Hello friends!
Steve Stockton here with you...
Welcome to out latest video!
In this episode, we take a look at the 1902 Unsolved Murder of Nora Fuller.
Join us!
While we talk all the time on this channel about mainly unsolved disappearances, the
fact of the matter is that nowadays crimes get solved relatively quickly- whether for
better or for worse.
Since the turn of the 20th century scientific and technological advancements have made it
not only easier for authorities to solve more cases more quickly but some might say, aside
from the exceptions that are taking place right under their noses in the woods which
is the main theme of this channel, it’s almost impossible to get away with murder
these days.
What about back then though?
At the turn of the 20th century?
Before DNA, the internet, YouTube and social media, armchair detectives, instant access
to information and everything else our society has now that would seem impossible to those
who lived way back when.
We want to take you back in time in this new series.
We want to look at missing persons cases and unsolved disappearances throughout history,
starting, for now, with the first decade of the 1900’s.
Let us know how you like this series and perhaps we can go back even further and see not only
how things were done, but to look at the cases that more than a hundred years later still
have no rhyme or reason or at the very least, still haven’t been officially solved.
Come and take a walk with us folks, down a creepy and macabre memory lane of sorts and
look into two of history’s long unsolved and perhaps, in some cases, long forgotten
cases of people who disappeared without a trace and murderers never brought to justice.
1. Nora Fuller 15 year old Nora Fuller lived in San Francisco in 1902.
She was your average and typical teenage girl for the time and had her whole life and a
bright future ahead of her.
On January 10th of that same year however, all of that would change when Nora saw an
ad in the local paper advertising for a job.
The ad, which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, stated someone was, “looking
for a young girl to take care of a baby. Good home and good wages.”
Perhaps back in those days that was enough information as the world, even San Francisco,
was much simpler and much more innocent then.
Nora’s mother Alice had recently divorced her second husband and was struggling to support
Nora and her three siblings.
Nora saw this as the perfect opportunity to chip in and help her mother out.
Instead of remaining in school and getting her diploma, she decided to step up and try
to relieve some of the financial burden that was very stressful on her mother.
Nora and Alice discussed the advert and eventually, with some reluctance, Alice relented and allowed
Nora to respond and try and get the job.
She figured the extra money would be nice and it would ease her burden a bit.
Nora’s original dream was working in the theater and she had even signed up with an
agency however no opportunities were presenting themselves and, being the eldest daughter,
she and her mother were falling on hard times and were desperate to make sure the younger
children had everything they needed.
Nora immediately replied to the ad for what was basically a nanny to an infant and waited
patiently and hopefully for a response.
Just a few days later on January 11th, a postcard arrived at the Fuller house explaining that
Nora had been hired for the position.
The postcard read as follows, “Miss Fuller in answer to yours in response to my advt.
kindly call the Popular Restaurant, 55 Geary St. and inquire for Mister John Bennett at
1 o’clock.
If you can’t come at one, come at six. J.B” By the time she received the invitation it
was well past one o’clock but she had plenty of time to make it to the restaurant for 6.
Nora got dressed and put the note in her pocket along with the grocery money her mom had given
her earlier that day.
She was to stop at the store and do the shopping on the way back from her meeting.
Approximately an hour later, Nora’s brother Louis answered the phone at the house and
was told by Nora that she was already at Mister Bennett’s house.
She explained she had been hired on the spot and the man needed her to start immediately
and so she went with him.
She told him to relay the information to their mother and that his address was 1500 Geary
St. Alice, who was there while John was on the phone with Nora, told John to tell her
she must return home right away and start the job at a more reasonable time, like the
following Monday.
(This all took place on a Saturday evening.) Alice was displeased as she was waiting on
the groceries Nora was supposed to have picked up in order to cook dinner for the rest of
the family.
Nora was obviously upset but agreed to do as her mother said and come home, after retrieving
the groceries. The phone call ended and that’s the last her family ever heard from Nora.
Nora never made it home.
