Death of Starr Faithfull

Starr Faithfull was born Marian Starr Wyman (nicknamed "Bamby") in Evanston, Illinois, on January 27, 1906, the first daughter of Frank Wyman II, an investment banker, and his wife Helen MacGregor Pierce of Andover, Massachusetts. In 1907, the family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, where a second daughter, Elizabeth Tucker "Sylvia" Wyman, was born in 1911. Starr's mother Helen came from a wealthy, socially established family, but her father Frank lost his fortune before she was married, leaving her relatively poor. Her cousin Martha had married Andrew James Peters, a career politician who served as member of both the Massachusetts House and Senate; a U.S. congressman; an assistant secretary of the Treasury under U.S. President Woodrow Wilson; and mayor of Boston from 1918 to 1922. As mayor, Peters was known for his failure to avert the 1919 Boston Police Strike, which helped raise the national profile of Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge later was elected as vice president and president of the United States. Peters was also a friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was governor of New York at the time of Starr's death and who also later became president. Helen and her daughters frequently visited her wealthy Massachusetts relatives, including Peters and his wife Martha. The Peters family were among the relatives who helped support the Wymans by giving Helen monetary gifts and paying for her daughters' private school educations. Starr attended private school in Brookline, Massachusetts, until 1921, when she enrolled at the Rogers Hall School in Lowell. He also had a history of bringing lawsuits for money. The Faithfulls initially settled in West Orange, New Jersey, but lost their heavily mortgaged house to foreclosure and moved to an apartment at 12 St. Luke's Place in New York City. This was their residence at the time of Starr's death in 1931. Jimmy Walker, then the mayor of New York City (from 1926 to 1932), lived a few houses away at 6 St. Luke's Place. == Alleged abuse by Peters ==

During Faithfull's teenage years, she began to show signs of emotional disturbance. She eventually received psychiatric treatment, including a short voluntary stay in the Channing Sanitarium, a mental hospital in Wellesley, Massachusetts. In June 1926, Faithfull divulged to her mother that Peters had been sexually abusing her for years, beginning when she was aged 11. Faithfull alleged that Peters read her sex instructions written by Havelock Ellis and drugged her with ether before abusing her.—in return for keeping the abuse secret. Although the settlement document stated this was a one-time payment, It was later discovered that the Faithfulls had contacted Peters and others close to him just before Starr's disappearance and sent him a letter while she was missing, asking for more money. According to author Jonathan Goodman, the police evidence file indicated that by 1931, gangsters unrelated to the Faithfulls had also learned about the alleged abuse, using this knowledge to extort money from Peters shortly before Faithfull's death. Russel Crouse, who wrote an early true crime account of the case, stated that the investigators "did come upon some evidence that someone other than the Faithfull family had heard the story and had attempted to make use of it in Boston." == Lifestyle ==

Investigators learned after Faithfull's death that her mother and stepfather, acting on doctors' advice, had paid artist Edwin Megargee to be her "sex tutor" and teach her how to have normal sexual relations after her traumatic experiences with Peters. Money received from Peters was also used to send her away on cruises to the Mediterranean, the West Indies and five or six times to the United Kingdom, where she stayed for extended periods in London. When not going on cruises, Faithfull regularly attended the "bon voyage" parties held on ocean liners in port before their departures from New York, often socializing with the ships' officers. Faithfull regularly visited nightclubs and speakeasies, drank and used drugs, once nearly overdosing on sleeping pills in London. In March 1931, she was briefly committed to Bellevue Hospital after being found drunk, naked and beaten in a New York hotel room; she had checked into the hotel as "Joseph Collins and wife," with a man she had apparently just met. On May 29, 1931, a few days before her death, Faithfull attended a party on the Cunard liner RMS Franconia to see the ship's doctor, Dr. George Jameson-Carr. She had been infatuated with Carr for some time and considered him the love of her life, although he did not return her affections. Newspapers and Faithfull's friends later reported that she had attempted to stow away in order to be with Carr and return to London. However, in a letter to Carr, she wrote that she did not intend to stow away and had simply become too drunk to disembark. This explanation may have been intended to protect Carr from getting into trouble with his employer, Cunard, over the incident. == Death ==

