Calls Slain Woman His Runaway Wife
Mouquin Waiter Thinks He Identifies the Hudson Victim – Impossible, Says Dr. King.
More of the Body Found
Part of Leg Picked Up at Keansburg Fitted in Place – Floating Head Again Seen.
Casper Jianen of 303 West Thirty-third Street, a waiter at Mouquin’s uptown restaurant, viewed at Volk’s Morgue, Hoboken, N. J., yesterday parts of the dismembered body found in the Hudson, and said that he believed that the murdered woman was his wife, who deserted him in May, 1912.
Jianen had paid a previous visit to the Morgue last Tuesday and saw the birthmark on the left shoulder of the dead woman. He left uncertain whether to claim the body as that of his wife. Yesterday, however, after a more careful examination, he announced that he was positive this time that it was his wife’s body.
Jianen said that his wife’s mother had a similar birthmark and that her child, a six-year-old girl, had inherited the same blemish on the left shoulder. The girl, according to Jianen, was with his parents in Lorraine, France.
Jianen told the Hoboken authorities that he and his wife had been living together in Lorraine up to the time that she deserted him. He followed her to this country, he said, and found her living with a man in 104th Street. Jianen gave the name and address of the man to Lieut. Wood, a New York Headquarters detective, and it was learned last night that the man described by Jianen had departed on Tuesday of this week for Havana.
According to County Physician George W. King of Hudson County, the murdered woman could not have been Mrs. Jianen. He said the autopsy showed beyond a doubt that the woman had had no child before the one which was born within a few days of her death.
Detectives from Police Headquarters last night found the brother of the man described by Jianen as his wife’s companion. He said:
“My brother left here on Tuesday for Havana on business, and his wife went with him. It is untrue that my brother enticed Jianen’s wife away from him. My brother was married. His wife might have been claimed by Jianen as his, but I know nothing of that. I never heard that my brother’s wife had a birthmark on her shoulder. At any rate, she was alive on Tuesday, for I saw her then when she started on the trip with my brother.”
Jianen lived at 303 West Thirty-third Street in an Italian and French boarding-house kept by Charles Possas. Yesterday was Jianen’s day off duty, and he did not return home in the evening. Possas gave a slightly different history of Jianen from that which the waiter had given to the Hoboken authorities.
“Jianen’s wife,” said Possas, “was a Spanish woman whom he met in this city. I have never seen her because she had left her husband when I first met him, five months ago.
“Jianen told us that he thought the woman was his wife when he saw a picture of the birthmark in the paper. Jianen was not sure about it though, because he said that his wife had other birthmarks which were not described.”
County Physician King went in an automobile yesterday to Red Bank. N. J., carrying with him the hip joint of the torso now in the Hoboken Morgue. This was fitted to the section of the leg found on Wednesday at Keansburg, N. J., and taken to Coroner Fay’s Morgue at Red Bank. Dr. King declared that the two parts came from the same body.
Miss Grace Cure, 17 years old, the daughter of Frank Cure of 252 Prospect Avenue, Bayonne, N. J., reported yesterday that, while she was in a row boat on Tuesday close to Constable Hook, N. J., she had seen the head of a woman floating past the boat on the outgoing tide. It is believed to have been the same section of a skull which was seen last Thursday floating in the bay near Tottenville, S. I.
Lucy Smedes, the 19-year-old girl of Keyport, N. J., who has been missing from her home since June 17, telegraphed yesterday to her parents in Keyport that she was working in Kingston, N. J. Friends of the girl had feared that she might be the murdered woman.