The hands had been cut, evidently while Antonio was endeavoring to gain possession of the knife. End of report. Okay. Now, you know, with the types of injuries to his face, to his skull, you know, obviously from a bludgeoning instrument, this is where, when you have a pooled blood source, and you have a blunt force instrument strike that pooled blood source, this is where you get this blood spatter pattern. Mm-hmm.
That informs me, okay, I've got blows to his face, to his head.
I would expect that there potentially is going to be spatter pattern within the crime scene that helps me place where his head was at certain moments in time during the commission of the homicide. Now, the stab wounds are interesting. We've got stab wounds to the left side of his head. You know, the sequence, if you have a distribution of the stab wounds, let's say the stabbing is occurring first, and I don't know if that's happening or not.
But it sounds like it very well may be with the defensive injuries to his hands, because I would imagine, you know, with the types of fractures to his frontal and occipital bones, he's going to be incapacitated and likely has lost consciousness. So it may be the defensive injuries to his hands is that the offender is initially attacking him first with a knife. And then whether the victim is still upright, still conscious, don't know without assessing the crime scene.
But now you have the massive blows being inflicted to his head, causing these skull fractures. So now let's go to the crime scene. Let's see what they say about the crime scene and any blood patterns present. Okay. I don't know about blood patterns, but they do try to assess where all this happened. They don't have to look for a murder weapon because...
There is a bloody 15-inch knife sitting right next to Antonio's body. Before you ask, I don't know if this is Antonio's knife or it was brought. Here's what was something that was interesting, and you can tell me if this tallies with the coroner's report. They said that the knife itself was bent as if someone had twisted it in Antonio's body during the attack. Is that kind of the rib thing that they were talking about? All the ribs were cut? No, we frequently see...
knife blades damaged or broken and stabbing, and it's not so much from hitting the bone. Think about this, and this can be a little graphic for some people. This is a 15-inch long knife. During the stabbing with the victim on the floor, that blade is passing potentially all the way through the victim's body and then impacting, I'm assuming it's a cement floor. At least it's a hard surface underneath him. Yeah.
When that knife suddenly stops as the offender is thrusting the knife through the victim, this is when you start to see knife blades being bent or broken. Also, when you start to see the offender's hand slipping off the handle and going on the blade and they get cut themselves. That's what we always hope for in stabbings is now we have an offender who's bleeding.
Sometimes striking bone will cause that, you know, but this is a significant knife, you know, and if the offender's holding onto it and thrusting with force, 15-inch blade, I think it's going all the way through the victim's body and striking the floor. So now we'll talk about forensics a little bit. Not that they were able to do anything in this case, but you can tell me what's possible here. So the stove, which we said was too big to be
installed in this tiny little kitchen, it's in the center of the dining room, had been dented by a blow, we're going to presume from his head, had blood and hair stuck on it.
Meanwhile, remember there was this communal jug of water that Antonio had kindly put by the front door so people could come and get some water. It was a dull red color. You know, I think the thought was that whoever did this put his hands in to maybe wash the blood off. And there was a nearby towel that had several bloody finger marks on it. Can you pull fingerprints off of a bloody towel? I mean, what would be useful today, aside from DNA, of course? Yeah.
Everything. Well, I guess your last detail first, you know, the blood on this towel. Generally, towels, even if they have a fabric that has the tightest weave possible, it's still not going to be possible to get a print off of such a textured surface.
So chances are what you've got is just some bloody fingers grabbing the towel. You can tell. We see this all the time. You know, somebody has grabbed a surface and you can see the outline of fingers or a thumb or something. There's just no ridge detail to be able to do anything with. The dent in the stove with the blood and hair is interesting. This could be from, you know, he's...
receiving blows while he's still upright, and he falls and hits his head on the side of the stove. But I would not eliminate the possibility without knowing more of the offender taking the victim's head and ramming it into the stove.
