The middle-aged gentleman took one last look in his hotel room mirror before heading downstairs, and he couldn\u2019t help but smile at his good luck.<\/p>\n
The native New Yorker, dressed to the nines in an elegant three-piece suit and pockets flush with cash, was ready to paint Detroit red.<\/p>\n
Waiting for him in the lobby was not one, but two winsome redheads half his age \u2014 sisters who\u2019d worked as burlesque dancers, no less! \u2014 he\u2019d met the prior evening, and the hotsy-totsy siblings had made it abundantly clear they were primed for a rip-snorter of a good time.<\/p>\n
His big night didn\u2019t quite turn out as expected.<\/p>\n
On the balmy summer morning of June 27, 1935, a group of laborers tending to Rouge Park, Motor City\u2019s massive public greenspace, stumbled upon the body of an older man lying facedown in the grass next to a dirt roadway.<\/p>\n
Detectives called to the scene initially pegged it as a gangland rubout. While Detroit was no longer a hotbed of rumrunner violence, there was still enough bad blood left over from Prohibition days to result in a bullet-riddled stiff turning up every now and then.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/resizer\/0xHJwwkbIWxfMgChD1q7ZaBZR4c=\/1440x0\/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)\/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com\/tronc\/B3MITMELHZBQFBNEHYUT4FRKR4.jpg\")
<\/picture>Howard Carter Dickinson <\/span>(New York Daily News Archive)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n The victim, who\u2019d been killed at another location and dumped there, had taken a slug to the head and another in the chest at close range \u2014 typical signs of an execution-style hit after being taken for a \u201cride.\u201d<\/p>\n The man\u2019s wallet was gone, but cops found his expensive watch and gold lucky charm inscribed with \u201cJe porte bonheur\u201d \u2014 French for \u201cI bring happiness\u201d \u2014 so robbery was ruled out as the main motive.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until the following day that officials learned the John Doe lying in the morgue was no run-of-the-mill mobster with a defective talisman.<\/p>\n He was Howard Carter Dickinson, 52 \u2014 a widely respected attorney for a Manhattan-based white shoe firm.<\/p>\n He also happened to be the nephew of Charles Evans Hughes, the sitting chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n The mysterious murder was naturally front-page news across the nation \u2014 and a hot topic in New York City. Family, friends, colleagues and newspaper readers alike were by turns aghast and astounded at how the buttoned-up, Harvard-educated lawyer was shot and dumped in a desolate park in the middle of the night on what was supposed to be a routine business trip.<\/p>\n There was certainly nothing in his private life that would indicate he\u2019d ever end up the victim of foul play. Dickinson, whose father was a reverend, lived in suburban North Tarrytown, N.Y. (now called Sleepy Hollow) with his longtime wife and 20-year-old son. After Harvard Law School, he worked in the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s office before going into private practice with a partner at a Rockefeller Center office they shared.<\/p>\n The body of Howard Carter Dickinson was found in a Detroit park. He had been shot in the head and chest. <\/span>(New York Daily News Archive)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n With nothing much to go on, Detroit police working with imported New York detectives set about trying to retrace Dickinson\u2019s last hours. The legal case that had brought him 600 miles away from Manhattan by rail \u2014 he was on a fact-finding mission to get information on a woman claiming to be the daughter of late lumber baron William H. Yawkey, patriarch of the family that owned the Boston Red Sox \u2014 didn\u2019t seem to have anything to do with his death.<\/p>\n No one at Dickinson\u2019s hotel or the local law firm he was working out of could recall seeing anything out of the ordinary with the quiet, unassuming attorney.<\/p>\n But when investigators learned from friends and family that Dickinson was known to carry huge amounts of cash on trips \u2014 said to be a few thousand dollars \u2014 they revisited the robbery angle.<\/p>\n Dickinson, they now figured, was likely targeted by a local stickup gang who may have seen him flashing a huge wad of bills around town. Cops started searching for a local hood who had bragged he was meeting up with a lawyer \u2014 \u201ca guy with plenty of money\u201d \u2014 just before Dickinson was killed.<\/p>\n As quickly as that lead fizzled came a huge break. Two days after the murder, a stool pigeon in Fort Wayne, Ind., told police there that the folks responsible were lamming it in a local hotel.