Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer by Harold Schechter Page B

commit him in order to get her hands on some money his father had left him. His only crime, Pope insisted, was a weakness for the game of “Klondike crap.” Questioned at police headquarters by King, Maher, and a third detective, Samuel Ryan, Pope explained that he was the son of a steamboat inspector and the executor of his father’s $30,000 estate, though he himself had only come in for a pittance of that inheritance. He had been trained as an engineer, but he had not practiced that profession for many years. Now, with the Depression underway, the only work he had been able to find was as the superintendent of an apartment building on Madison Avenue. He lived with his sister, an elderly spinster, and supported them both on his meager salary.
    Ada Pope, the suspect’s sister, confirmed every part of his account. Though her brother and his estranged wife had been married for forty-two years, their relationship had always been difficult. Indeed, over the course of those decades, they had been separated more than twenty times. Her brother, Ada Pope tearfully told the detectives, was a hard-working but soft-hearted man who had fallen victim to the malice of a spiteful woman. “I do not know why she hates Charlie and me so much. Charlie has not been able to give her much money these past few years. He does not make very much, and he is looking out for me.”
    Investigating Pope’s story, King discovered that it checked out in every detail. The old man had no police record. And though it was true that he had been institutionalized for eight months between September 1924 and July 1925, the superintendent of the asylum, Dr. E. H. Mudge, affirmed that Pope’s ailment was of “a mild nature.” There was nothing violent or dangerous about the man at all.
    Reluctantly, King and his colleagues were beginning to conclude that their elation over the capture of Grace Budd’s kidnapper had been premature. What they had on their hands, it seemed, was not the long-sought solution to the girl’s disappearance but a sordid squabble, motivated by rankling resentments over money, between a pathetic old man and a bitterly vindictive woman. It was true that Delia Budd had unhesitatingly picked Pope out of the lineup. But Mrs. Budd had already proved herself a notoriously unreliable witness.
    From the moment of Pope’s arrest, the city’s papers, from
The New York Times
to the
Daily News
, had been running major stories about the successful climax of the two-year manhunt for the Budd kidnapper. But just two days after Pope was arraigned before Magistrate Anthony Burke—who set his bail at $25,000—reporters learned that King and his fellow investigators now had serious doubts about Pope’s guilt and were on the verge of dropping all charges against him.
    Before that could happen, though, events took a sudden and very dark turn for the unhappy Mr. Pope.
    During his initial two-hour interrogation of the suspect, King had learned that Pope owned an old farmhouse on an acre of land in Shandaken. New York, a small town in the Catskills. A search order was put through to the State Police base at nearby Sidney, New York. Early the next morning—Sunday, September 7—a contingent of troopers, led by Lieutenant Matthew Fox, arrived at Pope’s place and proceeded to ransack the two-story farmhouse from basement to attic. There was nothing even remotely suspicious inside the house. Concluding that they had been sent on a wild goose chase, Lieutenant Fox and his men made ready to leave.Determined, however, to “leave no stone unturned” (as Fox later told reporters), they decided to take a look inside the small garage at the rear of the farmhouse.
    Inside was an old Dodge touring car bearing 1929 license plates. But what caught the lieutenant’s eye were three small trunks lined up against the far wall of the little building. Dragging them out into the sunlight, the troopers swung open the lids. The contents of the first two seemed innocent