Edward Rulloff
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| “ | You cannot kill an unquiet spirit, and I know that my impending death will not mean the end of Rulloff. In the dead of night, walking along Cayuga Street, you will sense my presence. When you wake to a sudden chill, I will be in the room. And when you find yourself alone at the lake shore, gazing at gray Cayuga, know that I was cut short and your ancestors killed me. | „ |
| ~ Rulloff in an interview a week before his execution. |
John Edward Howard Rulloff, AKA Edward H. Rulloff, (c. 1820 - May 18, 1871) was a Canadian-born American doctor of various fields, philologist, lawyer, schoolmaster, inventor, career criminal and serial killer. The contrast between these led Rulloff's biographer to term him "The Man of Two Lives", and he was also known as "The Genius Killer" due to his high intelligence and unusually large brain (the second-largest on record).
Biography edit
Rulloff was born in Canada to Danish parents. By the time he was 20 he had found work as a lawyer and had been imprisoned for two years for embezzling money from his law firm. In 1842 he moved to Dryden, New York State, where he worked as a schoolteacher and received a doctorate in botanical medicine. The following year he married 17-year-old Harriet Schutt against the wishes of her family and they moved to Lansing, where Harriet gave birth to their daughter Priscilla.
In 1844 Rulloff began pressuring Harriet to move to Ohio to get further away from her family, but she refused and threatened to leave him and take Priscilla with her. On June 23, Rulloff borrowed a horse and wagon from his neighbours the Andersons claiming that he needed it to return a wooden chest to his uncle. However, the Andersons saw Rulloff placing a bulging half-full sack in the wagon before leaving in the opposite direction to where he claimed to be going. When he later returned the wagon the Andersons saw that he still had the chest he was meant to be returning. Rulloff told them he and his family would be out of town for a few weeks before departing, leaving his house in disarray. When Rulloff returned a few weeks later Harriet and Priscilla were not with him; they were never seen again.
Rulloff was soon accused of killing his wife and daughter. Confronted by Harriet's family, he claimed first that she had left him, then that they had moved to Ohio together. Nobody believed him, as his wife's clothes and personal items were still in the Lansing home, suggesting she had not left willingly. Rulloff soon fled but was arrested and sent to stand trial in Ithaca, where he was prosecuted for kidnapping his wife (the grand jury was unwilling to indict him for murder without a body). Rulloff was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison with hard labour. He taught himself philology in prison and was soon skilled enough that students began visiting him in his cell to learn from him, but his hopes of starting a career in the field were dashed when the District Attorney pledged to prosecute him for the murder of Harriet Rulloff after his release. This plan was abandoned due to double jeopardy, and Rulloff was instead charged with Priscilla's murder and found guilty in 1858.
Before the verdict could reach him, Rulloff escaped custody with the help of Alfred Jarvis, the son of Ithaca's undersheriff who he had tutored in Greek and Latin. He fled on foot to Pennsylvania, losing two toes to frostbite during his journey before he reached Meadville. Under the alias "James Nelson", he convinced local inventor A.B. Richmond to take him on as a partner by demonstrating his in-depth knowledge of various subjects. He also managed to gain a professorship at Jefferson College, but before he could begin in the job he was tracked down by Alfred Jarvis, who attempted to blackmail him for a large bounty. He attempted to pay Jarvis off by robbing a jewellery store but was arrested, identified and sent back to Ithaca. In spite of having escaped from prison, Rulloff successfully appealed his murder conviction upon return and was acquitted and released, with prosecutors deciding not to try him for his escape.
Rulloff and Jarvis moved together to New York City and survived as burglars. Rulloff was caught in 1861 and served two years in prison, where he met his second accomplice, William T. Dexter. Rulloff, Jarvis and Dexter lived together in an apartment in Brooklyn that Rulloff owned under the alias "Edward C. Howard". In 1869 Rulloff wrote a paper under the alias "Euri Lorio" which he believed would revolutionize the field of philology and attempted to auction it to the American Philological Association for $500, 000 but did not receive a single bid.
In 1870 Rulloff, Jarvis and Dexter planned to rob a dry goods store in Binghamton, New York. Knowing that two live-in clerks, Frederick Merrick and Gilbert Burrows, were sleeping upstairs, they attempted to keep them unconscious by burning chloroform downstairs only for Jarvis to knock something over and wake them up. Merrick ran downstairs and tried to shoot Rulloff but his gun jammed and he threw a stool at him instead. Merrick and Burrows then grabbed hold of Dexter and began beating him. Rulloff fired a warning shot into the air and Burrows fled, but Merrick began attacking Jarvis and was shot dead by Rulloff. The robbers then fled only to find they had missed their ferry and would have to swim across the Chenango River to get away. Exhausted, Jarvis and Dexter were swept away by the current and drowned. Rulloff made it across the river, but left behind a pair of boots with a distinctive depression where his missing toes would have been.
By this time police had been alerted by Burrows and begun rounding up suspicious-looking men. Rulloff was caught the day after the murder when he refused to identify himself to a police officer at a railroad station before running across the tracks and being arrested hiding in a nearby outhouse. He identified himself as "Charles Augustus" and "George Williams". Rulloff was brought to where the bodies of Jarvis and Dexter were being displayed and, while Burrows could not identify him, bloodstains were observed on his clothes. Rulloff continued to refuse to give his real name but was recognised by an onlooker, Ransom Balcom, who said "You are Edward H. Rulloff. You murdered your wife and child in Lansing in 1845" and warned police that Rulloff knew his rights better than they did. He was then taken to the jailhouse, where it was confirmed that his toes were missing from the same part of the foot where there had been a depression in the killer's boots. Papers on the bodies of Jarvis and Dexter combined with the discovery of Rulloff's true identity disproved his claims not to know Jarvis and Dexter, who Burrows had identified as the other two robbers.
Rulloff defended himself at trial, arguing that his theory on language evolution was so valuable that he should not be convicted until he had completed it. He was convicted and requests that Governor John T. Hoffman commute his death sentence on these grounds were ignored. While awaiting execution Rulloff admitted that he had murdered his wife in 1844 by bludgeoning her with a pestle after accusing her of having an affair, but denied killing his daughter, claiming she had been sent to live with relatives. He was publicly hanged at the Broome County Jail on May 18, 1871.