Murder at the Battery Park Hotel

Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Haley. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries, Tales from Appalachia. Ugh, okay.

So how's your week been? Oh, so far so good. I'm just enjoying this fall weather. How about yourself?

It's good. I have been doing all of the checking on our downloads and where we have the listeners from. And it's as of right now. Is it just my mom?

Yes, I'm sorry to tell you we only have two listeners and it's your mom and my mom. Well, I thought so. It's okay, but I'm happy. That's true.

I'm happy that they're at least supporting us. No, it's not right. It's actually more. It's just our parents.

It's really good. It's just our parents proud and we have like 89 people listening to this. Oh my gosh. Wow, that is 87 more than I expected.

I don't think. Oh, okay. So they're from 16 different states, which is wild. And our second highest listener population comes from Washington state.

That's incredible. Thank you, Washington state. Thank you. Please email us so we know that you're real.

Exactly. It's not just like one guy, right? It's just like... It's one guy just downloading it like 20 times.

Over and over and over and over because of our sexy voice. Right. That's totally what it is. That's what it is.

And we have an international listener. What? Oh, Jolie Good. I know.

Please let me know. And Susan, do you live in England? She does. Alright, so you want me to tell you a story?

I like stories. This feels good. Yeah. Hit me.

Well, not literally. Hit me with the story. Okay. One more time.

Alright, I'm going to hit you with this crazy one. And it is back in like the golden decade of the 1930s where all good things are happening. You know, like the Great Depression. Yeah.

Yeah, such good things. There are all the good things. We're out of the roaring 20s. We're going into the Great Depression.

We're living life. Yeah. Businesses are closing. Dust Bowl area era.

There's a lot of great stuff going on. Yeah. I'm going to tell you the story. Great.

Alright, so you really built it up. I'm super excited. Okay. Yeah, it's a good one.

So this story actually takes place in Asheville. I'm familiar. We both used to work. That's correct.

And now we do not work in there, Asheville. No. So this story happened in 1936. It was a murder.

A murder that you say. Yeah. A murder in the south. This case is technically solved, but there are a lot of people myself included that don't believe that everything is exactly what it seems with this case.

Mm. I will. I am strapped and ready to go. So the Battery Park Hotel, which is now actually an apartment building for seniors, was built in 1924 in Asheville, North Carolina.

It is 14 stories tall and is described as a neoclassical structure. Ooh. Do you know what a neoclassical structure is? I do.

I did not add to Google it. Oh, okay. Well, you know. So it's kind of like, think how the White House is built.

That's kind of a neoclassical structure. Mm-hmm. And back when it was built, locals felt like the building was actually too cookie cutter and looked like all the other new buildings going up across the country. But tourists loved it.

And anyone who lives near a tourist town knows that tourists bring in money. Especially in Asheville. Asheville is a tourist town. That's how they get their money.

And if you all don't know, Asheville is home to the Biltmer's Day. Yeah. One of the biggest tourist attractions that's there. Yeah, for sure.

So the local government decided that, hey, we're going to keep it like it is because tourists bring in money and we like tourists. So they actually loved it so much that there's been several famous guests that have stayed there, like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Grace Kelly, Boris Karloff, O'Hindry, and Thomas Wolfe. That is so crazy.

Yeah. So it's been like a, it was kind of the police to be back in the 30s. I know that in the 20s and 30s, a lot of prolific writers came to this area. Yeah.

They like to have a good time here. Yeah. Well, it's so pretty and picturesque. And it's where you get down.

Right. So our folks and other states, just so you know. Take a trip to Asheville. Take a trip to Asheville.

But not now. Because COVID. It's true. Not now.

Don't come because of COVID. Yeah. Yeah. And actually our freeways are pretty packed.

So maybe just wait a while. Maybe just Google us where it's pretty to look at. Yeah. Just, yeah.

Look on YouTube. So another guest who has become famous is Helen Clevenger. And if I say that name wrong, I'm so sorry. Well, we're talking the 30s.

So chances are she's not listening. Oh, no, no. She's for sure dead. Oh, oh.

Well, you know, okay. Yeah. We're going to dive into that. So she was 18 and was about five feet tall and 100 pounds.