In the days leading up to her disappearance and death, Faithfull kept a busy social schedule. She was seen by numerous witnesses, including her friends and family as well as taxi drivers and other strangers. Faithfull's family last saw her on the morning of Friday, June 5, 1931, leaving the house in the same dress she was wearing when found. Investigators discovered that after she left the house that day, she made multiple trips to ocean liners docked in Manhattan, where she visited ship's officers. After spending the evening with one of them, she got into a taxi late on Friday night and seemingly vanished. She was found dead on a Long Island beach the following Monday morning, on June 8. Events before discovery of body Thursday, June 4, 1931 After Faithfull's death, a taxi driver and other witnesses reported that on the afternoon of Thursday, June 4, an intoxicated woman whom they later recognized as Faithfull was helped into a cab in front of the Chanin Building on 42nd Street, Manhattan. The taxi driver testified that she stopped to buy additional liquor during her ride and that he drove her to Flushing, Queens, in search of a certain house, but she could not locate it. Faithfull left his cab at a drugstore located at 33rd Avenue and 163rd Street. On the evening of June 4, Faithfull told her mother and sister that she had attended a party given by publisher Bennett Cerf for actress Miriam Hopkins (whom she confused with actress Peggy Hopkins Joyce) in Cerf's office at 20 E. 57th Street in Manhattan. According to her mother, she mentioned seeing two friends of hers, actors named "Bruce Winston" and "Jack Greenaway", at the party, and said she would be meeting up with them the following night as well. Another friend, Dr. Charles Young Roberts, later said that Faithfull had spent the evening of June 4 with him at The Roosevelt Hotel, visiting a speakeasy and going for a taxi ride. Friday, June 5, 1931 Faithfull's family reported seeing her for the last time leaving their apartment on St. Luke's Place at 9:30am on the morning of Friday, June 5, wearing an expensive silk dress, hat, gloves, shoes and stockings, and carrying a purse and coat. She had $3 and was planning to have her hair waved. According to her family, Faithfull never returned home. A newsstand vendor located near the Ninth Street subway station in Greenwich Village, of whom Faithfull was a regular customer, said that he sold her a newspaper at 11:30 am. A beauty shop employee in Grand Central Terminal said that a "Miss Faithfull" had visited the shop on June 5 between 2:30 and 3:00pm, and spoken to her about an appointment. A female acquaintance of Faithfull also reported seeing her at the terminal around the same time. Later, she was seen on board the Cunard liner RMS Mauretania, but was also seen leaving the ship before its 5:00pm departure for the Bahamas. Carr and Roberts later said that, after visiting Mauretania, Faithfull had visited another Cunard liner in port, the RMS Carmania, to which Roberts was then assigned. He confirmed that on June 5 he entertained Faithfull aboard Carmania from about 5:30pm until after 10:00pm, including having a light meal at 8:30pm. She had said she wanted to travel to Calcutta and Paris, where she said she had a woman friend who had willed her some money. Roberts said that shortly after 10:00pm, he gave Faithfull a dollar for cab fare and put her into a taxi near Pier 56, supposedly to drive her to another ocean liner, the Île de France, on which she planned to attend a party. Saturday, June 6 and Sunday, June 7, 1931 Police informants later told investigators that on Saturday, June 6, a woman fitting Faithfull's description had been seen with a male companion at Tappe's Hotel in Island Park, New York, near Long Beach. She may have had an argument with her companion or have left with a group of other men. The hotel was a favorite rendezvous for New York mobsters and bootleggers, including Bill Dwyer, Vannie Higgins and Dutch Schultz. After Faithfull's family had failed to locate her by the evening of Saturday, June 6, her stepfather reported her missing to the Missing Persons Bureau of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Her parents also sent a letter to Peters on June 7 informing him that their daughter was missing, again seeking money. Discovery of body on Monday, June 8, 1931 On the morning of Monday, June 8, around 6:30 am, Faithfull's dead body was found by a beachcomber at Long Beach, on the beach near Minnesota Avenue. Faithfull's lungs contained a large quantity of sand, which was later interpreted as indicating that she drowned in shallow water near shore, rather than further out to sea. The autopsy also revealed that Faithfull had eaten a large meal of meat, potatoes, mushrooms and fruit three to four hours before her death but had not drunk alcohol for 36 hours before her death. Her liver contained a high level of a drug initially identified as the barbiturate Veronal a sedative that she frequently purchased and used. Before her death, Faithfull had taken a dose large enough to cause stupor or semi-stupor, but not large enough to kill her. A toxicologist's letter and other evidence later suggested that she might have taken a similar but stronger drug such as Luminal or Allonal, which would have increased her stupor. The medical report initially stated that Faithfull had been raped; a second report ruled out rape, but stated she had sexual intercourse shortly before her death. == Investigation ==

