A Horsehair, A Rope, A Brutal Murder Solved

Nancy Titterton
John Fiorenza Reenacting the Murder for Police

On the morning of April 10, 1936, the body of novelist Nancy Titterton was found in a bathtub in her home on Beekman Place, an upscale street on the east side of Manhattan. Previous to her untimely death, she had shared the home with her husband Lewis Titterton, an executive at NBC. Titterton had been raped and strangled to death with her own pajamas. The only evidence at the scene was a foot-long cord tied around Titterton's hands and a single horsehair on her bedspread.

The detective in charge of the case set out immediately to find the source of the cord used to bind Nancy Titterton. Every rope and twine manufacturer in the Northeast was contacted until police determined that the distinctive cord was produced by Hanover Cordage Company in York, Pennsylvania. Company records showed that the same type of cord had been sold to an upholstery shop in New York owned by a man by the name of Theodore Krueger. It just so happened that Kruger and his assistant, John Fiorenza, were the ones who had found the body of Nancy Titterton. The two had been delivering a couch to the Titterton home, a couch that had been repaired at Krueger's shop and stuffed with the same type of horsehair found on Titterton's bedspread. Both Krueger and Fiorenza had denied entering the bedroom but the horsehair proved that one of them was lying.

In addition to the damning physical evidence, when the police looked into John Fiorenza they learned that he had been arrested four times previously for theft and had been diagnosed as delusional by a prison psychiatrist. The detectives working the case told an unsuspecting Fiorenza that they needed his help to solve the case. After they had gained his trust, they informed him that they knew that the cord used to bind Nancy Titterton had come from his place of employment. Confronted with this evidence, Fiorenza confessed but claimed temporary insanity at the time of the brutal rape and murder. At trial, the jury did not buy this defense and John Fiorenza was executed on January 22, 1937.

Related Reading:

Snagged by a cord in killing of novelist


Bloody, Bloody Beekman Place: Where the Wealthy Wind Up Dead







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