So teeny tiny. Just like me. I don't remember the last time I weighed 100 pounds. It's been that.

It's been a decade. I think my left leg weighs 100 pounds. Damn. Yeah.

Well, she was on a road trip with her uncle William across the country over the summer in 1936. And they decided to stop in Asheville. They had friends in the area and knew that this place was beautiful and just wanted to stop and see the sites and do the things that you do in Asheville in the 30s. I don't really know what's going on in the 30s here.

She was a student at NYU and was super excited for the trip and sent letters home to her family throughout the trip to let them know how it was going. And it was supposed to be kind of a week long, like weeks long trip. So when they arrived in Asheville, Helen was given room 224 at the Battery Park Hotel. And then her and her uncle went to have dinner with friends and they returned to the hotel around 1030 p.m.

on January, sorry, not January, on July 15th because it's somewhere another winter. So Helen's uncle went to wake her up on the morning of July 16th in 1936 and couldn't get her to come to the door and he knocked several times and finally tried the door knob and found it unlocked. And when he went in, he found her laying on the floor. Her pajamas were covered in blood and she had been shot in the chest with a 32 caliber pistol and had been beaten.

So she was very dead. The police were immediately called to process the scene and the sheriff at the time was Lawrence Brown. And at the scene the police discovered a shell casing from the pistol and the shell casing had an H engraved on it. And they were also collected fingerprints for comparison to a suspect when they eventually had a suspect.

And the medical examiner would later say that there was no evidence on Helen's body that suggested sexual assault, so silver lining against. Right, yeah. And DNA technology was not really a thing in the 1930s. Right.

So that was not collected, obviously. Right. After the murder, there were several people questioned. The police really believed that whoever killed Helen had worked at the hotel to be able to kind of get in and out without too much fuss.

Over 60 hotel staff members were interrogated along with several guests. Daniel Gaddy, who was from what I can understand, kind of like a security guard. Several articles I read said that he was a hotel detective. So I'm taking that to be mean security guard.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that's a very Dwight Schrute thing, you know? Like I'm actually the hotel detective.

Right, right. Yeah. I think you're right. So he reported that there had been people that had come down and said that they had heard a gunshot and a woman scream that night.

And he went up actually the second floor to check it out and saw that nothing was out of the ordinary. And there had been a storm that night. So he kind of figured people must have heard thunder and maybe people were getting a little crazy and that's what it was. And it wasn't really a gunshot.

So he didn't see any evidence. So he said, no. Well, I mean the detective. Right.

He didn't say this bare minimum job. I was going to say this very bare minimum. I would probably knock on some doors and just say, is everything okay? You know, we heard some noise and ruckus, but at least he, he bothered anybody.

So I guess it was just being respectful. Right. So we just kind of checked out the hallway and said, no, nothing going on here. I'm going to get back to my donut.

That coffee's getting cold. It is. So the police actually checked the shell casing with a h on it to someone who sold ammunition and asked them where someone would buy that and the seller said that no ammunition like that had been sold in Asheville in the last 10 years. So to me, that means somebody had to bring that with them.

Right. Or just a really old box of ammunition. Right. And yeah, I mean, that just doesn't even make sense.

No, it doesn't. I mean, I don't own guns. I don't know a lot of that. Do you just buy ammo and put it backwards in years?

Yeah. I mean, does that stuff go out of date? I mean, okay. I mean, I mean, I don't know.

I mean, I don't know how that works. I mean, I don't know how that works. But could someone have brought it from another state? So someone who is traveling?

That's a good question. So four people also reported to police that they had seen a suspicious person lurking around the hotel. The only solid clues that they could come up with after questioning everyone was that there had been several reports of people seeing a linky man jumping 15 feet from a porch, like a porch balcony thing off the hotel and a shell casing from the gun was found in the room. The linky man was described as being white around five foot nine inches tall and way around 160 pounds.

So after questioning all these people, the cops focused in on two bellops, Joe Eury and LD Rodey, who were both black men. And these two swore that nothing to do with the crime. And after being questioned by police, the police really had no proof or way to tie them to the crime. So they let them go.

Our next aspect we talk about will not be so lucky. Am I? Yeah. So after not a lot of progress, the NYPD was called in on August 7, 1936, because Helen was from New York.