And you would get the same type of damage as well as blood and potential hair transfer. So right now, I can't say one way or another, you know, and this is where I'm wondering, is there evidence that a separate bludgeoning instrument was used? Or do we have an offender grabbing the victim's head, hitting it on the stove, hitting it on the ground, which happens and can cause blunt force trauma like what we're seeing in this case?
Police do not have any information about another weapon. The only thing is this knife. That has been left behind, and that's it. Let's talk about motive, because it seems like robbery was the motive.
because the front door had been busted open, which suggested a forced entry. One thing that a witness will tell us later is that Antonio had a habit of shutting down right after the lunch rush, locking the door, leaving, and then coming back. So anybody who knew his routine knew
you know, knew that the door would be potentially locked even if he was inside until he opened the doors up again. Everything in the restaurant of value had been taken. His pockets had been emptied out. A trunk in his sleeping area had been ransacked. The restaurant's register had been cleaned out. And
anything that was worth anything had been taken. And there were things that were stained with blood all over the place. Little cards and strips of paper were stained with blood that we're presuming the killer sort of rifled through and left Antonio's blood or his own blood.
behind. So he takes the time to rob this place. It sounds like pretty thoroughly, but he doesn't take the knife. That seems weird to me. Is it not to you or do people just don't think the way I think about stuff like this?
Leaving the knife behind, I think we also have to remember when this case is occurring. You know, what kind of evidence could be used during this era to identify who the offender was based on him leaving the knife behind? There was nothing that they could do.
I mean, we're even in the infancy of fingerprint technology at this point. And the offender likely is completely unaware of fingerprint technology during this time. Yeah. It wouldn't have been available in 1885 at all. I mean, Oscar Heinrich innovated fingerprinting in the United States. That was like 1910. I mean, it was very much later on. So they really were pretty clueless, I think, at this point. Yeah.
So what they want to know is they want to really try to figure out how the killer got out. There's only one way to get in and get out of this restaurant. How they got out without being noticed, that this was a very bloody scene. Would the killer not have been completely covered with blood?
It didn't appear like he changed and put on Antonio's clothes and walked out completely clean. And I don't know if you had answered this earlier, and we've talked about this before. Is it possible for him to have gotten away after this ruckus?
as raucous that happened in the middle of this tiny restaurant without a significant amount of blood on him, or at least maybe be able to pull his jacket over a shirt that got bloody in the middle of this. No, absolutely. The misperception out there is that when you have the super bloody crime scene, that the offender must have blood all over them. There are times that, yes, the offender gets very bloody.
However, most of the blood at any of these types of crime scenes, particularly if there's large blood pools, those formed after the offender was long gone, right? The body is just laying there bleeding out and the offender has already escaped. He's never had to step over that blood pool. He never had to interact with the victim with that blood pool present.
In this situation, let's talk about a stabbing. Generally, stabbings don't produce a lot of bleeding that is going to get onto the offender. There are times where, of course, you can get some, as you have multiple stab wounds in the same location, the knife starts getting bloody, you start getting some drops that could end up
on the offender. But oftentimes, if you have, let's say, stab wounds that are distributed across the body and not clustered into one location, you don't have like this real bloody area that the knife is constantly going in and out of that's causing a lot of blood to get onto the blade. And generally, outside of cast-off, stab wounds
Stabbings don't produce like blood spatter that is flying everywhere. Even if you're hitting an artery or, you know, I mean, I know that there are parts of your body that you can hit where it spurts, even if that happens? That can happen notably with the neck. Okay. You know, that's really in stabbings. If you hit the carotid, there's a possibility you can get what we call an arterial spurt. And if that happens to get onto the victim, that would be a little bit more significant amount of blood.
But more typically what happens is you have stabbings in which the knife blade goes in and it comes out. Of course, that wound starts to bleed. But as the blade comes out, notably like the fat layer, which doesn't have a lot of blood in it to begin with, kind of wipes, wicks the knife blade clean. And then you stab somewhere else and bring it out. So you're not getting a ton of blood that most people would expect.
