Hidden History of Boston by Vargo Dina;

Hidden History of Boston by Vargo Dina;

Author:Vargo, Dina;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2018-03-06T16:00:00+00:00


Chapter 10

MURDER AT THE Y

The Murder of Avis Linnell, 1911

Questions started to arise almost immediately after the events of October 14, 1911. The shock of Avis being found dead would never subside, but as her family, friends and, ultimately, law enforcement processed Avis’s death, something wasn’t quite right. Avis Linnell was as beautiful as she was talented. She was well liked. She had a loving family. What’s more, she had plans for her life. Originally from Hyannis, Cape Cod, she was living at the YWCA on Warrenton Street while studying singing at the New England Conservatory of Music. She’d always had a beautiful singing voice, and her fiancé had convinced her to pursue her love of music. She was thrilled to be living in Boston, in love with her studies and even more in love with her handsome and charming betrothed, the Reverend Clarence Richeson. Suicide just didn’t make sense.

The circumstances surrounding her apparent suicide didn’t add up, either. Chief Inspector Joseph Dugan had suspicions immediately. Inspector Dugan had been around the block, and in his experience, women of Avis’s class and status did not commit suicide with an intention to be found and identified quickly. A woman like Avis would have found herself a quiet, secluded place to do the deed. A woman like Avis wouldn’t want to wind up as the subject of newspaper headlines; she wouldn’t want to bring any attention to her family or to the state that brought her to her ultimate decision, because it would be too shameful. Seeking death in her room, in a building in which everyone knew her, in a town as big as Boston was so atypical that Dugan couldn’t shake his doubts.

She also had a future to look forward to with her fiancé. But even that didn’t quite square. After her housemates found out about the tragedy, they were able to reach him by telephone. His reaction to the news was odd—he was cool, unresponsive. He wouldn’t address the media, afterward citing illness, not grief. He holed up at a home in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Brookline—a home owned by Moses Grant Edmands, the father of his other fiancée.

There was no question in the mind of Avis’s brother-in-law that the Reverend Richeson should have come directly to the YWCA as soon as he heard the news. As McLean told the Boston Globe, “Why, he was supposed to be the best friend she had in the city.…I would have acted more kindly toward a sick dog.”

Other questions remained: if she didn’t intend to kill herself, why take a lethal dose of cyanide? Perhaps she wasn’t aware that she was taking poison. And if she wasn’t aware of the danger, who’d given it to her and why? What was the motive? Chief Inspector Dugan was sure of one thing: if they ever found someone who’d given Avis Linnell an envelope of cyanide, that person would most certainly be found guilty of murder.

Piecing this puzzle together started in the usual place, with Avis’s fiancé, the Reverend Richeson.



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