1. "Suspect  Mr. Carpenter"
Posted by Kat on Jul-9th-02 at 4:56 AM

Yesterday In Old Fall River
Paul Dennis Hoffman, 2000

"Joseph W. Carpenter, Jr.  (1855-1899):
Carpenter was an early suspect in the killing of Andrew and Abby Borden.  He was cleared when his claim that he was far away from Fall River on the day of the murders proved true.

Carpenter had been a bookkeeper for the undertaking firm of Borden & Almy.  He was caught embezzling money from the firm in an amount of $6,700 over a period of years, a lot of money in the late 1800's.  Carpenter was arrested but the charges were quietly dropped.

After Andrew's death, a rumor circulated that Carpenter threatened to tell of dishonest practices such as how the firm cheated clients...Since Carpenter later paid  the firm back at least some of the missing funds, it is more likely that he and the company reached an out-of-court agreement to have the charges dismissed.

A New York publication, Once A Week, offered a $500 reward for the missing note that Lizzie said Abby received on the day of the murder.  Among other responses, the New York paper was told that Carpenter, who had left Fall River before fully repaying Almy and Borden, was seen in the city shortly after the killings.  Peter Driscoll, a Fall River barber, also said he saw the ex-bookeeper in town at about that time.

In August 1892, Carpenter was living in Albany, N.Y., and was on a sales trip far from Fall River.  This was verified by Mrs. Victoria Foreman, Carpenter's landlady.  When Mrs. Foreman told her story to Fall River police officer Phillip Harrington, Carpenter was no longer a suspect.

Carpenter was born in Fall River and worked there until fired by Borden and Almy.  He and his wife Ann relocated to Holyoke, Mass., until Ann moved back to Fall River alone in 1882 to live with relatives.  Carpenter, meanwhile moved to Buffalo, New York and then to Albany as a traveling salesman for an ink manufacturing company.  He died in Worcester, Mass., at the home of his sister."

--Terence Duniho had a long feature article on the subject of Carpenter as a suspect and his relationship to Phillip Harrington in the LBQ:
"Friends from Boyhood, A Police Officer and an Embezeller", July, 2001.



(Message last edited Jul-9th-02  5:46 AM.)

A traveling salesman for an ink manufacturer?  Another blot on his already stained reputation!  (Sorry...I don't know what came over me.)

Cool, thanks, Kat!  I replied to your other message that was voided, I didn't see this one.  Sorry, I'm just getting over being really sick, have had a fever for the last three days running.  I think I'm still a little bit loopy.  Well, thats one suspect off the hook, how many known suspects does that leave? 

Masterton also mentions Carpenter as a possible suspect.  He claims that the barber, Peter Driscoll "insisted that he shaved Carpenter on August 1" in Fall River. And a schoolteacher named Dean said that Carpenter was in Fall River on August 4 and left the next day with his wife for Albany.  (However, Victoria Foreman signed a statement that "to the best of her knowledge" Carpenter was telling the truth when he said he'd spent every night between July 18 and August 13 in her rooming house in Albany.)

Masterton also says that -- although Carpenter paid back some of the money he'd embezzled from Andrew's firm -- much of it was paid back in the form of mill stock which became worthless when the mill failed.  And it was "at that point, Andrew Borden, against the advice of his partner, insisted that Carpenter be arrested".  But when Carpenter threatened Andrew with exposure of unsavory business practices (selling expensive caskets and substituting cheaper ones at burial, e.g.) Andrew dropped the charges.

He also brings up the letter purportedly found by a Rome, NY dentist on July 15, 1893 -- addressed to Joseph W. Carpenter, Jr. Albany NY -- and mailed from Fall River on June 22, 1893 ...

(You probably all remember this letter from various sources.  Primarily newspapers, I think.)
      'My dear husband -- Lizzie has been acquitted and I don't think they can do anything with you now.  I want you to come home to spend the Fourth.  The papers give a description of the man seen over the fence on the morning ofthe murder.  Can you prove where you were on the morning of the murder? -- Annie'  According to Masterton, Annie Barney Carpenter, who lived at 152 North Main Street in Fall River, "freely admitted" sending this to her husband. (pp.229-231)

[While I was looking up Carpenter in Rebello and in the Knowlton Papers -- I noticed that, in a letter from Attorney General Pillsbury to Knowlton about Jennings and Carpenter:  Knowlton Papers p.100 has:  "Jennings tells me a story about one Joe Carpenter, who had a grudge against Borden, who he says ought to have been LOOKED up".  But Rebello's p. 133 version reads:  "Jennings tells me a story about Joe Carpenter, who had a grudge against Borden, who he says ought to have been LOCKED up".  I wonder does the 'he' refer to Jennings? or Borden?] Carpenter is also referred to as a "rather shady character" in this letter -- but it is unclear to me whether this is Pillsbury's or Jenning's assessment.

