The Disappearing Parrot: A True-Crime-Noir Murder Mystery
John Brunen, a 47-year-old, wealthy circus owner known as, “Honest John,” is murdered in his own home before he even has a chance to draw the pistol he always carries. “Honest John’s" life ended when he was decapitated, shot from behind, his head literally blown off by a double-barrelled shotgun fired through a locked window by a shadowy, light-footed killer. Brunen’s wife Doris, a former broadway chorus girl, is upstairs when she hears the fatal blasts. But the killer didn’t know that Brunen was a close friend of New Jersey super-sleuth Ellis H. Parker. Parker swears vengeance, promising not to rest until the murderer is found. Parker's as good as his word. But promises don't mean much without results. After investigating 600 possible suspects, he can't single clue. Parker's hit a stone wall, and he can't help but wonder why someone removed Brunen's talking parrot from the scene of the murder....What will Ellis H. Parker do next? If you’re ready to find out, please join host Zevon Odelberg for Kinda Murdery’s telling of, "THE DISAPPEARING PARROT!"
Sources:
https://gardenstatelegacy.com/files/Who_Shot_Honest_John_Bilby_GSL34.pdf https://ia601404.us.archive.org/32/items/true-detective-jan-1929/TrueDetectiveJan1929.pdf
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Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of
violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening
now. True crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the
strange in the darkly comic. I'm zevan Odeleberg, host of kind of Murdery,
a podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket
dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved,
the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long
as it's kind of Murdery. My sincere thanks again to Kelsey Childs and Pamela
j from Haunted Detective for filling in last week. Please do check out Haunted
Detective wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe. It's a great show. The
ladies from Haunted Detective were kind enough to fill in for me while I was
recovering from throwing out my back. But my back is better and I am
back, and I am zevn Odelberg, and this is kind of Murdery.
I found the story you're about to hear in the January nineteen twenty nine issue
of True Detective magazine. My sources are in the show notes, and boy,
this is a hum dinger of a whodunn at, folks, It's a
heck of a story, a real, really happened, first person true crime
noir detective story, as told by the Burlington County, New Jersey Chief of
Detectives, Lish Parker. I gotta tell you, lsh. Parker, sure
sounds like the name of a Bogart private eye if I've ever heard one.
And this what you're about to hear is Detective Parker's story, as told to
Alan Hind formerly of The Boston Post. Here's the hook. When forty seven
year old wealthy showman and circus owner John Brunnan was murdered in his own home,
shotgunned in the back of the head before he even had a chance to
draw the pistol he always carried, I'm talking, had his head blown off
from behind in his own home while his wife, Doris, a former Broadway
chorus girl, was upstairs. When that happened, Famous New Jersey sleuth Ellis
Parker swore to get the murderer. But Parker never guessed that he would check
up on six hundred possible suspects without finding a single clue. He'd hit a
stone wall. Where would he turn next? Well, if you're ready to
find out, please join me as we uncover what truths we can and solve
what mysteries we may, kind of murderies. The Disappearing Parrot. That's right,
like where pollywanacracker. The Disappearing Parrot starts now. Between seven forty five
and eight o'clock on the evening of March tenth, nineteen twenty two, the
telephone in my office rang. I was lying down at the time. Last
two nights rest were working on an important case, and I did not much
relish the idea of getting up to answer a call. However, something told
me the call was for me, and that it might be official business.
Call it an instinct, call it gut, whatever you like. But during
the few seconds that elapsed between the time that the idea first occurred to me
and the time that my secretary, Miss Anna Use, answered the phone,
I became thoroughly convinced that something was in the wind. I was right that
you, Parker, were the words that greeted me when I answered, Miss
Hughes, having told me that the call was personal and an important one.
The voice on the other end of the wire was a Chief Vocal, that's
Chief of Police, William Vochel of a Riverside, New Jersey, just a
few miles from Mount Holly, the county seat of Burlington County, where I
made my home for the last thirty five years. I replied to Vocal in
the affirmative and was greeted with that circus guy, you know, honest John
Brunan. Somebody killed him in his own home, where I achieved. I
queried, the brute home. I'll be there as quick as possible, I
said, don't let anyone touch anything. A queer feeling passed through me,
no wonder, for I was a warm friend of John Brunan. I've known
him for years. Hell, we'd been talking only a few days before.
We was discussing as carnival the Mighty Doors shows, which I was going to
take to the road shortly misused and another one of my assistants, Clifford Kane,
donned their coachs for the automobile trip to Riverside, and just as we
were getting in the car, along come State Trooper Herman Baiting, who'd been
doing some work in connection with my office so herman joins us and we're off.