So NYPD sent down a couple detectives. Yeah. These two detectives were Thomas Martin and John Quinn Jr. And they began re-questioning people to see if they could uncover anything that maybe the Asheville police had missed or maybe they didn't think to ask.

That's impossible. I don't think they wouldn't have missed a thing. Right. Yeah.

I don't know. I'm sometimes fresh eyes are good thing. It's good. Especially I mean you've got the NYPD who probably sees this a lot more often.

Yeah. Yeah. More than the actual PD. Right.

Used to kind of bigger cases. Didn't turn out to be a good thing in this case. Oh no. Yeah.

So one of the hotel cooks, Banks Taylor, told the cops that the hall boy slash janitor slash hotel employee, Martin Moore owned a 32 caliber revolver. So a little bit about Martin Moore. He was 22 years old. He was a black man that was working at the hotel.

He lived on Hill Street in Asheville. And by all accounts, he was close with his family, was well liked in his community. He had this big family. All the pictures of him and his family.

They all look really close and it's really sweet. And when asked why police if he had a gun, Moore said yeah, he did and that he would take him to where he kept the gun. And he took place back to his house and gave him a gun. It was wrapped in a burlap bag and he had put it under his house, which is like weird place to store a gun.

Yeah. And then he had to get a gun where he kept it and maybe there were other people in the house, they didn't want them to get a hold of it. I mean, I'm not really pro gun, but if you have a gun, wouldn't you have it where it's handy? I mean, what would think?

I mean, wait a minute, wait a minute, intruder. I've got a dig under my house for my pistol. Right. Yeah.

So I don't know. That kind of made it look a little suspicious to me, but yeah. I don't know. He cooperated with police and agreed to answer questions.

And according to Sheriff Lawrence Brown, Moore confessed to killing Hill and just, you know, confessed to it. Without any coercion at all. Yay. So according to Sheriff Lawrence Brown, he said that Moore had confessed to wanting to rob someone, so he went around trying doors in the hotel to see if he could get in.

And when he got to Helen's store, he found that it was unlocked, so he just went in. Oh, Helen. I'll never keep you going. No.

Well, she may not have. Oh, listen, this is a crazy story. I think I'm a little wild here. Okay.

So he was surprised to see that she was there and when she screamed, it scared him and he shot her. And I already have issues with this because if the door was unlocked, why did police later find a key in the door? And she was beaten. Right.

He claimed he shot her and never said anything about beating her. That seems like a weird detail to leave out. Right. But these inconsistencies didn't really matter that much.

The police got a confession and that's really all they needed. The NYPD sent Moore's gun to a lab in New York and the lab reported that it had found hair on the gun that was similar to Helen's because the evidence showed that she was beaten with the gun. So you would think her hair would be on it. But I don't know how advanced like hair comparison technology was in the 1930s.

Right. So they're saying that she was pistol whipped. Yeah. Basically.

Okay. So he shot her and then pistol whipped her. Right. So I'm guessing she wasn't dead when he shot her until he decided he needed to finish her off.

Kind of thing. I don't know. There's not a whole lot about like the technical. Cause he never even said he'd beat her.

He'd just say he shot her. So I don't know. I don't know what happened when or how. But regardless Moore was indicted and put on trial on August 19th of the same year.

At trial Moore claimed that his confession had been coerced and that he had been beaten with a rubber hose until he confessed. So yeah, I'm kind of seeing here that maybe he didn't actually do it. Right. Yeah.

But I don't know. I'm not saying yes or no here. I don't know. A psychiatrist actually took the stand and said that Martin Moore had confessed to him again.

Four days after he confessed to police. So that kind of sealed a deal there that this was a true confession in the judge's eyes at least. Moore and his family actually claimed that he had an alibi for that night and he was actually at a birthday party for a relative. So there were tons of people that saw him that claimed to see him the night of the murder.

Right. Grand, they were all family members. But still that's a lot of. It's a lot of people.

Right. That said that he was somewhere other than killing a girl. So he actually wasn't at work then that night. Right.

So colleagues didn't say like no, he wasn't even on duty. And they have. They had a whole lot of record because they needed this case to be closed. Yeah.