Now, the bludgeoning is a little bit different because you can start getting spatter as you beat somebody on, let's say, their face and their head, and you start getting some pooled blood sources that the more blows you inflict, the more spatter you get. Most of the time, though, that spatter is shadowed from the offender by the weapon itself. So the weapon, let's say it's a baseball bat, right?
Well, oftentimes that baseball bat will prevent much of the blood droplets from flying back onto the offender because now the droplets are going out away, you know, from the head and can't come back at the offender because the bat is in the way. But I would expect in this case that the offender, without seeing anything, you know, that's my caveat, if the offender had blood on him,
He likely had some spatter low down on his shoes, on his pant legs, because I think the victim is attacked initially with a knife and then is eventually either bludgeoned or stomped to death on the head. And then the offender has a few drops of blood on him.
And possibly he could easily just walk out of the shop, you know, button up his sports coat and walk down the street and nobody would know that he had been involved in any act of violence. Well, the police don't know that because they are assuming that this guy is a ghost, that he would have left bloodied head to toe,
None of Antonio's clothes were missing. Nobody knows what happened. When the police start canvassing, I think this is an interesting story about witnesses. When the police start canvassing, they start gathering more and more information about Antonio, which makes this case a little more complicated. So they start asking with neighbors. Antonio is the only employee of his own restaurant. He has no family. He's not from New York. He lived in Cuba. And he's well-liked.
But people know he has a lot of money, and he's kept a lot of money. There is a woman who said that, you know, she thinks he was targeted specifically because the restaurant does really well, even though it's tiny, and that she was afraid that's why he was going to get killed, and that she's not surprised that he was a target considering where they lived.
And in this time period, you know, particularly in this area, he would have been a target. They tracked down a guy named Julius Daikon, who was someone who knew Antonio really well. And he had eaten at the restaurant about an hour or two before Antonio was murdered. And he said he actually watched Antonio lock up the restaurant when Julius got up and left. Antonio got up and locked the restaurant and left the property at about 1 o'clock.
he said that this was a big part of his routine. As I told you, he always left the restaurant for a break in the middle of the day. So let's talk about routines because we've talked about this with many other cases. I don't think this was random. I think this was targeted. How important is it when you're investigating to know who
would have known the person's routine. Is it a bad idea for us to all have routines? You know, I mean, it makes me paranoid about, am I leaving the house at the same time? What if somebody is watching me? And the routine part of this is interesting. Somebody knew when to get back to this restaurant. Somebody knew when he would come back.
Well, this all goes into victimology. Victimology is just not who is this person, but it is, you know, what is their life? What is their lifestyle? The daily routine is a big part of it. In assessing this case, when the offender seemingly knows when to attack, you know, that would indicate that the offender has become aware of the victim's routine.
Now, does that mean the offender knows a victim? Absolutely not. This could just be from just simple surveillance. You know, somebody who is, in this case, this guy has some significant financial assets that are inside the restaurant.
I'm going to watch and plan, you know, and that would tell me I'm dealing with an organized offender. This wasn't a spur of the moment type of attack. If the offender is taking the time to watch the victim, figure out the routines, plan how to get in and carry out this crime and then clean out this restaurant, it's not just grabbing, you know, the cash out of the register drawer. They're cleaning out this restaurant. They're taking time to do that.
So that tells me, yes, this is a you know, there is a financial aspect to the offender's motive. And there's also some level of planning. But you could also just have somebody who was a customer who the victim is like, OK, time to close. And the customer is like the last one in there going, no, you're not closing right now. In fact, I'm going to take, you know, all your money and kill you. And then I'm going to lock up after the fact.
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Well, the police continue to canvas and they are talking to the many shop owners that surround the restaurant. They contact this guy named Patrick Ryder, who was a plumber. So he was one shop level above Restaurant Cubana and he heard glass breaking around 2.20 p.m. It was enough for Ryder and his co-worker to step outside the shop and onto the street level. But remember, Antonio's restaurant was basement level.