Within two minutes of the phone call, little did we realize that we
were about to work on what proved to be one of the most brutal,
as well as one of the most complex and baffling crimes that's ever come to
my attention in the thirty five years that I've been tracking down well criminals.
As we drove along the quiet road the Riverside, I couldn't help but think
of what some might call the irony of fate. You see, John Brunnan
had often asked me how I went about the thrilling business of solvent murder and
miss In spite of the fact that I hadn't even reached the scene of the
crime, I instinctively began speculating on possible motives. Had honest John been killed
by some disgruntled, discharged employee. I couldn't recall brunanever having told me that
anyone was out to get him. But uh, he was wealthy, and
he was known in Riverside as a quote big theatrical man unquote. I wondered,
therefore, if robbery could have been behind the killing. But these speculations
were neither here nor there, so I stopped quizzing myself. As we drew
up to the Brunean home, I was immediately impressed by the fact that it
was an excellent spot for a killer to you know, kill. The night
was pitch black and there were no lights nearby. To the right of the
Brunan home, which was a huge old fashioned frame dwelling stretched fields fields,
big enough to give a dozen secret slayers room to make clean getaways. In
the rear of the house was a garage. Beyond that nothing for quite some
distance. To the left of the police quite a bit of ground separated it
from the next dwelling. Ringing the front doorbell. I was admitted to the
house by missus Brunnan. She'd been widowed for less than an hour, her
eyes were swollen from crying, and she was in a state bordering on Extremeistheria
chief of police vocal upon seeing me, told me where the body was and
led me to the kitchen. There I found the man I'd talked with only
several days before. He was slumped in a chair. Half his head had
been blown off by the charge from a shotgun. The floor was literally covered
with blood and brains. On the floor near the body was a newspaper which
the murdered man had been reading. I found out later that he'd been reading
about a murder case in California. What a strange coincidence, huh. Brunan
had been sitting in a chair close to and with his back toward, the
one window in the kitchen, which of course was in the extreme rear the
house. There was a hole in the pane about four inches in diameter.
Looking more closely, I found that the glass had been blown inward. This
was a clear and positive indication that the murderer had fired the death shot as
he stood outside the house. Going round the back of the house, I
succeeded in finding, with the aid of a flashlight the footprints I expected.
There were two sets of him, those of a man and those of a
woman. Missus Brunan told me later that she'd made the woman's prince when she
went out to put her bulldog in the cellar for the night. The other
footprints were those of a man of presumably short and slight stature. I arrived
at this conclusion because the size of the prince were quite small, and the
impression made on the soft ground was not very heavy. I followed the footprints
as best I could under the difficulty presented by the extreme darkness, and they
led to a lane where I found fresh automobile tracks. The fact that the
shotgun had been used convinced me beyond doubt that the crime was not the work
of a highed or experienced gunman. In the first place, a hired gunman
wouldn't risk being detected carrying anything so bulky. Second place, a hired killer
usually quote works unquote with a revolver, because in almost every case he's clever
enough to get his man with the first shot. A shotgun is, as
a rule, used by someone who's not sure of his aim, and who
therefore believes that the bigger the weapon, the bigger his chance are hitting his
target in the first place. Additionally, the fact that the slayer stood right
up against the window to fire the shot, as revealed by the footprints,
proved to me that he was more or less of an amateur, an amateur
who wanted to make doubly sure that he got Brunan on the first shot.
The comparatively small hole in the window pane was additional proof that the shot had
been fired at close range, that the shotgun pellets hadn't had time to spread
out before they hit the window. I decided that to make any further attempt
to trace material clues around the grounds was impossible then, on account of the
dark night, so I instructed my associates to keep a close god around the
grounds all night. I then went back to the kitchen. Here I might
pause for a moment to explain to you that the eye of a man trained
in the detecting crime will instinctively notice things which are overlooked by the average joe.
The peculiar arrangement of a bit of furniture, a stop clock, a
disarranged curtain. Any one of those things may be the very thing to furnish
the solution to the most baffling crime, and yet they seem so unimportant on
the surface to most people. Bearing this in mind, as I always do,
I was immediately impressed by the fact that a parrot which had been in
a cage hanging in the kitchen was missing, not just the bird, but
his cage too. You see, Brunan was a friend. I'd been in
that room on more than one occasion before, and I'd unconsciously taken a mental
photograph of everything in it. The parrot, which by the way, was
a talking one, had been there for years. That night it was missing.