For some unknown reason, often speculated she figured she had simply been disobeyed
by her rebellious teenage daughter, Alice didn’t report her daughter missing until
5 days after that last phone call.
It was January 16th when she finally alerted the authorities.
Nora’s mother was adamant that she had been kidnapped but the police didn’t see it that
way and failed to help much, if at all, in the initial investigation.
They briefly spoke to a few of Nora’s closest friends and discovered that one of them had
recently run away from her home and thought it quite obvious Nora had done the same and
would be back anytime then.
Unfortunately, three weeks later on February 8th, they would be proven severely mistaken.
On that particular day, a rent inspector named H.E Dean visited a property at 2211 Sutter
Street for his employer, Umbsen & Co. real estate.
It was a two story building and had been rented two months previously by a man calling himself
C B Hawkins.
Upon his arrival to collect the second month’s rent from the tenant, Dean found what looked
like a vacant apartment.
The first floor was completely empty and upon entering the bedroom on the second floor,
he came across the body of a deceased female.
Her clothes were strewn all about the room and there was no one else in sight.
He ran outside and in his shock stumbled across a police officer who followed him back up
into the bedroom where he had found the body.
The officer’s name was Gill and he was shocked at the sight before him.
It was the decomposing body who would later be identified (some say by her brother Louis
and others say it was Alice who identified her remains) as 15 year old Nora Fuller.
The cause of death was strangulation and her torn clothing seemed to indicate to investigators
that she had also been sexually assaulted.
She had eaten some of an apple and drank some type of alcohol within an hour of her tragic
and untimely death.
Witnesses had come forward stating they had seen Nora eating an apple as she walked to
her meeting on the night of the 16th and therefore it was concluded she had been murdered within
just a few hours of leaving her home that fateful night.
The Sutter St. apartment yielded little to no evidence or clues and though her purse
was found, the postcard asking her to meet her alleged future employer at the Popular
Restaurant and the grocery money Alice had given her was gone.
There was an empty whiskey bottle, some junk mail addressed to C B Hawkins and other than
a bed, just an empty chair in the corner of the room remained.
There was no such thing as DNA and fingerprinting was still in its infancy so there was very
little that could be concluded from the crime scene, even though a cigarette butt, most
likely with the killer’s DNA on it had been left behind.
The investigators quickly concluded that C B Hawkins and Mister Bennett were the same
person and this was backed up when several people described the man with Nora at the
restaurant that night and the description was almost exactly the same as those who had
had contact with Mister Hawkins.
The owner of the Popular restaurant told the police that the man who had given the name
Bennett had been a regular at the restaurant for ten years and was even known to the staff
by his own nickname.
The owner also stated that no woman ever showed up that night and Mister Bennett left alone,
despite him telling his server to be sure when the young lady showed up that she be
seated at his table.
He gave a description of who he knew to be Bennett and also said he noticed him pacing
outside of the restaurant for about a half hour before leaving, seemingly alone on the
night of January 11th.
Upon investigation of the address Nora had given her brother during their last conversation,
where she claimed to have been with Mister Bennett already and at his service working,
they discovered it was a vacant lot.
Making this case even more strange was the coming forward of a friend of Nora’s named
Madge Graham who told investigators that Nora had been having a secret romance with a much
older man who went by the name Bennett.
Madge claimed she had even been Nora’s alibi on numerous occasions when Nora wanted to
go and be with her older lover.
She even went so far as to allege that the ad in the paper was simply a ruse concocted
by the couple in order for them to be able to spend more time together.
A local grocer named Menke seemed to back up Madge’s allegations when he came forward
and told the police that Nora frequently used the phone in his store, despite having one
at home, to call a local hotel.
Nora had a stellar reputation in the community though so most people gave little credence
to what Madge and the grocer were saying about her.
She was known as a “Devoted daughter” and a smart girl.
Not as someone who would run around with a man 25 years her senior and sneak behind her
mother’s back in order to eventually take off for good with a few dollars grocery money.
Plus, that money was desperately needed for the family to eat.
