THE CAT LADY OF BUSHWICK (1915)
******************************************************************************************************************************** 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? ******************************************************************************************************************************** There is an old wives’ tale which tells us that cats steal the breath of humans. They lie in wait until the human is deeply asleep before climbing upon the victim’s chest, leaning down closely to the mouth, and then slowly sucking the air out from the lungs of their victim. When the next morning, a dead body is discovered, no visible suspects are to be found. On a morning in January of 1915, at 1355 Dekalb Avenue, a night watchman by the name of William Heuermann, was returning home after a night’s work. Upon opening his bedroom door, and discovering his dead wife – he found plenty of suspects – 47 to be exact. THE CAT LADY OF DEKALB Angelina Heuermann was crazy about cats. Some would say that she was just plain crazy. She was always “collecting them off the streets,” her fondness for the felines “frequently causing them to be dispossessed from houses where the presence of weird animals was undesirable.” The neighbors knew about her quirk, but they chalked it up back then to an oddity rather than a sickness. The number of cats that lived in and about the house, though, had grown suspiciously large of late, causing the neighbors to gossip amongst themselves regarding what […]