It's a lot of pressure too. There was. I mean, at that point, Asheville is not a huge place. Right.

You know, this is a small city and then some went like New York cops are coming down and there's a lot of pressure to solve this. Right. They want this done and closed. Yeah.

So Moore actually said to the court that he had given the gun to Elie Rody that Bell popped at the question earlier and that Rody had returned the gun to Moore the day after the murder. So okay. So I'm guessing that he's like once they did the ballistics, the forensics and they found the hair, then he had to say, well, you know, I loaned it to my buddy. Right.

It's kind of like when you find cigarettes on your kid and they're like, oh, they're not mine. No, I'm just holding them for a friend. I don't smoke. What are you talking about?

Right. Yeah. I know it's a bit weird. Yeah, definitely.

Definitely felt weird. Um, Moore's attorney, Jay Scoop style's tried to get Moore's confession thrown out, but after the psychiatrist said his piece about him confessing, judge Don Phillips approved the confession. And this was really all that prosecutors have that was needed to make his case. The prosecutor said that they had found fingerprints on the lampshade and they were matched to Martin.

This is actually a lie. They found out later none of the fingerprints were usable. So he just said that, hey, we found fingerprints and they matched, but none of the prints that they collected were able to be used. Wow.

And that's okay. He didn't have to back it up. Oh, no, no, this is the 30s. Okay.

Right. The jury deliberated for one hour and returned a verdict of guilty. One hour to determine a man's fate. Yep.

You want to guess how the jury was made up? Like what kind of people it was? I have a feeling this is just me going out on on a limb here. Uh, 12 white men.

You're right. Oh, man. Wow. That was really going out on a limb.

Right. I didn't say anything else, but I don't think women could serve on a jury in the 30s. Well, they got the right to vote in 1920, but I don't know about when they were allowed to be on juries. Yeah, I don't know either.

Anyway, they were all white regardless. So after he was convicted, he had to go to sentencing and more was sentenced to death in North Carolina's new method of execution, the gas chamber. Oh, my. Yeah.

So the NAACP had actually been monitoring the trial and initially reported that the trial was fair. Uh, they had tech at that, so and tried to save more, but Moore's lawyer tried to appeal the conviction, but it was denied due to him missing a deadline with the appeal. Are you kidding? Which I was because on December 11th, 1936, Moore was led into the gas chamber in Raleigh, North Carolina and was executed.

Reports say that Moore was shaking and crying as he was led to his death. So let's just recap for a second. The crime happens in July of 36 by August. He's arrested and the trial happens very quickly and he's executed by December.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Could you imagine being an innocent or, you know, if you were innocent and you're led to your death?

No. I don't even want to think about it. That's terrifying. Yeah.

I mean, it was horrible and it's likely that he didn't even commit this crime. Highly likely. I mean, it's totally possible because I mean half the freakin evidence was a lie. Exactly.

So I don't know. I don't know. So I said earlier that there were several people out there that don't believe that Moore was the killer and I have a few alternate theories that I think are important to consider. Oh, alternate theories.

I'm excited. Hit me with them. Yeah. One more time.

So let's go back to the suspicious person that was lurking around the hotel. Now if Moore was there that night, which his family says he wasn't, but less pretend he was, he was likely not have been considered suspicious. He would have looked like he belonged there, probably dressed in his uniform and walking with confidence because he worked there. Right.

And he would know the ins and outs of the hotel. Moore also does it match the description of the linky man. Moore was much taller than five nine and was black. Right.

So one possible alternative suspect was Mark Wollner, who was a 35 year old German violinist. Wollner had lived in Asheville for two years in an apartment across the street from the hotel and he had apparently told a friend that he had a date at the hotel at 10 p.m. The night that Helen was killed. So a guest in the hotel, E.B.

Pitman was his name. He was in the room across from Helens and he woke up at 1 a.m. when he heard screams. He went to the hallway to see what's going on and he reported speaking to a man who was standing at Helens doorway.

And this man reassured him everything's fine. So Pitman went back to bed. So after Pitman told police, they actually sent Pitman over to the growth park in, which is another famous hotel in Asheville. And Wollner was there playing his violin and so they sent Pitman over there to see if he could identify Wollner as the guy that he'd seen in the doorway that night.