Despite a $5,000 dollar reward being offered and a flood of tips being called in, after
investigating every single one of them further, the police were no closer in having any answers.
Captain John Seymour, the lead investigator on Bora’s case went so far as to bring in
a handwriting analyst and review over 30,000 pieces of handwriting in an attempt to get
the signer of the lease agreement at Sutter St.
Dispute having thought he had a match with four different men who could have filled out
and signed the lease, all four men were quickly ruled out and were found to have had nothing
to do with Nora’s murder.
One of the handwriting samples reviewed in the investigation was that of a man named
Charles B. Hadley.
Charles Hadley was a seemingly random man who had embezzled money from his employer
and then disappeared right around the time that Nora’s body had been discovered.
When the police went to a local hotel to arrest him for the embezzlement, they found only
the woman he had been staying with named Ollie Blasier.
Ollie was interviewed by the police but had no information to give them as he had walked
out on her and never came back, without any warning at all.
The day after she was interviewed she returned to the police station though, this time on
much more serious business.
It turns out Ollie had seen the handwriting samples that were published in the newspaper
and brought with her a sample of Charles Hadley’s own handwriting and swore that they were one
in the same with the killer.
The police studied the samples and actually ended up agreeing that the handwriting was
a definitive match for both CB Hawkins and the Mysterious Mister Bennett.
She gave more information as well which would convince officer Kytka that the men were all
the same man, using numerous aliases around the city and who had murdered Nora Fuller.
She explained he had a love for the tenderloin of a steak and that she had come across some
clothing of his that seemed to have blood on it right after the murder.
She said his entire personality changed around the time the body was discovered.
He had begun to actvery strangely and even anxious, especially when reading about the
murder in the papers.
Although he had a clean shaven face, Ollie explained that Charles had numerous fake mustaches
he liked to wear all of the time, very much like those both Mister Bennett and CB Hawkins
were described as wearing.
Detectives had a picture made up where they put a mustache on Mister Hadley but when shown
to witnesses who knew what the other men looked like, the results, unfortunately, were inconclusive
at best.
The owner of the Popular restaurant was very adamant that the man in the picture, Mister
Hadley, was definitely not the man who had frequented his establishment who the staff
had dubbed Mister Tenderloin.
Captain John Seymour was more than convinced though that all three men were one and the
same and that all three names were aliases.
There was a manhunt undertaken for Charles Hadley, whose real name they found to be Charles
Start as he was wanted for embezzlement in Minneapolis as well.
He was never found. In March of 1902 a pharmacist named Charles Seifert was arrested for embezzlement
and Captain Seymour, after reading into the man’s criminal history, was convinced he
was the one who had murdered Nora.
Charles Seifert had befriended a friend of Nora’s around the time of his arrest whose
name was Emma Searight.
It was nothing more really than a series of uncommon coincidences that led to Mister Seifert
being considered a suspect in Nora’s murder though.
He had been staying at the Winchester Hotel but had left without paying his bill, allegedly
in a hurry, the same week Nora was known to be killed.
He also chose that same period of time to shave off his mustache for the first time
in a very long time.
He was known to prefer the company of young ladies (those we consider today to be minors)
and he had a penchant for fine dining.
Charles Seifert was even a customer at the Popular Restaurant on many occasions.
According to witnesses though this man bore almost no resemblance to the other two men
who were believed to be one and the same. There were also no similarities in the handwriting.
He was ruled out as quickly as he was ruled in as a suspect and the press had a field
day with this information.
They reported that this was basically a pathetic attempt to pin the murder on a random man
in the interest of covering their tracks for grossly mishandling the investigation into
Nora Fuller’s murder from the beginning.
.No other person was ever on record as being a suspect in the murder and tragically Nora
Fuller’s murder remains unsolved to this day.
Well, there you have it folks!
What do you think of this sad case?
Who do you think the murder might have been?
I look forward to your comments, but please keep it friendly and respectful.
Until we meet again, be good to yourselves and each other!
As for me; i'll see you a little further on down the trail.
I'm Steve Stockton and I'll talk to you next time!