Looking around the house without saying what I was looking for, I soon
discovered the parrot in the cellar way. A cloth had been thrown over the
cage. I kept this observation to myself, as I have found that a
detective invariably makes a blunder whenever he reveals his hand, except when forced to
do so. The incident of the p being removed might mean very little,
and I won't go as far as to say it was of paramount importance to
me just then, but it was something to be taken into consideration. It
gave me an inkling that the murder might just be an inside job. I
then asked missus Brunan for a statement. She said that her husband had arrived
home at six o'clock or thereabouts, and that he'd driven to Williamstown, Jersey,
early that morning in Hortense the family car. That's what they called the
family car. Hortense. Don't ask me. She said. He had to
attend to several business matters at the winter quarters of his show. When he
arrived home that night, he put the car in the garage as usual.
Then into the house. He said he was tired and hungry, but he
thought he would wash up and put on fresh clothes before eating dinner. When
he was done fixing himself up a bit, Brunan came downstairs feeling in good
spirits. He joked with his wife say that he said, I'm not such
a bad looking guy when I'm cleaned up, am I? Then John and
his wife were alone in the house for a while. He ate a hearty
dinner. Missus Brunan then washed the dishes, while John sat with her in
the kitchen with his back to the wind, and began reading the news of
the day, his usual custom. One of the first things that caught his
attention was a California murder case wherein a woman had been accused of brutally slaying
her husband. Do you know, dot, said Brunan to his wife.
I don't believe that woman knows a thing about that killing. It was then
about half past seven pm, and Missus Brunan said she went outside to put
the dog in the cellar. Coming back inside, she went upstairs to draw
her husband a hot bath. The shade above his head pulled down halfway as
was customary. A light directly above his head outlined the killer's target very clearly.
There's a railroad near the Brunan home, and two trains were scheduled to
pass at about half past seven. That's when the shot was fired, and
Missus Brunan was the only one who heard the gun report. The noise of
one of the trains drowned it out. It was apparently perfectly timed. Missus
Brunan said that she ran down to the kitchen when she heard the shot,
but stopped at the threshold when she saw the ghastly sight of her husband with
his melon blown off. She notified a woman neighbor about ten minutes later.
When I asked her why she'd allowed such a length of time to elapse before
giving any alarm, she replied that she'd been so upset she didn't know what
she was doing, which seemed reasonable under the circumstances. During my questioning of
missus Brunan, I found that she and her husband had often quarreled. She
assured me, however, that there had never been any serious differences between them.
Missus Brunan, at the time of the murder was an attractive, blonde
woman of thirty six, rather plump. She'd been married once before she became
John's wife. John Brunan, a German guy at middle aged, had also
been married once before. He Webb the current Missus Brunan. He had a
daughter, Hazel, a good looking kid of seventeen, by his first wife.
I found out later that the Brunans had quarreled seriously at a time when
Hazel ran off with a circus lion tamer, and that shots had been fired
by both Missus Brunan and her husband. A bullet from brune His gun struck
Missus Brunan, but the injury was not serious. Of course, at steel
caused the bullet to glance off. I also learned through question in the Widow
that her husband years before had been tried for murdering another man. He was
acquitted on grounds of self defense. By this time, the plot was,
as they say in the movies, thickening. Missus Brunan was getting more and
more nervous every minute, and the process had drawn information from her was growing
more difficult. I was afraid that she was going to faint on several occasions,
but I had to try to get as much as possible, for I
had no time to lose. So I asked missus Brunan if she had any
idea who killed her husband. She thought for a moment and then replied that
she suspected a man named George Werner, a circus chef known as Duchy.
This Werner, she said, had been discharged by Brunan not long before the
murder, and he'd threatened to quote get unquote his employer. We all know
what that means, right, So I asked the widow to describe Duchy,
and she said he was a short man. I then asked if he was
heavier, slight and build. She said he didn't weigh very much. I
noticed at once that this description fitted in fairly well with the picture of the
slayer, which I conjured up with the aid of the footprints. I asked
Missus Brunan when she'd seen Duchy last, and she replied that it had been
a matter of weeks. She added that she hadn't the slightest ideas to his
present hans. It was now pretty well along toward midnight when the doorbell rang
and in walks Harry C. Moore, Missus Brunan's brother. Now Moore's a
tall, heavy set fella in his mid thirties. He'd been a showman himself
for a little over a year, and he'd been associated with Brunan's show.
