16CHURCHYARD KILLER OF L.I. MOM NABBED IN 24 HOURS
Rock-solid detective work nets co-worker paramour to close case
It was a little past 1 a.m. on a still November night in 1942 when Patrolman Joseph Doyle, walking his usual beat along Jamaica Ave. in Queens, noticed a flicker of light coming from the darkened yard of the spooky old church up ahead.
The flatfoot stopped dead in his tracks and watched as the light went out, then reappeared moments later before everything went black again.
Doyle’s throat tightened as he silently approached the First Reformed Dutch Church of Jamaica on 153rd St. At this ungodly hour, whoever had struck those matches was bound to be up to no good, he thought. Probably a burglar looking to get his hands on the collection box.
With one hand hovering over the holster of his service revolver, Doyle pointed his flashlight into the churchyard. Nothing but silence — then a sudden movement in the shadows, followed by the sound of footsteps scurrying into the night.
Doyle scanned the area with his flashlight until the beam landed on a gruesome sight. Lying faceup on the ground was the body of an attractive, well-dressed young woman, her face frozen in a look of horror and surprise.
Wrapped tightly around her neck was a green silk scarf, drenched in blood from several stab wounds to her throat.
Next to the body was a broken box of cupcakes she dropped as the killer squeezed the last breaths out of her.
It only took a few minutes before a horde of NYPD detectives were on the scene. Among them was Capt. Henry Flattery, a veteran Queens investigator who wasn’t buying the theory it was a mugging gone bad just because the victim’s pocketbook was missing.
In a first-person account of the so-called “Cupcake Killer” case written years later for a pulp crime magazine, Flattery recalled telling his men to scour the grounds of the 18th century church to see if the killer had left behind a “calling card” — what Flattery suspected he’d been desperately looking for in the darkness before Officer Doyle scared him off.
Flattery also sensed the victim knew her murderer and had willingly walked with him to the secluded area in the churchyard, perhaps for a quick tryst.
Police quickly caught two major breaks in the case. Near the body was a small folding knife, the kind people kept on a key chain. It was the “calling card” Flattery mentioned. And it still had fresh blood on it.
Then just before dawn, a patrolman walked up to the crime scene and presented detectives with a purse he’d found a few blocks away. Inside was a photo ID that turned out to be the victim’s, along with a commuter railroad ticket home she never got to use.
She was Carol Tuttle, 35, who lived with her husband, Harry, and
her two children from a previous marriage in Freeport, L.I., about 20 miles away.
Flattery and a team of detectives paid an early-morning visit to the Tuttle household, where the husband was saddened but hardly surprised at the news.
He explained that Carol, who worked as a waitress at a Jamaica Ave. restaurant, often stayed out late having drinks “with the girls.” He figured she missed her train home and was sleeping it off at a friend’s place.
And in case they were wondering, Harry gave cops a solid alibi. He was home all night with the kids.
Then the husband dropped a bombshell. A few weeks before her death, Carol had come home with cuts and bruises on her face, courtesy of an ill-tempered boyfriend Harry didn’t realize she was seeing. The couple made up after she promised to drop the bum.
Harry gladly gave the cops his name: It was either Joe or John
Wright, he couldn’t remember which. Carol had said he was a sailor.
Just hours after the murder, police had a strong suspect and a likely motive. Already a woman-beater, Wright must’ve flown off the handle completely when Carol gave the seething swabbie the heave-ho.
Meanwhile, another team of detectives traced Tuttle’s last hours to a bar a couple of blocks away from where she was found.
The barkeep at Ye Olde Corner Tavern remembered Tuttle had spent the night boozing it up with a guy he knew only as Jim. They’d staggered out sometime after midnight, with a wobbly Tuttle carrying her box of cupcakes.
Could Tuttle have found herself another paramour after dumping Wright? Or had the wayward wife been stepping out with two men?
With “Jim” the last person known to have seen her alive, there were now two solid suspects.
Flattery’s visit to the restaurant where Tuttle worked revealed Jim’s full name — and proof of a relationship. A co-worker said everyone knew she had been carrying on for years with James Mallon, aka Jim, who worked there as a soda jerk, but quit several weeks back.
No one at the eatery, though, had ever heard Tuttle mention a sailor named Wright.
Mallon lived near the church with his widowed mother, and Flattery made a beeline to their home to ask about his whereabouts the night before.
The 32-year-old Mallon freely admitted he had been seeing Tuttle and was with her until after midnight before going their separate ways. But he looked shocked when Flattery mentioned she had a husband and kids. He insisted he didn’t know she was married — and that they were planning their own wedding.
Flattery was suspicious. How could Mallon not know Tuttle was married after they’d spent three years in an illicit affair? He figured it was a ruse. If Mallon didn’t know about the husband, then he wouldn’t have a clear motive for killing her. His defense would be that he had no reason to slay the woman he loved in such a horrific manner.
The veteran cop was right. Mallon’s ploy collapsed that same day after police found a letter he’d written to Tuttle. It read, “I know you are thinking of the children, but you don’t owe Harry anything.”
Flattery realized there was no sailor named Wright after all. Tuttle had made up a fake name to keep her husband from finding out about Mallon.
It didn’t take long for Mallon to spill after that. He admitted he wanted to kill Tuttle because she was through with him.
“She double-crossed me and I wanted to pay her back,” he said, according to police.
They argued after leaving the bar, and Mallon, consumed by a blinding rage fueled by countless beers, strangled her with her scarf before slashing at her neck with the little knife. It was what he had indeed been searching for in the dark before running off.
It had taken Flattery and his squad less than 24 hours to crack the case.
Mallon was spared the electric chair when he was convicted of second-degree murder a few months later and given a 20 yearto-life sentence in Sing Sing.
In his 1955 story for the true crime magazine, Flattery eloquently summed up Mallon’s mistake — and eventual fate — in his vain attempt to get away with murder.
Mallon, wrote Flattery, “had killed in haste; he got plenty of opportunity to repent at leisure.”
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