Elsie Sigel
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Elsie Sigel, a granddaughter of General Franz Sigel, is notable for her notorious murder at the age of 19 in New York City in 1909.
Sigel, who had been a missionary in Chinatown, was found strangled inside a trunk on 17 June 1909 [1] [2] in the apartment of the prime suspect, a Chinese man named Leon Ling, a waiter in a Chinese restaurant. Ling was a favorite student of Sigel's, and among her possessions were 35 love letters to him. Ling was never apprehended, and the murder remains unsolved.
Sigel's murder gained widespread notoriety due to the inter-racial aspects of the relationship as well as the fame of her Grandfather, who was a Civil War hero. The murder set off a wave of anti-Chinese hysteria as well as suggestions that the murder was Sigel's own fault.
[edit] References
- ^ Die on 17.June.1909, found on 18. June.1909
- ^ "FIND MISS SIGEL DEAD IN TRUNK; Granddaughter of Gen. Franz Sigel Victim of a Chinese Murder Mystery. WAS STRANGLED TO DEATH Body Discovered After Days in Eighth Avenue Room Whose Tenants Had Fled. ROPE AROUND HER NECK Two Chinamen Whom as a Missionary She Had Helped Sought by Police -- Three Arrests on Suspicion." (fee), The New York Times, 1909-06-19, p. 1. Retrieved on 2007-06-16.
[edit] External links
- The Chinatown Trunk Mystery : Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City (Amazon.com)
- 8th Avenue: New York Songlines
- CHARLEY HONG, RACISM, AND THE POWER OF THE PRESS IN JEROME, ARIZONA TERRITORY, 1909
- That Was West Forty-seventh
- Photograph of the apartment where Elsie was found