<\/p>\n A motorcade of Detroit law enforcement officers promptly drove the 160 miles to Fort Wayne and came home with four suspects in Dickinson\u2019s slaying.<\/p>\n New York Daily News on Friday, June 28, 1935. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n The alleged ringleader and triggerman was William Schweitzer, 24, a small-time grifter who once beat a murder rap and was most recently wanted by Detroit cops for kiting checks.<\/p>\n Yet his accomplices were hardly the brutal henchmen people were expecting. They were instead a trio of comely young women \u2014 redheaded sisters Florence and Bobbie Jackson and \u201cparty girl\u201d Lillian Winters \u2014 who police said helped set a honey trap for Dickinson in a robbery gone bad.<\/p>\n As it happens<\/p>\n Get updates on the coronavirus pandemic and other news as it happens with our free breaking news email alerts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Schweitzer initially denied killing the lawyer. It was Winters who confessed all to police, leading to the four being formally charged with murder.<\/p>\n After arriving in Detroit, Dickinson was eating dinner alone in the hotel restaurant when he struck up a conversation with the Jackson sisters. A little flirtation and a lot of drinks later, the lawyer ended up in the girls\u2019 hotel room, where they were joined by their \u201cfriend\u201d Schweitzer, described in the New York Daily News as a \u201cprocurer\u201d \u2014 a nice way of saying pimp.<\/p>\n Realizing Dickinson was probably loaded, Schweitzer and the sisters hatched a plan to get the lawyer drunk and take his money. But Dickinson somehow kept his wits about him and left the party unscathed.<\/p>\n These girls look quite cheerful, considering the plight they are in. Jean Miller, Florence Jackson and her sister, Bobbie (l. to r.) are shown with Prosecutor Duncan McCrea (right, seated) during questioning in Detroit on the murder of Howard Carter Dickinson, New York attorney. They were partying with the murdered man when he was shot down by William Schweitzer. <\/span>(New York Daily News Archive)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n The group made plans to meet the following night for more fun and frolics, when they were joined by Winters. After more heavy drinking \u2014 Dickinson at one point sipped whiskey out of one of the girls\u2019 shoes \u2014 Schweitzer, the three women and the unsuspecting, scholarly lawyer having the time of his life piled into Schweitzer\u2019s car on the pretense they were going club hopping.<\/p>\n Dickinson never made it back alive. After driving into Rouge Park, Schweitzer pulled over, ordered the women out of the car and decided to shoot Dickinson dead after rolling him for his wallet. The women insisted at their trial later that year that they had no idea Schweitzer planned to kill Dickinson to prevent him from going to the cops.<\/p>\n Expecting their haul to be a few thousand dollars, the take was instead $134, or about $3,000 today \u2014 a princely sum during the Great Depression but hardly worth the four life sentences Schweitzer and the women received.<\/p>\n William Schweitzer (right), confessed that he killed Howard Carter Dickinson, New York attorney and nephew of Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes in Detroit. <\/span>(Walter Ranzini\/New York Daily News)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n JUSTICE STORY has been the Daily News\u2019 exclusive take on true crime tales of murder, mystery and mayhem for more than 100 years. <\/i>Click here to read more<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/resizer\/dHgarZpH37hNp5ufU0zDvHmsoT8=\/1440x0\/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)\/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com\/tronc\/D6PKTLJJYRCA7KPUDTW4TZKABE.jpg\")
<\/picture>![](\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/resizer\/clUWg9PTFaAzJWqoA3LtLcQXMu4=\/1440x0\/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)\/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com\/tronc\/3JOTG6VKGNGWXPLSVYOS45ULVM.jpg\")
<\/picture>![\"Breaking](\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/resizer\/AD1k7du8UFps6imYD_Vro-GwuOI=\/84x84\/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/NCS7JR7NDFA7FIXUIBZW4DYD6M.jpg\")
<\/div>\nBreaking News<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/resizer\/iaMisB3q_aRPnOYM4iv3XbGXzdc=\/1440x0\/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)\/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com\/tronc\/VG5NRT4TVJBF7GS52PI5TND52I.jpg\")
<\/picture>![](\"https:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/resizer\/PER2GYRI9-3uAwLj5O7Sgw5JTiw=\/1440x0\/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)\/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com\/tronc\/EDUDBJQS75BU3C7GHMCP3ROWJM.jpg\")
<\/picture>