15. Trying Tirrell
Multiple witnesses had seen Albert Tirrell enter Mrs. Bickford’s room on the evening of her murder after her last customer had departed. A bloody razor was found near the body, along with pieces of Tirrell’s clothes and broken-off sections of a distinctive cane known to belong to him. Tirrell fled, and was last spotted bargaining with a livery stable keeper, reportedly saying that he was “in a scrape” and needed to get away.
Tirrell was eventually tracked down to New Orleans, where he was arrested on December 6th, 1845, and extradited to Massachusetts to face trial. The story quickly became a local and national sensation. It combined the salacious details of sex, the sin of adultery, the class divide briefly bridged between a scion of a wealthy family who abandoned everything to be with a prostitute, capped off with a gruesome murder, nationwide manhunt, arrest, and trial.