So they just sort of looked around and didn't see anything. And I don't think they could tell that it was coming specifically from his restaurant. So they didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, but they did hear glass break. So police now are operating under the idea that this is a robbery, that he walked in on someone breaking through his door and he walked in and there was a robbery happening at the same time.
So far, does that make sense to you, Paul? That absolutely does make sense. Okay. Things get a little bit more complicated for the police because they are talking to a lot of different people and they discover something interesting about Antonio Saloa. That is not his name. Oh. He is not Cuban. He is from China. And his real name is Chong Ong.
So he did live in Cuba. He did wrap cigars. That was his job in Cuba. But he was from China. And he came and changed his name. And the police are now wondering if he was hiding under the identity of Antonio Saloa.
And they want to know if this really is a robbery or if this was something politically motivated or a personal vendetta that they can't even sort out because they assumed that this was, you know, a neighborhood robbery. And it becomes more complicated because...
I don't know if they've really heard of someone not only just changing their name, but changing their, you know, identity, their racial identity. While we're sort of moving forward, because I don't want this to be a red herring, it doesn't sound like he was a criminal. It sounds like
When he went to Cuba from China, he identified with the Cuban culture. And when he came to New York, he changed his name to sort of become that. He loved Cuban food. He knew how to cook it. He wanted to assimilate in that way. And nobody seemed to question him, that he was not Cuban. So this is still a mysterious man, and it's part of victimology. It doesn't seem nefarious.
But it is interesting, and it does say something about Gilded Age New York, where you have all of these immigrants coming in, and you can be anybody. Sure. Do you know how long he was portraying himself as this Cuban Antonio? No.
The entire time he was in New York and probably when he was in Cuba, too. So it sounds like years. I don't think this was a new thing. Okay. And, you know, and I'm looking at, again, this intersection where his restaurant was at, and there happens to be just one of the buildings at this intersection that
Today it's Mackage, but there is a basement level at this location, whereas the other three corners, I'm not seeing basement level. So I'm thinking I found the location of where this Cuban restaurant was at. So based on what you're looking at now, knowing how New York works with the basement level stores and everything else, would it be easy to have a massive restaurant
fight like they were having and not be heard. I guess with bustling Soho all around you and shops, I mean, it just seems like inexplicable to me that this happened at 2 p.m. on a busy day in a restaurant, even though it was below ground.
No, I think it would be easy. You know, you think about this, being down in the basement, you know, the audio aspects, there's going to be just a natural muffling of any screams or any other noises that may have occurred during the altercation. You have the noise up top midday, you know, Soho, you know, now we're in the days before COVID.
automobiles, but you still have the clapping of the horse's hooves, you know, the carriages being drawn over these paved roadways. I think it would be very easy to get away with the crime down in this basement. And at least today, you know, I'm looking at where somebody would come up out of that basement location.
you know, and they would just simply walk out onto the sidewalk and blend into the crowd and disappear. Well, the police now are surprised that Antonio is not Antonio, but they move along, operating under the assumption that
that he is a good man, as everybody has said around him, and just sort of putting aside the fact that he had changed his identity, which, again, I don't think was nefarious. I think he just wanted a new identity here. So they start interviewing more and more witnesses, and our witnesses get a little more high quality, which is great. And this is where I really do want you to start talking about witnesses and their reliability. The biggest break in the case so far comes from a guy named William Schripper, and
And he owned a shop directly across the street. And he actually goes to the police. And he has a 15-year-old employee named George Manns. And George had gone to William, his boss, and said, I saw something weird. And he said he saw Antonio chasing someone up the restaurant stairs. And he
He said that there was an altercation, which is very violent when I describe it to you. It sounds like what the police thought had happened had happened, that this mystery person had broken through the door, because that's the evidence they saw, had gone and ransacked everything, and Antonio caught him and then chased him up the stairs, okay? So what happens next is...
is he described this man as a tall Cuban man with a scar on his face who was running up the stairs being chased by Antonio. And he said that the Cuban drew a big knife, thrust it into Antonio's breast, and then seemed to have difficulty drawing it out. Then the Cuban ran down to the basement again, and Antonio turned to follow him but fell headlong down the stairs. And then they don't know what happened after that.
