Four Floors Above the Alley: A Pearl Button Pointed Toward the Basement

Four Floors Above the Alley: A Pearl Button Pointed Toward the Basement

A single dark leather glove with a pearl button, left hand, sat on a sealed windowsill four stories up - and a photograph of it led detectives to a body in a basement. How did one glove, found on May 14, 1923, connect a sealed alley window to a woman who had been missing since May 9?

In this episode, we follow the sequence of discoveries from the fire escape photograph to the basement find and the people tied to the case. What does the glove, the bricked-up window, and the timeline between May 9 and May 14 reveal about Judith Hayes and the events that ended her life?

Person: Judith Hayes
Date: May 9-14, 1923
Location: 41 Brennan Street; boarding house on Cutler Avenue; Nora's Luncheonette on Gerber Street
Cause of death: Strangulation by cargo rope
Witness/Identifier: Marge Tobin (button identification)

- On the morning of May 14, 1923, Warren Murphy photographed a dark leather left-hand glove with a pearl button on a bricked-up windowsill.
- Judith Hayes had been missing since the evening of May 9 after leaving the boarding house at approximately 7:30 p.m. carrying a cloth bag.
- Marge Tobin identified the glove by a replaced pearl button that Judith had sewn on herself.
- Karen Edwards entered the basement within two hours of Murphy’s call and found Judith Hayes in the far corner beneath a shelf of rusted chain hooks.
- Mason Otto Krebs estimated the mortar sealing the alley window was three to four weeks old, placing the brickwork in mid-to-late April, before Judith disappeared.

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