And the question is why they sent in Pitman over there by himself to identify his aspects. That's not scary at all or intimidating or you know, good job. Right, I mean it's also the 1930s. Hey, yo buddy, why don't you go over there and check him out?

Right. I'll just go see if you can see it. Why don't you just go listen to his concerto and see if it could be him? Yeah, so I mean 1930s and all that shock that this was the thing that's happening.

But Pitman did it and he came back and reported that the guy looked like the person he had spoken to but that the voice didn't match. Didn't have the same voice. Wollner was detained in jail and questioned by police and I think he actually spent several days in jail while being questioned and the county physician Howard L. Sumner examined Wollner and said that he had a cut on his left foot, a bruise on his left heel and a strange brown stains on his clothing.

Poop. Right, maybe. I'm thinking blood. Oh, blood dries, proud-ish.

So yeah, I was going more with blood but maybe you had a really rough night. Just couldn't make it. Just cracked himself. No, no, he was that scared.

Yeah. So all of these injuries were consistent with jumping from let's say a 15-foot high porch. So Wollner claimed that he was not actually at the hotel that night and he had stayed in that night and the landlady at the apartment building confirmed this. However, there were several people that said hold up.

We saw him out about that night. He was reportedly seen at the hotel restaurant slash bar at 10.30 p.m. was seen around 2 a.m. on the street.

Was seen at 6 a.m. drinking coffee. And then was seen returning home at 6.30 a.m. And a neighbor even claimed that she saw him coming up to his apartment and that he looked injured.

So he was kind of limping on the stairs coming in. But apparently none of this mattered and he was released on July 24th from police custody. Which kind of infuriates me. For sure.

Because Martin also had an alibi. Martin Moore. And that was ignored. And no one can actually police him at the hotel but there are all these people that said that they saw Wollner out and about and acting all weird and it's not an issue.

I guess not. But I mean Wollner was white and Martin was black. So that. And I mean you got someone who's a violinist.

Yeah. Did you say cellist or violinist? Violinist. Violinist.

Yeah. Someone who's a violinist. He's probably you know somewhat distinguished. You know.

I mean in a way he was probably a little bit more upper class. So money money and privilege talk. Yeah. Especially at that time.

Well now too. Right. Yeah. So I think that is just I don't know it's interesting theory.

Yeah. So that's kind of the first theory. Okay. The alternate theory.

So I got the German violinist in my head. Yep. He is a possibility. I think he may actually be the most likely possibility.

Now this last theory is actually the one that got me into this case. Okay. As I saw it when I was researching for our Halloween episode our haunted stories episode. And this kind of came up and I was like holy crap this is crazy.

So the other theory is that Fscot Fitzgerald might have been involved. Wait a minute. The writer? Yeah.

Okay. The writer. Yeah. So let me tell you a little bit why.

Okay. We think this. So he was actually staying at Asheville at the Grove Park Inn for a while during the summer of 1936 after he had admitted his wife Zelda to Highland Hospital. Which was the local mental hospital.

Right. Right. So she had a lot of mental health issues and was admitted there for psychiatric treatment. Or whatever you want to call mental health care in the 30s because.

Prison. Right. Not a great child. He was actually injured in a diving accident at Beaver Lake and injured his shoulder and required a kind of a home health nurse to take care of him during this time.

And there was an article published on September 25th, 1936 entitled The Other Side of Paradise. It's not Fitzgerald 40 and Gullft and Despair. And this was written by Michael Muck and was published in the New York Post. And he had interviewed the nurse that was caring for Fitzgerald.

And I'll read you kind of a section from the article and tell me what you think. Okay. So quote, basically he was suffering the aftermath of an accident eight weeks ago when he broke his right shoulder in a dive from a 15 foot springboard. But whatever pain the fracture might have caused him it did not account for his jittery jumping off and onto his bed, his restless pacing, his trembling hands, his twitching face and his pitiful expression of a cruelly beaten child.

Fitzgerald admits a series of things happened to Papa. He said with mock brightness. So Papa got depressed and started drinking a little. But the things were he refused to explain.

One blow after another he said and finally something snapped. Well, first off, I just want to say I appreciate that he refers to himself and their person's Papa. Right. That's odd.

