Lizzie Lloyd King

Elizabeth Lloyd King (born 1847) was the murderer of Charles Goodrich, whom she is said to have shot three times in the head on 20 March 1873 in Brooklyn, New York, United States. The murder was headline news in the city, until her capture more than three months after the event. Her inquest drew large crowds, and prisoner church sermons drew requests for attendance from the general public, some of whom were granted entry. After a year in jail, a psychological assessment deemed that she was unfit to stand trial, and she was committed to a life sentence at the State Lunatic Hospital at Auburn.

Her inquest was held on the same day and at the same court as that for Mary Ann Dwyer, who had murdered her three children, making the story even more sensational for the New York press. The ''New York Times'' story headline the next day was ''"TWO INSANE WOMEN"''.

The chief of police who handled her case, Patrick Campbell, would recall her case decades later as "a great one", and one of the most memorable of his career.

Description

King was described as a "remarkable woman", who was "attractive in face, manner and figure, and was a fine musician". She was also intelligent:

Early life

King was born Elizabeth Lloyd King in Plymouth, Massachusetts to Isaac B. King and Harriet A. Hoyt, and had an older sister. She was described to have a normal childhood, for which her mother could not recall King as having "ever said an immodest word". After puberty, "she grew more and more unnatural and strange", and led a troubled youth, leaving and returning to school at her whim. When in school, she did well in her studies.

She left home shortly afterward. On 25 April 1867, a probate court in Boston committed her to the Taunton Lunatic Asylum, during which time she was also known as Alice Howard. Her attending physician was Norton Folsom, who indicated the "form of her disease was mania, which was manifested by excitement, irascibility, incoherence of speech and violent conduct", and that her condition was "caused by some disease peculiar to females". He indicated that by 10 May 1867, she appeared better. She was discharged on 10 September 1867. From then until 1873, she worked as a milliner and teacher in New York City, Philadelphia, and Hartford, not returning to her hometown during this period.

Relationship with Charles Goodrich

In New York City, she roomed with Mary Handley at 45 Elizabeth Street from February 1872, until late June or early July of that year. Handley knew King by the name Kate Stoddard, an alias in recent use by her, and the name by which she was commonly known at the time. She was an inmate of the Working Women's Home, and worked as a milliner making straw bonnets at a warehouse on the corner of Broadway and Spring Street.

King met Charles Goodrich after responding to a personal ad in a newspaper, identifying herself to him as Kate Stoddard. A relationship between King and the widower Goodrich ensued, established no later than early 1872. In a letter to Goodrich from early 1872, King refers to him as "my dear Charlie".

She would write seven more letters to Goodrich between then and March 1873, and he would write to her five times. She would sign her letters to him using the alias Amy, or sometimes Kate. The letters indicate that the two had married on 20 May 1872, after which her letters to him are addressed "my dearest husband". Goodrich always addressed King as "Amy" in his letters to her.

Her letters revealed that from June 1872 to February 1873, she had been living at a house on Degraw Street.

His second letter to her after their marriage states that "it is better for both that we should separate". Goodrich's last letter to King states his intention of providing her with a room in New York City and to aid her financially, if she would cease to refer to herself as his wife, and not mention their relationship to his family.

Eviction, and a letter to William Goodrich

King refused the proposal, and on the evening of 15 February 1873 wrote a letter to his brother William W. Goodrich, sending it to his office.

In that letter, King made many revelations, including that she has been living in the third Brownstone house from Fifth Avenue on Degraw Street. Seven units had been built and owned by Charles Goodrich, and were completed in the fall of 1872; he had assumed residence of the unit at 731 Degraw Street. The letter also indicated that Goodrich had married King in what she now knew was a mock marriage, since the clergyman who conducted the ceremony was Reuben Smith, a doctor by trade and a friend of Goodrich. Further, it notes that Goodrich had treated her cruelly, that they had a child in December, and that on the day she wrote her letter, he had evicted her, throwing her trunks and clothing into another unit. She lamented that she had neither friends nor money, and that "it seems like some dreadful nightmare". She signed the letter Amy G., intended to mean Goodrich.

At the urging of his brother, Charles Goodrich temporarily separated from King for about a week, but she had returned to live with him for at least a few days before he was shot.

Shooting and investigation

When Goodrich attempted to finally terminate the relationship and evict her from his home, King shot him in the head three times. The murder occurred at his home. King had descended to the basement, with Goodrich following her, during an argument. He insisted that she leave his house, and reiterated that he "would do all he could afford for her". At this, she shot him in the head, dragged his body near the fireplace grate, and cleaned off the blood.

A search of the house by police netted a set of letters with "only the Christian name of the writer" (that is, the given name) signed therein.

During the first few days of the investigation, it was hypothesized that Goodrich had committed suicide. The post-mortem investigation revealed that he had been shot three times, the "three bullets in the brain...being as fatal to the theory of self-destruction as they were to the victim". Others persisted in the suicide conjecture; the claim was that he shot himself once, and that the person who discovered him shot him twice more to give the appearance of a murder, and then wiped away the blood. By 25 March, this conjecture was abandoned.

Despite daily questioning of the neighbors up to 26 March, an accurate account of the events could not be established because they offered conflicting information. It was unanimous that a woman was either visiting or living at Goodrich's house, but little was known about her:

The neighbours also unanimously endorsed the hypothesis that it was murder, and that the woman was "directly concerned in the affair".

