NEW YORK MURDER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22401, 23 April 1936, Page 11

NEW YORK MURDER

POLICE MAKE AN ARREST CONFESSION BY UPHOLSTERER NEW YORK, April 21 The police announce the arrest and confession of the alleged murderer of Mrs. Nancy Titterton, aged 34, writer of juvenile stories, known as ."Nancy Evans." in the bath in her apartment in Beekman Place on April 11. Mrs. Titterton, who obviously had made a terrifio fight for her life, had been garotted with a silk pyjama cord. The police arrested John Fiorenza, aged 24, an upholsterer's assistant. They say that, having called for a chair for reupholstering the day before, accused again called at the Titterton residence next morning. After committing the crime he calmly returned to his workshop, where he finished repairing the chair. Fiorenza and his employer then delivered the chair, and it was they who gave the alarm. A piece of string commonly used by upholsterers, which Fiorenza had inadvertently left behind him, was the clue upon which the police worked, tracing it from the manufacturer into the upholstery shop where Fiorenza worked.

The latter, who was engaged to marry, had been arrested four times previously for various offences, including grand larceny, and was out on parole. The police had early fixed their suspicions upon him, and he and other employees in the upholsterer's shop were constantly under surveillance, but the authorities succeeded in diverting suspicion and giving prominence in the press to fictitious clues while secretly working on the true ones.