The specific details about the long knife, and we know we have a 15-inch knife that is found, you know, in the crime scene. So that is a detail that I put a lot of weight on. And most certainly, after a single stab wound, the victim could continue to function and remain conscious. And so if now you have the offender running back down and Antonio following him after being stabbed and the knife still embedded in him,
Now, you know, he's easily drug back into his own shop and that knife is pulled out and more stab wounds are inflicted. I think that's the sequence. I think you have the stabbing first and then you fundamentally have this this bludgeoning of some sort that is occurring. So I right now I'm liking that witness statement.
So here are two things. George is across the street. So it says a shop directly across the street from what's happening, you know, at Antonio's restaurant. And George says two things that he gives information to police to help them identify this tall Cuban man with the very long knife.
He says he had a scar on his face and he had a unique watch chain. How can all of that happen and you pick up on those two specific details? Does that seem odd to you? No. Really? I'm looking at the street. Small, huh? It is narrow, you know, so this isn't like a standard, you know, big city wide street that's
This street looks like it's about half the width of what I was expecting, to be frank.
You know, so the witness is reasonably close and is remembering some specific details that could very readily be seen from such a close distance. Now, is he accurately remembering them? You know, we know witnesses, you know, especially during something like this, which is like you see it and you're shocked, right? Because this isn't a normal thing. And you're not necessarily paying attention to the types of information that
That needs to be conveyed to help law enforcement. You are just like absorbing what you're seeing. But certain aspects, the scar, if this offender does have a significant scar, just when we walk down the street, when we see somebody who has that type of deformity, it stands out.
It's something that our eyes just kind of go, oh, you know, we see it. And then this watch chain, that must be something that was somewhat unusual, I imagine. And that's why this witness, his eyes picked it out.
Again, we know that there is inaccuracies with what witnesses think they saw versus what actually occurred. But it is something that I would put some weight on that. OK, that's such a weird thing to convey. It's such a weird thing to make up. Yeah. You know, so now I would probably put some weight on that. OK. Yeah.
Well, the police are saying, oh, shit. Okay. It's a Cuban guy. Now, this is 1885 New York. What are you going to do when you're going to try to find someone? You have a witness who says, yes, I think I can identify this tall Cuban man with the scar and the big knife.
They take him on a tour of New York factories where all the Cuban workers are. I would not say a word if I saw the guy with a big scar, but they take him to all these factories and he can't identify anybody. No shit. I would be scared to death. I don't know if I would be able to identify anybody, but he is not picking out anyone as they are taking him from factory to factory to scan the faces of all of these guys. What do you think about that technique? Yeah.
If that was the culture, I guess, you know, if somebody was Cuban, that they more likely than not worked in the factories, you know, I could see where there would be value with that. But also one of the things I'm wondering would be, well, let's post up some undercover officers in the blocks around this neighborhood, right?
just for the next few days and see if we find somebody who matches that description with the scar on their face, just wandering around. This guy may be a routine customer of the restaurant and lives in the area. So let's just have some eyeballs out there and see if it's such a distinctive feature that there's a chance that you could easily spot him. It'd be sort of like today we could go to the surveillance videos, but back then you just
You know, you use these undercover officers as your own sort of pseudo video surveillance cameras. Well, what the New York City Police Department decides to do is they really talk, frankly, with members of New York's Cuban community and say, who do you know who could have done something like this with this level of violence? We think you're all good people. You know, we are not saying that this is what all Cubans in New York are like, but help us identify this guy.