Reward offer

Goodrich's body was removed from his residence at 17:00 on 22 March, placed in a hearse, and transported to Cumberland Street, to the residence of his brother William Goodrich. A funeral service was conducted there on the afternoon of 23 March, and his body was then transported on that evening's train to Albany, where he was buried in a family vault the next day. Three days later, William Goodrich offered a $2,500 reward for the capture of the woman who had sent him the letter. On 2 July 1873, Brooklyn Common Council unanimously adopted the motion to offer another $1,000 in reward for the capture of King, bringing the total reward to $3,500.

King had been the primary suspect from the start of the investigation, according to the New York Times:

The name Kate Stoddard was first considered for suspicion in the murder when a book of poems was found in Goodrich's home by detectives Folk and Videtto during their search for evidence. Her name appeared on one of the pages of that book.

By 1 April 1873, several suspects for the murder had been proposed: an Englishman named Barnet or Barrett; a man named James, using the alias "Pop" Tighe, and two other burglars; a Spaniard named ''Roscoe''; and Kate Stoddard, based on several letters that were found during the initial investigation of the crime scene. The suspicion of Roscoe was based on an interview of Lucette Meyers by Chief of Police Patrick Campbell, in which she proposed that Goodrich had been "followed to his house and killed by a man—an enemy". The police efforts were by now being criticized, having failed to apprehend or even nominate a viable suspect. When a New York detective apprehended a Frenchman named Charles Dalzen, of "Hayti, West Indies" (sic), mistakenly believing him to be Roscoe, the New York Times noted:

Lucette Armstrong had been in jail at this time, unable to make a $1,000 bail. She had refused to divulge information she claimed to know about the murder. The police resorted to using an undercover female detective, labeled a ''petticoat'' by the press, "by whose wiles it was confidently expected Mrs. Armstrong would be induced to tell all she is supposed to know about the Goodrich murder". She was placed in the same room as Armstrong, posing as a witness named Lucy in a civil case, but failed to elicit any relevant discussion from Armstrong.

Goodrich's father made a request to coroner Whitehill on 19 April 1873 to inspect the pistol used in the murder. He stated that it was not his son's pistol, which "had a white handle, ivory or pearl, while this is wood". The location of the son's pistol was unaccounted. Lucette Meyers corroborated the father's account in May.

The burglar conjecture was largely ignored as implausible by this time. Various stories regarding Roscoe were known, and by July 1873, he was deemed an accomplice of King to the murder.

Having failed in their search for Stoddard, increasingly the prime suspect in the case, the police hired Mary Handley, making her a detective to the chief of police, paying her a stipend of $2 per day for 40 days. Handley had revealed to the police that she was an "intimate friend" of King's, and had approached the police to assist in searching for her. At first, she dealt with a cold trail as had the other detectives on the case, but after a public tip "relating to the former haunts of Kate Stoddard" was given to the chief, Handley was "put on the track". She made trips to Glen's Falls, Gloversville and Albany, but none were productive.

Capture

By chance, on the afternoon of 8 July 1873 Handley was returning to Brooklyn from Manhattan via the Fulton Ferry, exiting the gates at the ferry dock, when she observed King headed that way, presumably on her way to Manhattan. Handley asked officer Doherty, the on-duty ferry officer, to arrest King. He did so after some persuasion, and took both Handley and King to the Second Precinct Station of the Brooklyn police, at York Street. On the way there, King was seen to discard several letters onto the street, which were collected by the officer.

Here, Handley introduced King to chief Campbell and captain James McConnell as the fugitive Kate Stoddard. King was interviewed, but denied the charge that she was Kate Stoddard. Campbell noticed a large gold locket pendant from a chain about her neck, and requested to see it. King denied, but Campbell took it anyway. After fumbling with it for some time, it opened, some of its contents falling to the floor. King picked them up and ate them. They were flakes of desiccated blood. Upon inquiry from the chief, she replied "that's blood—dried blood", then refused to answer any further questions.

She was later taken to the Raymond Street Jail. Meanwhile, Campbell inspected the letters, which were addressed to individuals in Manhattan and New Jersey, and inferred that King must reside in Brooklyn.

At this time, the police were reticent with the media, not yet having ascertained the identity of the woman. The police had, to their embarrassment, mistakenly arrested Lucette Meyers earlier in the investigation.

Meanwhile, detectives were continuing their search for Roscoe, who was now also considered a myth in some circles, and had summoned Dr. Reuben Smith and Charles Green to the police station. Smith and Green were friends of Charles Goodrich, and had met King during her relationship with Goodrich. This would allow the police to identify the woman in jail as Stoddard, whom they knew to be the author of the ''Amy G.'' letters.

Identification

Her identity was incontrovertibly confirmed by 11 July 1873, and King confessed to being ''Kate Stoddard'' and to the murder of Goodrich. She also admitted that she had been boarding at the home of the widow Ann Taylor, at 127 High Street in Brooklyn, a three-story brick house near Jay Street. Taylor's daughter Anna Knight would later testify at the inquest, indicating that King used the alias ''Minnie Waltham'' in association with Taylor.

King had been living at High Street since the third week of April, continuing to work in Manhattan. By June, however, she discontinued her work commute, instead working from her room at Taylor's house. She had friendly and frequent association with the Taylor family, who were unaware of her true identity; they became concerned about her disappearance on 8 July 1873, but King's friends suggested she had gone to visit her parents, whom she had said lived in Trenton, New Jersey

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