“If you send a couple of your men to the People’s Coal yard at Clybourn avenue and Blackhawk street you might get some light on that Binkley murder case. I live in this neighborhood and was sitting in my yard, leaning against the fence, when I heard voices talking low. I heard the voice of Frank Keller, who works in the coal yard, telling how he went down to see some elevator boy he knows in the Wellington hotel and how he got some easy money and a gold watch out of a sleeping old man on the third floor.

“The old man awoke and fired to save himself. The man had been arrested before. I would come down and give you the information, but I don’t like to get my name in it.

“ONE WHO BELIEVES IN JUSTICE

“P.S.—If this man is only bragging to the other ones I don’t know, but he should be pulled in for carrying a gun.”

Depending upon which account is correct, the police either did or did not arrest Keller but did take him to the hotel to see if anyone remembered seeing him.

On June 5 police arrested Clarence Newton aka Jesse Anderson, aka Fred Mitchell, age 21, in nearby Kensington. He had a revolver, ammunition, a silver shaving brush, and a safety razor in his possession and could not adequately account for his whereabouts over the previous days. Some accounts stated that he confessed to the crime. Within a few days police determined that he had not robbed and murdered Dr. Binkley although he was wanted in Ohio for burglary and for the theft of a horse and buggy.

That same day Detective George Scrivner of the coroner’s office and police detective Jeremiah O’Mara went to Evansville to investigate possible motives for suicide. Pawnbrokers Fisher and Raphael told them that in February they had sold a gun identical to the one that killed Dr. Binkley to a bearded man who matched the doctor’s description. An unidentified man in Evansville told the detectives that Dr. Binkley had complained of rheumatism so painful that if he did not soon get relief he would kill himself. Nevertheless, Scrivner sent a note to Coroner Peter Hoffman, saying that he had seen the doctor’s gun at his Evansville home and reminding Hoffman that Dr. Binkley’s watch and money were missing. The Waterloo [Iowa] Daily Courier wryly commented that with rheumatism established as the suicide motive and the pawnshop gun as the weapon it remained only to discover who had stolen the doctor’s belongings. The Binkley family indignantly denied that their father would have had any dealings with a pawnshop.

Family servants dismissed the suicide theory, describing to detectives Dr. Binkley’s constant good spirits. Robert Parker, the janitor at Dr. Binkley’s church, said that the doctor, fond of chickens, had talked to him of how he would raise enough for all of Evansville when he returned from his trip. Albert G. Kleinlein, who had sold Dr. Binkley his watch, told the detectives that he had seen the doctor almost daily in recent years and described him as “jolly” and never depressed. Having received a detailed description of the watch from Kleinlein, police announced they would search Chicago pawnshops.

On June 7 Isadore Hochstein, 16, reported that he had heard two well-dressed men discussing the robbery on a bus:

“Why did you shoot him?”
“I did not mean to. It was an accident.”
“How did it happen?”
“He was sitting on a chair. I had two buttons of his vest open. He awoke and made an attempt to get up just as I was taking a wallet from his inside vest pocket. He jumped up and took me by surprise. My finger hit the trigger and the gun went off. I threw it on the bed and ran out of the room.”
“What did you get?”
“I got $55 and a check.”

Young Hochstein joined the police in a stakeout of the bus line, but the two men did not appear. Although Dr. Binkley, Jr., told police that $55 matched the amount that he estimated his father had carried, police eventually dismissed Hochstein as “a dreamer.”

Some newspapers reported that Dr. Binkley, Sr., had previously been a well-known physician in Chicago. Others said that he knew so little of the city that he would not go anywhere without his son to guide him. Some said that he owned considerable property in Evansville; others, that he was largely dependent upon Dr. Binkley, Jr., for support. There was speculation about where the Binkley family banked in Evansville and how much money they had in accounts there.
No verdict.

HOME