The Mysterious Death of Kathryn Lawes the Angel of Sing Sing . Miguel Hernandez On the morning October 30 1937 at about 10:00 am an employee of the Bear Mountain Hudson River Bridge Company noticed an unoccupied car on the east bank approach to this structure. Eight hours later he saw that it was still there and called the New York State Police Barracks to have the plates checked. As it turned out, the car was registered to Sing Sing Prison and its head, Lewis E. Lawes, was called. Around 7:00 pm, Warden Lawes arrived at the scene in the company of his son-in law, Jack Stratton Duvarjo, and Dr. Amos Q. Squire, the Westchester County Medical examiner and former Chief Physician at Sing Sing State prison. The New York Times reported that they found Mrs. Lawes on the rockbound shore about 100 feet below the span. She had sustained several injuries and was semi-conscious and unable to tell her husband and his companions what exactly happened to her. She was then transported by ambulance to Ossining Hospital where she died later that evening. The next morning at daylight Dr. Squire returned to the site of the tragedy to see if he could find some possible answers to the circumstances leading to her death. He later said to reporters that she had sustained a broken leg and unable to summon help had lain on this spot all day and that shock and exposure led to her death. Dr. Squire also said that her injuries did not indicate that she had fallen from the bridge. He posited that she had fallen while hiking on a path leading to the river. This contradicted an earlier report by a member of Troop K based in the Hawthorne Barracks who theorized that she had jumped or fallen from the bridge. Mrs. Lawes was much beloved by the inmates because of her dedication to their welfare and some two hundred of them were allowed to leave the prison and marched up to the Warden’s Residence on Spring Street where her body lay in state. They were accompanied only by the Principal Keeper, John Sheehy and the inmates all returned to their cells without incident. On Tuesday, November 2, a funeral mass was held at Ossining’s St Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church officiated by Sing Sing’s Catholic chaplain and eight guards served as pall bearers. She was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Following interment Warden Lawes returned to his duties at Sing Sing. However shortly after Kathryn was buried rumors began to circulate amongst the Sing Sing inmates. Some suggested hat she had committed suicide and others that she had been murdered. The suicide theory soon evaporated as many of the inmate that knew her though their jobs as household help at the Warden’s Residence were adamant that she had an upbeat personality and in general not the kind of person who would take her own life. What’s more, she was a fairly heavy woman and the feeling was that as such, she would not have been easily able to climb over the bridge railing. The most widely accepted rumor in the prison was that she was a murder victim but no one could image who would kill or otherwise harm this universally-beloved woman and it would certainly not by anyone close to her. This rumor of foul play seemed to gained momentum when two of the inmates who worked as servants at the Warden’s residence reported that when Warden Lawes returned from Ossining Hospital after Kathryn’s death he got very drunk and mumbled something about a scar he had seen on his dead wife’s leg that he had never seen before. It was in the shape of a question mark. This rumor spread like wildfire through the prison and beyond but when prison employees and inmates attempted to get the warden to speak about what he saw, he fell silent. However the rumors persisted and a gangster and former inmate at Sing Sing named “Frenchy” de Mange (AKA George Fox) claimed that four months before Mrs. Lawes died that he had attended the Joe Louis – Jimmy Braddock fight at Madison Square Garden with Warden Lawes and another ex-con named Owen “Owney” Madden. (Warden Lawes was known for his love of boxing and propensity to go night clubbing with former inmates and other mobsters) Madden and de Mange were partners of the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem and the former later claimed that on that night, the Warden was approached by a man who slipped the Warden a note demanding that Lawes arrange for the escape of a death house inmate, a certain Major Green and that failure to do so would result in the death of a member of the Warden’s family. Frenchy also said that the Warden showed the note to him and Madden, and that the note had a crudely drawn question mark on the upper left-hand corner. Lawes was used to death threats and threw the note away giving it no further thought. But in preparation for the execution on the night of august 19, 1937, Green’s left trouser leg was slit to allow for the electrode to be attached and there on the exposed leg was a scar in the shape of a question mark. Again Warden Lawes gave no thought to the matter and perhaps thought it was a simple coincidence. According to Frenchy, that neglect was to haunt the Warden for the rest of his life for when the cut on his wife’s leg was discovered it had a similar question mark cut on it. Frenchy also said to friends that an Ossining bartender told him that the embalmer who prepared Mrs. Lawes body for burial told him that she must have been murdered as the wounds were so severe that they could not have been the result of a fall, but of a beating. The nameless embalmer said that in his opinion she had been savagely beaten and then her body tossed over the bridge railing to make it appear as an accident or as a suicide. He added that an unconscious person with an attendant limp body would have survived the fall and this explains the dazed but alive condition she was found in at the base of the bridge. Regardless, Dr. Squire’s accidental death theory was generally accepted and no further inquiries were made into her death. In June of 1939 Warden Lawes married a theatrical agent named Elise Chisholm; in 1941 he retired and then in 1947, he died and was buried alongside his first wife, Kathryn at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Elise died in 1972 and she too lies in Sleepy Hollow. Dr. Squire died in 1949. Owney Madden died in 1965. Frenchy de Mange died in 1939 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and his version of Mrs Lawes death was put down as just a jail house rumor that died with him. Photos: 1. Warden and Mrs. Lawes. 2. Frenchy deMange. 3. Owney Madden. 4. The Cotton Club.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:38:23 +0000
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