After the return of Verner Alexanderson, kidnapped son of Schenectady radio scientist Dr. E.F.W. Alexanderson, it appeared that the kidnappers had vanished into Canada. Apparently, police never stopped looking for them, because in 1924, almost exactly a year after the boy was snatched from his home in the GE Realty Plot, police arrested a…

It would only be three days after the 1923 kidnapping of Verner Alexanderson from his Schenectady home, and his father’s first-ever radio broadcast plea for help, that Verner would be found unharmed, hundreds of miles away, outside of Watertown. “Verner Alexanderson, kidnapped Schenectady lad for whom a nationwide search was conducted for 72 hours…

Hoxsie wouldn’t want to leave you with the impression that Schenectady had all the crime in the tri-cities in the early decades of the last century. Far from it. But it definitely had some of the most interesting. The Electric City had the mysterious torso of 1914, the killing of Captain Youmans and the…

Schenectady police continued to work the case of the mysterious torso that was discovered in the Mohawk River in the summer of 1914. (Her head turned up on the Fourth of July.) Detectives thought they had found a clue on June 26, when they found a bloodstained shirtwaist near Ballston Lake. As with the…

On June 21, 1914, Schenectady police were still puzzling out the mystery of the woman’s torso found in the Mohawk River days before. Police were working on the theory that Miss Sarah Meader of Quaker Springs, Saratoga County, might be the girl; her uncle said she had not been seen since May 25, when…

Schenectadians who had been shocked to learn, back on June 19, 1914, of the discovery of a woman’s torso in a weighted burlap sack submerged in the Mohawk River just downstream of where the new sewage treatment plant was being built, beyond Freeman’s Bridge, must have been relieved to learn a day later that…

Sorry, Schenectady, but it’s still your turn for True Crime Fortnight. Just about 99 years ago, the region was gripped with the discovery of a gruesome murder. On Friday, June 19, “fishermen brought to the surface of the Mohawk River the torso of a well proportioned woman, wrapped in a burlap bag, which had…

A tremendous effort was put into finding the gunman who in 1924 ambushed Schenectady Police Captain Albert Youmans, who died instantly, and Patrolman John Flynn, who died years later from his wounds. The underworld didn’t back down, immediately threatening the mayor, William Campbell, and the new chief Billy Funston. Investigations continued for months with…