26. A Messy Murder a Hurried Flight
Albert Tirrell was the last person known to have seen Maria Bickford alive, according to multiple witnesses, who saw him enter Bickford’s room that evening after her last customer had left. 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. Police immediately began a search for Tirrell, but he had fled, having last been 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 6, 1845, and extradited to Massachusetts. The rich kid murder scandal quickly became a local and national sensation that had everything. There was adultery, the class divide briefly bridged between a scion of a wealthy and respectable family who abandoned his wife and children for a prostitute, capped off with a gruesome murder, nationwide manhunt, arrest, and trial. Albert Tirrell’s parents hired Rufus Choate, a former US Senator and respected Boston lawyer is known for his creative defense strategies.