The detectives are given a group photograph from a Cuban-American organization. It sounds like it's a social club, but it also sounds a little political against communism, political. And in this photo, there are a lot of men. They show it to George Mance, the witness, and he points to one guy named Augustine Rebel.
Now, is that called a six-pack? What is that when you're identifying somebody with that kind of – and that's not a good method, right? Like, okay, which one of these guys looks most like him? Well, it's – yeah, it's not a six-pack. For the listeners, the six-pack was and still is in some areas a method in which –
Let's say a suspect is identified. So a photograph of that suspect and then five other similar looking individuals or should be similar looking other individuals are arranged with these six photos, one being your suspect and then the others non-suspects, and then presented to the witness. The problem with this approach, and you kind of mentioned it, is that
Witnesses in this situation, when presented with the photos all at once, have a tendency to pick out the one that looks most similar but not necessarily is the person. You know, an improved method but not infallible is a sequential six-pack where, in essence, the witness is given one photograph after another and
And ideally, this photo pack is given to the witness by somebody who doesn't even know who the actual suspect is in this photo. So there isn't any subconscious clues that the witness might key in on, you know, whereas an investigator who may be invested in saying, I really want this guy to pick out the suspect.
you know, he kind of leans in when the suspect's photo is sequentially laid down and the witness picks up on that. There have been improvements in terms of how to get witnesses to look at suspects and pull the suspect out of a photo lineup.
In this situation, you have this group photo, and the concern would be it's sort of like how the six packs have been used where you just throw the six photos in front of the person. And it's like he's the most similar, but is he the one that you remember? Human memory is elastic.
And so once the witness sees somebody who looks similar, it's very possible that their memory ends up getting molded to now that person is who they think they saw when in fact it isn't. Well, let's talk about Augustine, who is our suspect. He was a cigar factory worker. He did have a scar on his face, a very large one.
He had a violent history. He had been convicted of assaulting his wife. He served prison time, very violent. He had the watch chain that the 15-year-old kid had said the killer had. George Mance had also described the clothing that the tall Cuban man with the scar had been wearing. And Augustine was even wearing the same clothes when they talked to him that day.
that George Mann said the man had been wearing when he attacked and killed Antonio. So all of this is circumstantial, but all of it sounds pretty good so far, right? It definitely does sound good. Now it's a matter of, okay, so...
So now it comes down to, okay, so what was Augustine doing at the time of the homicide? Because you have a pretty narrow window. Yep.
These clothes that are similar to what the 15-year-old said the offender was wearing. Is there any evidence of blood on those clothes? You know, you start seeing, okay, based on the circumstances of the case, is there something that starts adding up on Augustine? Well, funny you should ask about alibis. So he was supposed to be at the cigar factory that day. He said...
I was working. Give me a break. I was there. Look at the books. You'll see that I had been there. So they look at the books, and it did establish that Augustine had made 100 cigars on the day that Antonio was killed. This seems like this is a day's worth of work. So it seems kind of locked that he was there, except his supervisor said that Augustine was really good at making cigars.
And he could have done 100 cigars in half a day. And there was no one monitoring when he left. He just got the work done and they confirmed he did 100 cigars, but no one can confirm when he left for the day. He just got them done. Yeah. And this is where really digging into the veracity of any alibi becomes important. My first question is, well, how do they know he made 100 cigars that particular day?
And then, of course, we're not dealing with a situation where there's going to be video that shows him coming and going. So now you're relying on witnesses. How many witnesses saw him come and go? What are their allegiance to him? You know, you have people who will cover up. You know, at this point, you know, there appears to be at least some question as to his whereabouts during the afternoon of the homicide. And then on top of that,
How would he know Antonio? And the police start asking more witnesses. And this is why witnesses are the only good thing in this story, because we don't have forensics or anything else. And they start asking witnesses, and they found out that Augustine loaned money out to a lot of different people, including Antonio. And he had not paid back Augustine.
