JARVIS CATOE CONFESSES TO SEVEN KILLINGS: THE WATERBURY DEMOCRAT, AUGUST 29, 1941

All that spring and summer of 1941, women in Washington had been dying, and the city had been told to be afraid. The fear reached the White House: Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt warned the thousands of young women who had come to take government jobs to be careful, Congress raised an outcry, and the police department was shaken up. Then, early on August 29, the United Press reported that Jarvis Catoe, a servant and former undertaker's assistant, had confessed to strangling seven women. The Waterbury Democrat in Connecticut had it on the front page that same day.

The police gave the names in the order the wire printed them. Betty Strieff, twenty-three, had come from Des Moines, Iowa, that spring to take a government clerkship and was murdered on June 15; she was a War Department secretary who got into Catoe's car in a downpour believing he drove a cab. Evelyn Dorothea Anderson, twenty-six, of New York, was found in the Bronx on August 4. Rose Abramowitz, twenty-five, formerly of St. Louis, had been married a month to a lawyer for the Social Security Board when she hired Catoe to wax her kitchen floor; she was raped and strangled on March 8.

The list ends with "Four Negro women raped and murdered," and the column runs out after one name, Ada Puller, killed on January 2, 1941. The others were Josephine Robinson, Lucy Kidwell and Mattie Steward, killed between December 1939 and November 1940, and their deaths had drawn little notice; it was the killing of a white woman, Rose Abramowitz, that raised the outcry. The police meant to question him about sex crimes going back to 1934. His confession reached as far as Florence Dancy, sixty-five, killed in April 1935, a murder for which another man had already been convicted and sentenced to life.

This is a wire report written within hours of the confession, and everything in it is the police account of what Catoe said. The paper gives his age as thirty; he was born on November 2, 1904, which made him thirty-six. It calls the first victim Betty Strieff; her name was Jesse Elizabeth Strieff. It has Evelyn Anderson thrown from a car into a Bronx street; other accounts say she was found strangled in an alleyway. The count here is seven; he confessed in all to eight. Before trial he took every word back. He was tried only for Rose Abramowitz, convicted of her rape and first-degree murder, and electrocuted at the D.C. Jail on January 15, 1943. The transcriber's closing note says he was convicted of Anderson's murder; the case tried was Abramowitz's.

The Waterbury Democrat for August 29, 1941, is less than ninety-five years old. The Library of Congress believes issues of this age are in the public domain but cautions that they may contain some copyrighted third-party material; nothing in this article is marked as syndicated or separately copyrighted matter. The scan is the Library's copy in Chronicling America, with the citation and rights statement beneath it.

The transcription covers only what was printed on page one. The story breaks off in the middle of a sentence and continues on page six, and that continuation has not been transcribed, so the rest of the list of names is missing. A smear across the Betty Strieff paragraph left two words unreadable, and they are marked [illegible] rather than guessed at. The paper's 1941 racial wording and its "(UP)" credit are kept exactly as printed.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

Colored Man In Washington Makes Confession He Killed Seven Women

Police Believe That Many Other Murders Will Be Traced to Slayer

Washington, August 29. — (UP) — Jarvis Roosevelt Catoe, 30, Negro servant and former undertaker's assistant, confessed early today that he had strangled two pretty government clerks, a New York matron, and four Negro women.

Though he had thus confessed seven murders, police suspected that he had been guilty of more and, after a brief respite, were to question him about a series of sex crimes here, many of them involving the murder of the victim, which date back to 1934.

Police, announcing his confessions, said they had solved the wave of sex crimes this spring and summer which caused Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt to warn the thousands of girls who have come here to take government jobs, to be careful and inspired such an outcry in Congress that the police department was subjected to a shake-up.

Murders He Admitted

He confessed, police said, to these murders:

Betty Strieff, 23, a pretty girl from Des Moines, Iowa, who came here last spring to take a clerkship in the [illegible] Department, [illegible] and murdered June 15.

Evelyn Dorothea Anderson, 26, of New York, whose body was found in a Bronx borough street where it had been thrown from an automobile on August 4.

Mrs. Rose Abramowitz, 25, formerly of St. Louis, the bride of a social security board lawyer, who was raped and murdered March 8.

Four Negro women raped and murdered — Ada Puller, January

(Continued on Page 6)

Transcriber's notes

- Readability: good at the head of the column, poor in one band. A smear across the page has obscured most of one line and part of the next in the Betty Strieff paragraph; two words there are marked [illegible]. The sense is clear from context — the War Department, and "raped" — but neither word can be read with certainty from the scan, so neither has been supplied. Everything else was legible.

- Kept as printed: "Betty Strieff" set with a lower-case s in the original ("strieff"), corrected here only in so far as the compositor's own capital is illegible; the racial descriptions, which are the paper's own 1941 wording, reproduced as a matter of record; and the United Press credit as "(UP)".

- **The story breaks off mid-sentence at the foot of column 5 and is continued on page 6.** Only the page-one portion is transcribed here, and only page one is supplied as a scan. The continuation has not been captured; say the word and it can be added, as was done for the Panzram story in an earlier batch.

- Catoe was convicted of the murder of Evelyn Anderson and executed in Washington on 15 January 1943.