Faithfull's death was initially investigated as a homicide. With new evidence, investigators came to believe that she died by suicide or suffered a fatal accident, caused by her jumping or falling overboard from a ship. The Faithfulls insisted her death was a homicide and accused Peters of having her murdered; they revealed their allegations to the media. In so doing, the Faithfulls came under suspicion themselves for not cooperating fully with police and for having a monetary motive to accuse Peters, whose money they had been living on for years. The case was finally closed with no conclusion being reached as to whether Faithfull's death was a homicide, suicide, or accident. Several true crime writers have written books offering their own alternative theories about her death. Homicide investigation The investigation into Faithfull's death was led by Nassau County Police Inspector Harold King, Nassau County District Attorney Elvin Edwards, and Assistant DA Martin Littleton Jr. After identifying his stepdaughter's body, Stanley told King and Littleton that he believed Peters had ordered her murder in order to prevent her from revealing her past sexual abuse. He also told the press that he believed his stepdaughter had been murdered, but initially did not give them Peters' name. Stanley eventually told them Faithfull had been "corrupted" as a child by an unnamed older, wealthy male friend of the family who had later paid a settlement. London artist Rudolph Haybrook, a close friend of Faithfull, also was quoted in the press as saying she was murdered to prevent her from testifying in an upcoming $25,000 lawsuit. At his direction, investigators began to examine the death as a homicide, with Edwards traveling to Boston and announcing that he expected to indict two unnamed men in her death, one of whom he said "played an important role in New York political circles." At that time, Peters was helping to organize the first presidential campaign for his friend, Governor Roosevelt of New York. Faithfull's body was due to be cremated on June 11, but Edwards dramatically ordered the cremation stopped at the last minute so he could convene a grand jury to look into her death. some of its material was featured in newspapers. The man named "Brucie", mentioned by taxi driver Edelman, was at first thought to be the actor "Bruce Winston", whom Faithfull had said she met at Cerf's party. Attempts to locate the "Bruce Winston" and "Jack Greenaway" supposedly mentioned by Faithfull proved fruitless. An elderly British actor named Bruce Winston was found, but he had not been in the U.S. since February and had spent the past several weeks appearing in a play in London. Although Edwards and Littleton continued to investigate the death as a possible homicide until December 1931, including questioning Peters, they were unable to gather sufficient evidence to obtain indictments or otherwise prove the homicide theory. Suicide and accident investigation While investigators were pursuing the homicide theory, Carr, having arrived in London on Franconia, received three letters that Faithfull had written to him dated May 30, June 2, and June 4, 1931. He personally hand-carried the letters back to the U.S. and provided them to the investigators around June 23, also being interviewed by police at that time. The second letter apologized for the May 29 incident aboard Franconia in New York. (An earlier Associated Press story that ran before Carr delivered the letters stated that one letter contained the statement, "When you receive this I will be dead." Following the disclosure of the letters, many people, including Inspector King (who had taken the position early in the investigation that the death was likely suicide or an accident) thought that Faithfull had died by suicide. The Times reported that the letters "seemed to remove all doubt that the girl...ended her own life." Edwards and Littleton also still believed that Faithfull had been murdered, and continued their investigation for several more months. Edwards thought that she would not have been capable of suicide while under the influence of so much Veronal. Later crime analysts have disputed the suicide conclusion. American true crime author Jay Robert Nash wrote in his book ''Open Files: A Narrative Encyclopedia of the World's Greatest Unsolved Crimes (1983) that there was no evidence of Faithfull ever having been aboard Île de France'', and little evidence that she had died by suicide, compared to more evidence that her death had been homicide. The Faithfulls' reaction to the investigation During the course of the investigation, Edwards and Littleton became suspicious of the Faithfull family and thought they were withholding information, being less than cooperative, and may even have been involved in the murder. In July, he alleged "shameful official negligence" on the part of the Nassau County investigators and further alleged that Edwards had been intimidated by persons "too big and influential for him to tackle". In late July and early August, the grand jury probe was reopened to consider evidence provided by Stanley that the suicide letters provided by Carr were forgeries not written by his stepdaughter. The Daily News, which had been conducting its own investigation, confirmed that the Faithfulls were struggling financially and that Stanley had traveled to Boston shortly before Faithfull's disappearance to seek additional payoffs from Peters. Stanley responded by suing the publisher of the Daily News, the reporter who wrote the stories, and several other papers for libel, but his claims were ultimately dismissed. Nash and reporter Morris Markey, who covered the case in 1931 for The New Yorker, both theorized that based on the evidence and Faithfull's past behavior, including the hotel incident that resulted in her being taken to Bellevue Hospital, she had likely been killed on the beach by an unknown man after a sexual encounter had gone wrong. According to this theory, Faithfull went to the beach with a man she had picked up, ostensibly for sex. Once there, she removed most of her clothing, but then teased or refused sex until the man became enraged, beat her, and drowned her in the shallow water and sand near the shoreline, possibly after sexually assaulting her. Goodman acknowledged that this theory is supported by some facts. == Aftermath ==