Yeah.
So now we at least have that connection. And, you know, I was questioning the anger, the amount of blood, but George Mance's story really does kind of solve it. I mean, he walked in on somebody. He walked in on this guy breaking in, and it was a big fight and lots of violence and blood. Yeah, so why would Augustine, a factory worker, have enough money to loan out?
What's going on with him? You know, between his background of violence and his mysterious nature, I don't know. But I would guess there's probably some illegal activity going on maybe with Antonio also. Yeah. So is Augustine arrested? Is he convicted of this case? Nope. Because politics...
Because New York's Cuban-American community came out in droves. The politicians did, the common people did, and said that he was being scapegoated for being Cuban-American. The police said, we have witnesses who talk about how bad this guy is, Augustine.
how we are sure that he's connected. But when they went to the witnesses who were, it sounds like part of the Cuban-American community, it just shut everything down. Nobody would testify. They were scared. They were all scared. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he were connected to a mob type situation, you know? So I would say, you know, based on, you know, you have witness statements, you have some circumstantial aspects, but the
case is weak at best on Augustine. Yeah. I'm not even sure there's PC there in order to affect an arrest today. There would have to be more for me to have the confidence that he's responsible, but he's in play for sure. Yeah.
I think that this case was interesting for me to read through because there are a lot of mysterious characters, but I like cases where it's sort of witness-based, where the story starts to unfold the more people you talk to. I think we get a lot of witnesses who are not credible, but in this case, we're starting to get with George Mance and, you know, these people coming forward for a man who was an immigrant with a very mysterious background.
People wanted to help to an extent. And then when they find out that somebody like Augustine is involved, who obviously is incredibly violent, even George Mance, this 15-year-old kid who came forward, they were all very scared.
So it just shows that the whole investigation essentially shut down once the Cuban-American community in 1885 got involved. Or maybe he was being railroaded. We don't know. I mean, we certainly know people, police in 1885 were heavy handed, to say the least.
But it's interesting how you have these cultures that are sort of coming together to try to help a victim, but at the same time also protecting probably the offender. I mean, there were a lot of connections between this case and this guy. Yeah. You know, this 15-year-old witness, you know, I'm looking at the crime scene today, and I've had people in the past tell me, you know, it's been so long, it's no good to go back out to
because so many things have changed. But I'm looking at this very old brick structure. It's obviously been refaced, you know, but there's a staircase that comes up from the basement level area. I'm not sure if it's another shop or storage or what, that, you know, right across the street is a very small vacant lot that I'm assuming where this 15-year-old witness was at. And everything he is describing about what he could see is,
you know, with this scar-faced Cuban coming up these steps, you know, and getting into a confrontation and then watching, you know, a single stab wound to the victim and the victim, you know, collapsing and basically going headfirst down the steps. It adds up. I completely believe, you know, this 15-year-old could see what he saw based on what I'm seeing today. And
And, you know, if he is bona fide in picking Augustine out of this group photo, they may have at least landed on the right guy. It's just unfortunate that they weren't able to prosecute.
Boy, I bet 15-year-old George Mance was not sleeping easy after this. I mean, he just fingered this guy and nothing, it never came to fruition. Yeah, this was a hard case just because this someone, Antonio or Chong Ong or whatever we want to call him, was hardworking and trying to create a new life and seemed really committed. We don't know what was happening in the background, but he was trying to create a new life.
But enough people came forward where they really wanted to see justice and they just didn't have it. It's still officially an unsolved case. So there you go. Welcome to New York, Gilded Age, New York, Paul. It's skeezy and gross. Someday I'll take you uptown where all the wealthy people, the boss tweeds live with their diamond cufflinks. But I think we're going to be slumming it every time we come to 1800s New York from now on.
Well, we'll have to get out there. I'm sure it'll be a fun time. Oh, yeah. All right. Well, thank you. All right. Thanks, Kate. This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.
Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now. ♪