High on a hilltop in Brooklyn’s historic Greenwood cemetery, is an imposing mausoleum. Written large on the granite stone lintel is the name John Anderson. He was once the owner of an upscale tobacconist’s in Lower Manhattanm but one hundred and seventy six years ago, he was also at the centre of one of the most notorious murders in New York City.
Never solved, it remains one of the longest cold cases in the city. It was one of the first murders to grip the imagination of the city of New York, and one of the first to be played out luridly in New York’s nascent tabloid newspapers, the so-called Penny Press. The murder would centre around a mysterious, abandoned cave, and act as a catalyst to reform and modernize the city’s police department. It would also inspire a novel by Edgar Allan Poe.
