A STUDY IN DISMEMBERMENT (1914)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** When the pieces of a dismembered body started showing up in different locations in Brooklyn around Christmas of 1914, it didn’t take long before Brooklyn Detectives traced those body parts to a block on Macon Street in the Stuyvesant section of town. “The two pieces of torso which were found on Friday by boy skaters embedded in ice in a pond between Coney Island and Ulmer’s Park were identified yesterday afternoon as parts of the body of Rufus Dunham, 61 years old, of 752 Macon Street, Brooklyn.” So began the article that was to create a great sensation on Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Macon Street between Ralph and Howard avenues. DREDGING UP THE PAST When we uncovered this story a few years back, we had been researching a house on this block of Macon Street (near to Howard Avenue) for our first House History Book. We had thought it would be interesting to see who else had lived on the block over the past 125 years. During our historical research, up popped this gruesome and sensational story which must have created quite a stir on the block at the time. SEARCHING FOR THE KILLER The murder case, described as “one of the most disturbing that police of the city have had to cope with […]