Peters was never prosecuted for any crime in connection with Faithfull's death. Although his personal reputation was harmed by the scandal, he still maintained some political status. and was named to the Massachusetts Advisory Committee of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation in 1933. Newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen reported Stanley's death in 1949. A 1946 Associated Press story on the death of former-DA Edwards discussed the Faithfull case as one of two high-profile unsolved cases handled by him. The police file survived and was reviewed by Goodman in writing his 1990 book about the case. Some sources have written that police lost or destroyed the diary after the case was closed. A 2002 article in The Baltimore Sun reported that the diary may have eventually been given to Peters, who locked it in a box hidden in the library paneling of his Boston home, where it was later found by the home's new owners. However, its whereabouts were unknown as of 2002. == In popular culture ==

Faithfull's life and death inspired several fictional novels. She has also been discussed in a number of non-fiction books and anthologies, as well as some other works. Fiction Several novels have been based on Faithfull's story. The first and best known is John O'Hara's second novel BUtterfield 8 (Harcourt, Brace, 1935). Contemporary readers recognized that the book was based on the Faithfull case. In the novel, Gloria is molested as a child by a prominent older man, becomes a heavy-drinking call girl, and dies by being swept under the paddlewheel of a boat. However, Sandra Scoppettone, who wrote a later novel about Faithfull, quoted the Faithfulls' landlady as saying that O'Hara visited her to research his novel, "asked a lot of questions" and "wrote a book, but he got it all wrong." BUtterfield 8 sold well when first published, and was later adapted into a 1960 film starring Elizabeth Taylor, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. • Some Unknown Person by Sandra Scoppettone (Putnam, 1977) is a novel based on the Faithfull story in which she commits suicide with the involvement of a fictional character, Orlando Antolini, whose life story is told in flashbacks alongside Faithfull's. Scoppettone said that she used her own Italian-American family background to create the Antolini family. Florence King wrote in National Review that "[the novel's] confrontational scene between the pedophilic Mayor Peters and Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge at the height of the [Boston] police strike makes a persuasive argument that Starr Faithfull put Coolidge in the White House." • The Memory Book of Starr Faithfull: A Novel by Gloria Vanderbilt (Knopf, 1994) is a novel in diary form based on Faithfull's life and her real "Mem Book" diary. It recounts her story from age 11 through the time of her death, focusing on her sexual abuse by Peters and her relationships with men. Although it contains some factual material, most of the book is Vanderbilt's fictional imagined concept of the contents of the real diary. • The Contract by William Palmer (Jonathan Cape, 1995) is a novel about Starr Faithfull's death and the subsequent revelations about her life, family and past, narrated by the fictionalized Starr Faithfull and her mother, Helen. Non-fiction A non-fiction essay, "The Mysterious Death of Starr Faithfull", was written by Morris Markey, who covered the story and interviewed the Faithfull family in 1931 as the original "reporter at large" for The New Yorker magazine. The essay was included in the collection The Aspirin Age (ed. Isabel Leighton, Simon and Schuster, 1949), a selection of pieces about the essential events of American life in the years between World War I and World War II. The second, The Passing of Starr Faithfull by Jonathan Goodman (Piatkus, 1990), • Woman in the Case by Charles Franklin (Corgi, 1964) • ''Open Files: A Narrative Encyclopedia of the World's Greatest Unsolved Crimes'' by Jay Robert Nash (Rowman & Littlefield, 1983) == References ==