“My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886
On Tuesday, January 10, 1871, the journalist shuddered from the briskness of the air. Edward Hamilton “Ham” Freeman peered down the corridor of the jail, a white two-story building with less than a dozen cells in Binghamton, New York (a town about 200 miles northwest of Manhattan). The sheriff escorted him through the darkness with only the feeble light of a kerosene lamp to guide their way. The stone walls smelled stale, like yeast in a wooden bucket that had molded after weeks of neglect, and the building was damp and cold even by the frigid norms of deep winter in Upstate New York. The heels of Ham’s smart leather shoes clicked along the floor. In just a few months he would turn 29 years old.
The guard directed Ham to a cell and slipped a key into the lock on an iron door. It swung open and there sat the journalist’s subject, the infamous killer. Ham had been a small-town newspaper reporter for much of his career, and he was always on the hunt for a prominent story, one that might showcase his writing chops. This meeting would provide him with a unique opportunity.
Condensation dripped down the jail cell’s walls, as the cold outside air blew through the cracks. As Ham offered the prisoner a handshake, his nervous voice echoed down the miserable halls. The criminal offered his own greeting: Edward Howard Rulloff. Despite the cheerless surroundings, Edward’s voice boomed with confidence.
Ham stood just feet from the murderer in the tiny cell. The newspaper editor felt some measure of fear now that he was finally alone with Edward, face to face, locked in a room with this infamous man. Ham squinted at the 51-year-old criminal’s dark hazel eyes, which were bloodshot from reading all night by inadequate light. But Ham also couldn’t help feeling giddy at the opportunity ahead. Despite all that had been written about Edward – his mysterious past, his academic feats, even the murder of which he was now accused – the killer had never told his own story. Now the notorious Edward Rulloff had selected Ham to record his intimate, personal history. It was a career-making opportunity.
It was also terrifying.
Ham had become intensely interested in Edward Rulloff – an enigma of a man described as “a monster imbued by the spirit of the devil” by some – as he’d observed the first few days of Edward’s criminal trial in 1871. At first, of course, his curiosity was merely for the scintillating story at hand. And it was very scintillating. Ham jotted down every detail of the case, each fact about how Edward had murdered a man during a botched robbery. It was a dreadful crime, and just one of many of which Edward was guilty.
Yet as the trial progressed, Ham began to feel some shred of empathy for the defendant. Maybe it was the way the beleaguered man continually leapt from his wooden chair after a particularly damning accusation, only to be reprimanded by his attorneys. There was something indignant, almost plaintive about his presence. Edward seemed utterly sure of himself, even in these dire circumstances. Ham was fascinated.
“I watched intensely every expression and every movement of the prisoner,” Ham would later write for the biography. “I did not, could not, keep my eyes off from him.”
With each day that had passed during the trial, Ham had felt more and more sorrow for the maligned genius who stewed just feet away from him.
“I took a painful, and melancholy interest in the trial, which increased as it progressed,” said Ham. “I listened intently to every word he uttered when he rose oftentimes, despite the efforts of this counsel to keep him still, to speak on his own behalf.”
Ham would shifted uncomfortably on the wooden bench in the courtroom as rounds of applause erupted from hundreds of trial-watchers both inside and outside. Edward Rulloff’s trial was becoming a spectacle, and for days the throng challenged local sheriff’s deputies to keep order. Ham described the audience’s outbursts as “crude” to his friends. Throughout the trial, the author sat directly behind Edward, and the man on trial seemed to take a particular interest in him. However, Ham wasn’t the only observer who was intrigued by the accused murderer.
“A large portion of the audience was composed of ladies, hundreds of whom stood patiently for hours listening with seemingly unwearied interest to the details of evidence, with the outlines of which they had long been familiar,” wrote New York Times reporter Edward Crapsey. Ham, too, observed the women in modest country dresses who crowded the courtroom.
“Crowds attended the trial,” wrote Ham, “a great portion of them being women, many of whom would early in the morning make their appearance before the closed doors of the court room, bringing their dinners that they might not, by their absence, lose their place.”
For generations, women have been the dominant consumers of true crime; in current times most readers, listeners, or viewers of these crime stories are female. Experts say many women hope to learn from the mistakes of victims, to absorb themselves in a world they hope to never enter. In some cases, they change their behavior based on that knowledge—they’re more skeptical of male suitors and more cautious about venturing out alone. This was certainly the case with the audience of mostly proper ladies in Binghamton in 1871.
Edward Rulloff certainly wouldn’t be described as “plain” in looks, but he fell slightly short of “striking” or “devilishly handsome.” Yet there was an element of danger that drew these women to his trial every day. To them, Rulloff was irresistible – a riddle that might never be solved, a threat kept just out of reach. They flocked to the courtroom each day, sitting with legs politely crossed at the ankles as the gruesome details of the trial unfolded.