Prior to that, he had had a show of his own on the road.
Moore, who lived with the Brunans, explained that he'd driven up from
Philadelphia. He seemed apparently greatly upset about the murder, and he asked me
if I'd picked up any clues. I told him about the footprints. He
went out, took a look at him, swore something I can't repeat,
and then he called me to one side, Parker. He says, there'll
be a bit reward in this for you if you can track down the fiend
who did this job. Guy had one hell of a voice, so I
then asked More if Brunan had the enemies who would be likely to murder him
for a grudge. More reflected for a moment and then mentioned the name of
a the same man as Missus Brunan, the discharge chef Werner. I asked
More to describe Warner, and his description tallied exactly with that of Missus Brunan.
I asked More if he thought the footprints in the rear of the house
might be those of Warner. He said it looked that way to him,
adding that Warner had been overheard on more than one occasion to say that he
would get even with John Brunan for discharging him. Furthermore, he stated that
Warner was the type of guy who would seek vengeance, and that on occasion,
Werner, following an argument with Brunnan, chased the latter from the lunch
car at the point of a gun. I told Moore and Missus Brunan that
I would bend every effort to catch up with Warner at the earliest possible moment,
and I asked him to assist me in any way possible to find out
the whereabouts of this fired chef. Missus Brunan was then emotionally overcome, and
she offered me a diamonds if I apprehended the slayer. From Missus Brunan and
her brother, I learned that several employees of the Mighty Doors Shows were living
in the cities of Perth, Amboy, Pattison, and Jersey City, New
Jersey. I at once called the police departments of those cities from the Brunean
home and asked that all employees of the Brunnan Show be questioned immediately and made
the given account of their actions at the time of the murder. I always
followed the plan at checking up on anyone who could possibly have even the slightest
connection with a crime, and then I go to the process of elimination.
In this way, I lay a groundwork that cannot be shaken, because all
possible angles are covered, and the process of closing in on the guilty party
is not so hard as it may seem. So when I drove home in
the early hours, I congratulated myself. Not such a bad night. I
knew that I was on the killer's trail. In fact, I was positive,
and you'll find out why later. The next day, newspaper headlines said
a manhunt was on for dutchy Werner. Bright and early in the morning,
refreshed by three hours sleep, I resumed my investigation of the grounds surrounding the
Brunan home. My man who'd kept god all night, had prevented anyone from
from loitering around the places. I wanted to keep the footprints and any other
clues intact. With Chief of Police Vocal, I went once again to the
spot where the killer had fired through the window. Then we carefully followed the
footprints to the lane where the murderer escaped by an automobile. And this is
where Chief Vocal picked up what proved later to be the most important clue in
the solution of the mystery. Look here, mister Parker, he shouted.
Chief Vocal had run across part of a grip of the slayer's shotgun. It
had been dropped during the flight. On the grip was a number which corresponded
to the number on the missing barrel and stock. I knew that if we
could only locate the gun itself, we'd be able to identify it immediately owing
to the piece being broken off the grip. But more on that later too.
About the remaining part of the gun, I mean, at this point
I called my assistants, Clifford Kane and Herman Baiting, and I had them
witnessed the finding of the grip, etc. Etc. I always make a
point to have another people witness things as I go along. In a murder
case. It's a good idea, no scratch that. It's a great idea
for a detective to have as many people back up his story as possible.
One man should never monopolize the witness stand. It was then that I questioned
those living in the vicinity of the Brunan home. Nobody'd hurt a shot fired,
But some neighbors had seen a man about Werner's size or run across the
fields from the Brunan Home, jump into a fourth coop that had been parked
in the lane, and speed off with the lights out, in the direction
of Camden. Yet the people who saw this told me they didn't attach any
particular significance to it at the time. What the actual fuck the man they
saw running across the fields carrying something which they thought looked like an umbrella instead
of a shotgun. I guess that's their excuse. You know, it's strange
how people arrive at surface conclusions and then build up false theories. Accordingly,
this is a failing of human nature, which, and this may shock you,
I have observed on countless occasions. The trouble with some people is,
of course, that they don't stop to think when a man dashes across the
fields and then speeds away in an automobile with the lights out. Some people
don't stop to think that maybe yet, just maybe that might mean that something
unusual is in progress. Well, anyway, and a short time, I
located Duchy Werner in Berwin, Pennsylvania, and I went there to question him.
Duchy eyed me up and down suspiciously when I told him who I was,
and he asked me in broken English what he could do for me.