And sounds like he was if you think about it 15 feet. That's the same right from the porch. So jumping off were there witnesses at Beaver Lake who saw him do this? I think he probably did have this accident, but I don't know why.

I mean to me like, let's see just a little less like why has a shoulder injury required you to have a home health nurse? He's a man. Sorry for all you men out there listening to us. But I mean, you know, maybe at this time he was a writer.

So maybe it was his right. You know, maybe, you know, I don't know. Maybe eight weeks before the article was written would have been July 1936 because back in the article it said eight weeks ago he suffered an accident. So him saying blow by blow.

Yeah, I just snapped. Yeah. So Fitzgerald actually had a suicide attempt at the Grove Park where he tried to shoot himself with you guessed it. 32 caliber pistol.

I want to guess how tall Fitzgerald was. Five nine. Yeah. Five foot nine.

Like length 160 ish. White dude. Five foot nine. So I don't know.

That's all the information there is out there about the three that I've been able to find. I just thought it was interesting. Wow. Oh my gosh.

So I mean, the most important thing is though that this young girl was murdered. Absolutely. And it's quite possible and this man was put to death for this. I mean, that is horrible in itself, but also, you know, Helen may not have actually got justice.

You know, if this guy didn't do it, if Martin Moore didn't do it, then her killer's been, you know, was able to walk freely and potentially do this again. Right. And live a whole, you know, long life. And I actually don't know the history.

We'll probably have to learn a little bit more about Fitzgerald. Did he end up, I don't think any of these writers at the time, because they all lived a kind of debaucherous life and had a problem with alcohol. I don't know that he lived a very long time. Did he go on and write more?

Did he live a life of, as I called it, melancholy up back then? I don't know. I mean, I think Fitzgerald has own demons. And whether this contributed to it is, I don't know.

I mean, there's just so many different little things that kind of come up. What if we, what if we cracked this case? What if we now said, Oh yeah, look at that. We've solved it.

You're welcome. No, and we don't want to say that. This is all of course, don't come at us. Right, do you see what's missing?

Yes, no, this is all just, you know, speculation theories, but it's just a good one. Yeah, they're just super interesting theories of, you know, was it the silence? This guy, right? Could it have been Fitzgerald?

Could, you know, did Rody that he gave the gun to have something to do with it and he was covering for a friend? Right. Who knows? But I mean, so that's, that's the story of Helen Clevinger.

That was fascinating. Yeah. That was eerie. I mean, you know, there's so many possibilities.

Yeah, I mean, it's technically solved. So it's not an open case. I know that's the case. Yep, man was arrested, tried and executed for the crime.

So it's, you know, in the eyes of the law, this case is over, closed. So I would love to see this case reopened at some point. That would be pretty cool. And what evidence would there be left?

I mean, yeah, I mean, although the Battery Park Hotel, now known as the Battery Park Apartments, it is still standing. Yeah. And I know they've done some remodels over the years, but essentially it is the exact same building that it was at that time. So, you know, they've seen a lot of guests and a lot of people living there.

So it's probably not like they can go back and cover evidence, you know, 80 years later. Who knows? So please subscribe, read and review us on Apple Podcasts. It really actually helps us to reach more listeners.

Give us a follow on Facebook at Mountain Mysteries, Dales from Appalachia, follows on Instagram at mountainmysteries.epilaccia. And send us an email at mountainmysteries.epilaccia.com. And feel free to send us some spooky stories to share some suggestions or you can just say hi. Yeah, just say hi to us.

I mean, we always need new friends. Hit me up, yo. You want to be my buddy? Do you want to give us a hint about your case next week?

I totally ignored you. Please don't. Don't ignore me. I want to be a friend.

Okay. My case next week involves an unsolved crime. It's actually technically still open. So I'm going to be sharing a little bit about a murder that happened at Mars Hill College.

Dun, dun, dun, a med. And Mars Hill College. Yeah. And it wasn't Escobot, it's Gerald as far as I know.

Bummer, man. I know. I don't know him two weeks. So I'm not this Gerald, but we'll see you next week.

See you next week. Bye, homes. Hit me up. Bye.

Bye. Bye.