Hamilton Freeman certainly understood the allure of Edward Rulloff. The author was himself quite handsome, with short, brown hair parted on the right, a long, pointed noise, a brow and a mouth that seemed to always remain in a grimace. Ham was the archetype of a small-town newspaper owner and editor – a hardworking local man who also secretly craved national recognition. His weekly paper, the Democratic Leader, was considered the leading source of local information in Broome County, New York; it covered everything from politics to gossip to crop prices. Ham Freeman was considered a capable, if somewhat unremarkable (and occasionally politically biased), journalist.
“He was a good writer, strongly partisan, perhaps, at times, yet his leaders were always interesting and refreshing,” read a journal in 1900 about Binghamton’s history. “(Hamilton) was (and still is) well informed on all subjects pertaining to Binghamton history, for he came from one of our respected old families.”
Ham’s family was prominent in nearby Lisle, New York, a village just twenty miles from Binghamton. His father was a successful lumber merchant, and after his death, young Hamilton moved to Binghamton for school. With his bright, active mind (and respectable pedigree), Ham quickly earned a reputation as a critical thinker with intellectual capabilities and education far beyond most of the folks in that small village. Ham’s penchant for scholarship and family connections led him into the newspaper business where, at a relatively young age, Hamilton Freeman found himself with a front-row seat to the trial of the century—the case of the killer-savant that had captivated American readers and horrified fundamentalist Christians across Upstate New York.
And now Edward Rulloff wanted to talk. To him.
***
Ham glanced around the cell as Edward settled himself. The room was surprisingly well-appointed with dim oil lamps, stacks of books, and an old wooden desk with paper laying to the side. Atop that desk was a pen leaning inside its inkwell. Edward had a creaky chair pulled close to his desk.
The writer surveyed his interviewee. Edward was well-dressed for a man who had been relegated to this dank jail for five months. His dark brown hair was short; he’d once boasted a long, scraggly beard, but the sheriff now insisted that it stayed trimmed to his cheeks. He was fully clothed, though according to the guards Edward often preferred to sprawl in the nude on the cell’s worn pallet. Edward’s overall countenance was that of a respected college professor, a scholar accustomed to being adored by overzealous students. Was this bookish, slightly eccentric, eminently respectable-looking man really a murderer?
Ham was like a lot of men of his class and background at that point in the nineteenth century. He subscribed to the belief that a killer would look like…a killer. And what was that, exactly? Of course, any keen person would spot one immediately—a man (almost always a man) with a disheveled appearance and wild-eyed, almost rabid features. The evil in his heart and mind couldn’t help but be evident on his person. But Ham noted that Edward Rulloff seemed calm, poised, and sophisticated. He spoke with grace, even eloquence. He showed flashes of intelligence and humor. Edward had a long track record of academic accomplishment (or at least, academic pursuits) that showed him to possess a first-rate mind.
Simply put: Edward Rulloff didn’t look or sound like a killer to Ham Freeman. But the newspaperman needed more data. The journalist considered whether Edward could be innocent, as he had claimed. And if he weren’t innocent, why was he guilty? Was Edward Rulloff insane or born evil? Or was he something else entirely?
Hamilton Freeman would be just the first inquisitor in a long list of men seemingly besotted with the killer’s mind, despite the malevolent character grafted to it. In effect, he was the first “mindhunter” to try to plumb the depths of Edward’s psyche – but he wouldn’t be the last. Ham requested that Edward Rulloff detail his personal history—his family, his boyhood, and his development into a troubled young man. Did something in Edward’s background predestine him to a life of crime and violence?
This interview was Ham’s chance to find out.
It was also Edward’s chance to control the narrative. Sitting before Edward was a journalist pledging to chronicle his life story for thousands of readers. Ham had no interest in interviewing anyone else for the book—just Edward. Edward’s own story would be the definitive account…if the killer could convince Ham that he could be trusted to tell the truth. But Edward Rulloff could never be trusted.
During their first conversation, one of many that took place over six months, Edward revealed something to Ham. He could identify exactly when his life seemed to unravel—his ruin began with an encounter in early 1842 after he stepped off a packet boat and shook the hand of Henry Schutt.
***
America in the 1840s was a country striving to progress. Out west, the Oregon Trail guided settlers along more than two thousand miles of harsh land stretching from Missouri through Idaho. Travelers were inspired by dreams of gold and rich farmlands, but they also hoped to escape economic struggles in the east and deadly diseases in the Midwest.