I gave it to him straight that I was investigating the murder of John Brunan
and thought perhaps he could shed some light on it. Dutchy immediately denied he
knew anything at all, and then I told him that Harry Moore had implicated
him. When cornered, a guilty man will usually shift the responsibility again and
again. I have found this to be one of the most positive evidences of
guilt. Duchy, on the other hand, did nothing of the kind.
He confined himself to a very strong denial that he had anything to do with
Brunan's death, and when I checked up on Duchy's story as to his whereabouts
at the time of the crime, I was soon convinced that he was not
the man. Duchy was not the guy I wanted. Back in Burlington County,
I began casting about for another man, a Werner's type, in spite
of the fact that Moore could not be convinced that Duchy was not the individual
who did the killing. By this time we were going after the case from
several angles. For one thing, we hunted high and low for someone who
saw the deathmobile with the lights off as it sped away from the murder.
Finally, a man named Arthur Fletcher, Philadelphian, came to us, and
he said that he was positive that he'd seen the Ford Coop of the slayer
as it made its way into the direction of Camden. Fletcher was driving past
the Brunan residence on his way home around seven thirty on the night of the
crime when he saw the Ford Coop turn out of a lane and had in
a southerly direction with its lights out. Fletcher thought this was suspicious and endeavored
to follow the car. He didn't succeed in keeping pace with it, but
he did get a license number by the aid of the headlights on his own
machine. He wrote the number down on a piece of paper, but his
fortune, or in this case, misfortune, would have it. Fletcher's wife
mislaid the paper the next day, little realizing she was destroying the few numerals
which, in their proper sequence could probably have saved untold time labor and expense
in the solution of this case. As for Fletcher, for the life of
him, he couldn't remember the license number, just another one of the many
tough breaks to expect the detective's profession. So now I had a whole lot
of people working on the case. The probable route of the death car from
the Brunan home toward Camden was carefully combed, and within a week Chief of
Police Morris Beck of Palmyra, New Jersey, located a shotgun barrel in pensackn
Creek on the road between Burlington and Camden. The shotgun barrel was in the
mud on the edge of the creek, not far from the main highway.
It had apparently been tossed in there at high tide, but at low tide
it was visible. Checking up, we found that the number on the barrel
corresponded to the number on the portion of the grip found on the grounds surrounding
the Brunin home. And if you want to find out what happens next for
Detective Ellis Parker in the case of the disappearing then please do join me next
Thursday, May second, for part two. But before I let you go,
don't go, because we've got some stuff to talk about. That's right,
It's time for three key takeaways and a moral. Is there, in
fact, any generally applicable wisdom that can be gleaned from the story? So
far? Will you tell me? Here we go? Here are the three
key takeaways. Number one Echoes of the past. Personal histories often cloud the
present, steering the course of events in unexpected ways. For example, George
Werner, who was previously fired by Brunnan, became a prime suspect based on
past grievances rather than current evidence, and Parker, to his credit, was
able to dismiss Werner pretty quickly. Sometimes we're too quick to judge people by
bad stuff that might have happened to them before, rather than what they're doing
now. I'd say that's generally true. Takeaway number two hidden motives. The
smallest d details can hold the key to unraveling complex mysteries, suggesting deeper unseen
forces at play. Hmm, Well, only example the removal of the peerage
from the kitchen to the cellar. Although it's hard to fathom exactly what that
has to do with the murder, it does hint at manipulation of the crime
scene in a way that suggests the crime may have been committed by someone familiar
with their surroundings. Number three, the fragility of human bonds. Now,
family and business entanglements reveal the delicate balance of trust and suspicion that often defines
unfortunately fortunately who knows, but often defines human relationships. Example, the Brunans
had a history of serious quarrels and previous altercations, underscoring the volatile nature of
their relationship, something which may very well influence the investigation's direction going forward.
But if you want to find out, you'll have to come back on Thursday
May second for part two, and now on too. The moral of the
story so far, and here it is, since after all, our victim
did own a circus. The moral of the story so far is even in
a circus ring where illusions entertain, the greatest illusions often occur unseen behind the
scenes, and what you see is only misdirection. Sometimes what's not there is
even more important then what is again. Please join me next week for part
two of Kind of Murdery's the Disappearing Parrot. Until then, thank you so
much for being here. I'm Zevan Odleberg, and this has been kind of
Murdery. If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell your
friends. You can find us on social media at kinder Murdery or email at
Kindomurdery at gmail dot com
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