I haven't seen the Terence Duniho article.  But just going on the title -- it's interesting that Hilliard sent Philip Harrington to Albany to check out Carpenter.  At one point, they were both working at Borden and Almay Co. (Rebello p.133) And they were also boyhood friends? Masterton refers to Harrington's investigation of Carpenter's alibi as "perfunctory'.

(Although Carpenter's account book showed he sold a bottle of ink to a customer in Albany on the 5th, and he was listed as co-seller in another transaction in Troy, NY on the 3rd -- there was no entry for August 4th.)  

I think A R Brown has the best explanation for that found letter. Somebody on the defense team found out about the letter sent to both the Marshall and District Attorney, and countered it by spreading suspicion onto J Carpenter. Brown also talks about the letter from a "Rubinsky"? from Boston, and analyzes it as a forgery.

Kat asked me to post this attachment as it is appropriate to this discussion.

Thanks Stefani...

Note the article is dated TODAY!!!!!
(That was exciting!)

WoW, Diana, that was very thorough.  Oh, I wish you had access to Terence's article.  It was fascinating.

Just a mite to add here:

Knowlton Papers, pg, 430, Glossary A,
"DRISCOLL, PETER M.
1853 - 1899: born in Boston, Massachusetts, son of Patrick and Ellen Driscoll. Employed as a hairdresser in Fall River, Massachusetts, he became a partner in the firm of Driscoll and Sheffield, Fashionable Hairdressers, in 1880. This partnership dissolved in 1882, at which time he continued in the same profession under his own name for the next sixteen years. He married Miss Harriet A. Read of Westport, Massachusetts, and, following her death in 1882, Miss Hattie D. Vadenais of Fall River, who died in 1898. He followed her to the grave only one year later in Taunton, Massachusetts, the cause of death acute melancholia. His claim that he had shaved Joseph W. Carpenter, Jr. in Fall River on August 1, 1892, cast suspicion on that man, as he was known to be an enemy of Andrew J. Borden."

Well, maybe I was too hasty.  Perhaps we shouldn't write off Mr. Carpenter just yet.  There was quite some animosity between the two! 

I found the draft notes for Ter's article here, printed out...Stef has the final LBQ article.

The part that refers to "boyhood friends"=
"Joe Carpenter, Jr. and Phil Harrington both worked for Borden & Almy.  Harrington worked there a little more than three years, from roughly 1874 to about 1877, and Carpenter from 1874 to 1878.  Carpenter was a bookkeeper, while Harrington was apprenticed as a cabinet maker.  Carpenter was 18, then 19, in 1874, while Harrington was 14 and 15 that year.  When Harrington left, in or near 1877, he would have been about 17 or 18.  When Carpenter left, he was 21 or 22."

Then the article goes into all the Harringtons involved -Hiram worked "as a clerk for Borden & Almy in 1876 and 1878...He is the only person whose name Lizzie or Emma ever publicly mentioned when asked who they each thought might've 'had bad feelings' toward their father or their father toward someone else."

"...Besides Philip and Hiram, there is a third Harrington connected to this case:  Bridget Sullivan's cousin, Patrick, in whose home on Division St. [great memory Harry!] she stayed for a few days shortly after the murders."

Then Ter asks the question:  "What might have been Hiram Harrington's relationship to Joe Carpenter, Phil Harrington and / or even Patrick Harrington.?"

He also ponders a connection between Alice Russell and Phil Harrington, as she took over the house he had lived in when she moved from Second Street....

I don't know, but, it sounds pretty incestious to me!  There are too many connections to ignore between some of the principal players in this tragedy and some of the minor ones.  Great info, Kat! 

I do not live in a "small town" (less than 3000?). But it is very likely that people who lived close together, or went to school together, etc. to continue to keep close throughout their lives.

Particularly if they live in neighborhoods where their grandparents lived. That was much more common prior to the 1960s than today, IMO.

Now that really is interesting, Kat.  It means that a suspect in the murders (Joe Carpenter), an investigating police officer, (Philip Harrington), AND a man Emma and Lizzie both named publicly as having "bad feelings" toward their father (Hiram Harrington) all worked at Andrew's business at the same time. Like Terence, I wonder what the relationship was between these three men.

The plot thickens.