SHOTGUN DIVORCE
Rocky carnie marriage ends with a blast
THREE WEEKS before his circus was to hit the road for the season, John (Honest John) Brunen was enjoying a quiet Sunday evening at home in Riverside, N.J., just across from Philadelphia. A din rose up at 7 p.m. that day — March 10, 1922 — as Brunen sat reading the Philadelphia Bulletin. Steeple bells at nearby St. Casimir’s Church began to toll just as a train rumbled by along New Jersey Ave.
And then came the last sound Brunen would ever hear: Kaboom!
Someone emptied the twin barrels of a 12-gauge shotgun through a window, and Brunen fell dead.
He didn’t have a chance to pull the pistol he carried in his pocket.
For some time, Brunen, 48, had been the target of “a campaign of mental torture,” as one paper called it, by someone intent on ending his life.
That someone, according to Brunen, was his wife, Doris.
He had spelled out his suspicions in a letter to his sister. He said Doris “is figuring to do away with me and thinks she can get free … She talks about it all the time.”
Other New Jersey cases of that era got more ink, including the Hall-Mills love triangle in New Brunswick later that same year and the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932.
But they have nothing on this long-forgotten jaw-dropper in Riverside.
Born in Germany in 1874, John Brunen emigrated at 14. He cut his carny eye-teeth in Coney Island, then criss-crossed the country with carnivals.
While in his 30s, Brunen bought a stake in Col. Francis Ferrari’s Trained Wild Animals Show, a 16-car railroad circus. In 1909, he abandoned his wife in New York after falling for a younger woman, pretty and plump Doris Mohr, 21.
He rebranded his show in his new bride’s honor: Honest John’s Mighty Doris-Colonel Ferrari Circus. By 1920, the show had grown to 30 rail cars — short of the Ringling Bros.’ 100 cars, but bigger than dinky.
The Brunens settled in Riverside, near their circus winter quarters 20 miles away in Williamstown, N.J. While the show thrived, the marriage faltered. Mighty Doris was not happy as chief cook for circus hands.
As she would later say, “I lived the life of a slave with him for 13 years.”
Doris took comfort in the arms of Doc Ward, the circus superintendent. The two traded steamy notes through a post office box under her nom d’amour, “Mrs. Nolan.”
John Brunen smelled hanky-panky when Ward gave Doris a Christmas gift in 1921. Brunen pulled his pistol during a Yuletide rhubarb. He fired several shots that went astray, though one lodged in Doris’ bulletproof corset.
She grabbed the gun and fired a reply, inflicting a flesh wound. Police came and called it a draw.
When Brunen was murdered 11 weeks later, detectives noted curiosities at the crime scene, including the impression of a lady’s shoe heel in the mud outside the broken window. They also discovered that Doris Brunen had moved her dog, Snookie, to the cellar from its customary spot in the yard before the shooting.
Neighbors saw a man dash to an idling car. His identity was revealed on April 26, when a contrite carny, Charles Powell, 31, went to police with a staggering confession: He said he had killed Honest John for $600 paid by Doris’ brother, Harry Mohr, the getaway driver.
Powell said widow Doris was the mastermind, telling him, “I hope somebody comes to my house and shoots my husband while he is sitting at the window.”
He said Doris had opened a window shade as a signal to consummate the plot. Police also learned that Doris told John Brunen’s daughter, Hazel, 17, that she shouldn’t be surprised “if you get a telephone call that John has been killed.”
Harry Mohr was charged with murder, and Doris soon joined him behind bars.
“We have had our suspicions regarding her from the start,” said prosecutor Jonathan Kelsey. He said Doris planned to use her husband’s $100,000 estate to live happily ever after with Doc Ward.
Brother and sister stood trial together that December. Powell, who took a plea to murder, was the star accuser. Typical of the era, the proceeding was a big-top spectacle. On the witness stand, Doris whipsawed between bawling and amnesia. She dissolved in tears when accused of murder.
“I have never in my life talked about killing my husband,” she cried. “I loved him!”
But when confronted with details of her affair, she deadpanned, “I don’t remember.” The prosecutor called her “the most wonderful actress who ever sat in the witness chair.” At the end of testimony, Justice Samuel Kalisch all but ordered the jury how to rule. “To me,” he said, “the testimony against Doris Brunen seems very meager.” And the judge added that Mohr’s alibi — that he was in Philly at the time of the murder — “is a very easy thing to fabricate.”
The jurors followed the judge’s hints, setting Doris free — just as she had predicted to her husband. They convicted Mohr, who got a mercy sentence of 30 years.
Doris Brunen waved a tearful buh-bye to her brother, then told the press, “In about a week, I am going to open a Mexican tea room either in New York or in Philadelphia.”
There is no record of whether that particular dream came true.