But even as the country stretched and expanded its borders westward (and even as big cities like New York City and Baltimore exploded in size), the landscape of American was still primarily rural. Farm life was the heart of American culture—in the countryside, families relied on their faith in God, their allegiance to their communities, and their devotion to each other to survive.
Indeed, hospitality (even hospitality extended to itinerant strangers) was a way of life in many of the villages and towns that dotted New England and the Northeast. It was normal and expected to offer a traveler who knocked on your door a night’s rest or a warm meal. These rural families would set a place at their table for these drifters and offer them a warm seat by the hearth. They trusted these itinerant men (and occasionally women) as they warmed themselves by the hearth; much of the time that trust was offered on the basis of nothing more substantial than a simple handshake. Sometimes the townspeople offered the visitors work in the wheat fields, cigar shops in town, or on boats that traveled up and down the canals in Upstate New York. Good, honest men might volunteer to carry the transients on horseback to another village, which might offer better opportunities. All this fellowship might have seemed naïve to someone reared in a big city, but generosity was a trademark of the countryside.
In the quaint towns that peppered the Ithaca area’s landscape, the sunset highlighted their most appealing traits—the silhouette of corn fields lined by spiky pine trees; a coral sunset reflected from the surface of a small pond; hundreds of corn stalks gently swaying during a light breeze. The hamlets were charming, unpretentious; they held a type of innocence and optimism that simply couldn’t survive in metropolises like Manhattan or Philadelphia, residents agreed. Their produce and meats were unspoiled, and their drinking water was pure; crime was low and educational opportunities were on the rise, even among young women. These country towns seemed idyllic, as if the devil had never paid them a visit—not even once.
But the country was changing, especially in quiet Upstate New York. The nearby Erie Canal in had been completed just seventeen years earlier in 1825, a marvel of engineering and a savior to the region’s (and the country’s) economy. The longest canal in the world at more than 350 miles, the waterway connected the pristine Great Lakes to the mighty Hudson River, offering a direct route to the bustle and commerce of New York City. In effect, the Erie Canal unlocked trade between the fertile Midwest and the commercial ports of the Northeastern U.S. Each shallow canal boat could carry as much as 30 tons of produce from farms as far away as Ohio, Michigan, and even Canada into New York City, dramatically lowering the costs (and increasing the speed) of transporting products.
The boats crept along the canal in 1842, moving so slowly that a waddling duck on land scooted along at a quicker pace. A mule trudged down the towpath nearby, lugging the boat behind with a rope. The boatman could peer out, his thoughts lost in the cloudy water as his barge slogged along. The water was yawning, intimidating, even though the captain knew perfectly well it was only four feet deep. Still, in the night, the waterway seemed like a black abyss, an “interminable mud puddle,” wrote author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The canal delivered so many wonderful things to the people of New York: fresh produce and meats, essential building materials like lumber and gravel, and immense prosperity – for some. But not all the cargo it transported was wanted. People, too, traveled across New York State via the Erie Canal – and sometimes, those people could be treacherous.
Henry Schutt wasn’t inherently a distrustful man, even as the second-eldest sibling of a very large family. He might have been a little naïve. His mother and father had raised their brood of twelve (five girls and seven boys) to always welcome the wayfaring men who stumbled onto their sprawling homestead, Brookfield Farm. Brookfield Farm consisted of a farmhouse and a barn sitting atop acres of land in Dryden, a village in Upstate New York. Henry was accustomed to wandering laborers, searching for work. He had always assumed that they had honest intentions – and his family hadn’t been swindled in the past.
In the summer of 1842, the 27-year-old worked on a passenger boat called a “packet” – a small, shallow canal vessel that carted riders between stops along the waterway. Off and on they stepped at destinations between Albany on the Hudson River and Buffalo at Lake Erie. As Henry Schutt docked briefly in Syracuse, a man strolled down the towpath.
The stranger seemed about Henry’s age, or just a bit younger. With gleaming dark grey eyes and a quick smile, he was an engaging presence. Henry gave him a quick, silent evaluation. The man wasn’t particularly tall, just about five foot eight inches, but he was solid, with broad shoulders and a compact frame. Canal work required a strong body, but the man also seemed well groomed, not messy like other men in need of work. The man’s face had a flushed, ruddy complexion, as if he were perpetually abashed, even while wearing a grin.
“He said he came from New Brunswick (Canada),” said Ephraim Schutt, Henry’s older brother, “He said he was German.”
That was about all the information the boatman gleaned from the man, except Henry did learn his name: Edward Howard Rulloff.
___________________________________
Excerpted from All That Is Wicked: A Gilded-Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind, by Kate Winkler Dawson. Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Copyright, 2022. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
