The Mad Sculptor by Harold Schechter Page B

usual police policy of dragging the first friendless suspect into custody for ‘grilling’ and feeding the newspapers with heated suspicions is a life-insurance policy for murderers,” the editorial concluded. “We offer humble thanks for waitresses who read mystery magazines.” 14
    By the time the editorial appeared, the object of those “humble thanks” was enjoying a head-spinning dose of fifteen-minute celebrity. Two days earlier, Henrietta Koscianski—the “plump and pretty pantry maid,” “chubby Cinderella detective,” “Public Heroine No. 1,” as the tabloids variously dubbed her—had received a telegram from Inside Detective editor West Peterson, informing her that she was the winner of the magazine’s one-thousand-dollar reward for the capture of Robert Irwin.
    “Sure, Irwin surrendered of his own accord,” Peterson explained to reporters when the announcement was made. “But we feel that ifMiss Koscianski hadn’t recognized his picture in the magazine and reported it through the hotel manager to the Cleveland police, Irwin would never have been forced into flight and surrender. She gets the dough.”
    On Monday afternoon, June 28, accompanied by her truck-driver father, Henry, she boarded a United Air Liner for her first airplane trip, an experience described in luridly purple prose by a tabloid writer named Dale Harrison: “A scullery girl came out of the kitchen today and followed a bewildering rainbow to a New York pot of gold. Murder painted the rainbow that arched Henrietta Koscianski’s journey. The blood of Ronnie Gedeon, her mother and luckless Frank Byrnes dotted it.” 15
    At 4:15 p.m., the plane landed at Newark Airport, where West Peterson awaited with a crowd of newspapermen and photographers. Emerging from the cabin, Henrietta posed on the rolling metal stairs, clutching the current issue of Inside Detective , its cover prominently displayed. Flanked by her beaming father and Peterson—who kept reminding her to hold up the magazine so the cameramen could see it—she answered a few questions about Bob. Though she had repeatedly turned down his requests for a date, she always found him to be a “perfect gentleman” and hoped he had “no hard feelings” toward her. Since she never read the newspapers—“I get all mixed up when I read them,” she explained—she had been completely unaware of the Mad Sculptor case until she had seen the issue of Inside Detective the previous Wednesday. “I guess my dad and mother won’t kid me so much now about reading all those detective magazines and listening to the crime broadcasts when they want to be hearing music on the radio,” she said with a smile. “I don’t know why but I’ve always been interested in reading about detectives and criminals. I like mystery, I guess. But I never picture myself as being a detective. And here I am—a detective in one of the most famous murder cases.”
    As for what she planned to do with the money, she explained that it would all “go to her family—part of it to pay for her little brother’s recent appendectomy, the rest towards buying a family home.”
    Taxied across the Hudson to Manhattan, Henrietta embarked on a whirlwind of glamorous activities. She made an appearance on the NBC radio show Vox Pop , a popular program of short man-on-the-street interviews; had cocktails on the roof garden of the Hotel Astor, where she was introduced to the romantic idol and singing sensation Rudy Vallee; and dined at New York City’s hottest cabaret, the Hollywood restaurant, where she was summoned onstage by famed MC Nils T. Granlund and invited to sing. Facing a roomful of Manhattan sophisticates, the nineteen-year-old kitchen girl, whose performing had been limited to her high school glee club, showed no trace of the jitters as she signaled to the bandleader and launched into the hit song “Where Are You?” from the recent movie Top of the Town. When she was done, the crowd burst into an