Locked Hotel Mystery?

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

To me my own, I’m disappointed that the defence went only with the Entry and Exit from the Hotel issues (especially after you pointed out the Hotel exits were probably not even locked at 1 o’clock or 5), instead of pursuing the Locked Room Theory and the inexplicable or at least unexplained locking of the door without a key.

Maybe if the lawyer’s name was Room instead of House, he would have gone with the Locked Room!

[Howard Brown]

One slight goof....the hotel is situated on the southwest corner of Catherine Slip & Water Street

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

Howard,

If you search the Paris Cafe and the East River, I think you find pictures of the East River Hotel doppelgänger building that Nina found. Maybe the door arrangements to the street are or were the same, even if the interior upstairs-room ones aren’t. I should have thought of that before.

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

paris-cafe-courtesy,_nyc_restaurant-002__large.jpg

The Paris Cafe building has the same configuration as the East River Hotel vis a vis the street too. I don't know but that only the doors to the right would have been in usage. The sketches of the East River Hotel (see above) shows the "projection" out onto the sidewalk which would correspond to the vestibule in the Paris Cafe.

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

The East River Hotel appears to have right angles at the corner of the streets so it's obvious that the Paris Cafe has that corner cut off to accomodate the double doors there. The ERH wouldn't have had them.

The only doors then would be these ones on the right side.

outside doors ERH.jpg

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

In this case of the building with the Paris Café, one entrance is for the apartments above. So the apartment entrance hallway in this case would now be separated from the Café as it's a separate establishment, not one like the tavern and the hotel at the similarly-built East River Hotel.

P.S. Sorry, the gallery photo I selected has the wrong side of the building. You can see the elevated highway on South St out the window.

Photo for The Paris Cafe (yelp.ca)

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

This would be the Café from the right angle. It's walled off from the apartment complex hallway and the original vestibule doors appear blocked.

Photos for The Paris Cafe - Yelp

Anyway, the position of the exit/entrance to the East River Hotel tavern would have led to the passageway or straight along the wall or partition to the doors in the corner so Ali would have headed down the passageway or along the wall or partition to the doors. I don't see how Fitzgerald could have seen anything sneaky about, at least, the direction Ali took.

[Howard Brown]

I don't see what Fitzgerald was talking about when he said Ali took a sneaky route. He came down from the rooms and went through or beside the passages.

Well, there's a perfectly good reason why you don't see what he was talking about. He never said it.

Fitzgerald referred to Ali as having sneaked down the stairs..... not took 'a sneaky route'. Fitzgerald was describing how Ali walked down the stairs with the dirtbag looking away from Fitzgerald as he came down..... not how he walked out of the hotel.

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

There must have been a window on the door to the stairs and/or I have a feeling there was another set of stairs after he opened the door to get to the tavern floor. He must have noticed when Ali opened the door.

Anyway, the building on South Street and Fulton that houses SJP Shoes and McNally Jackson Bookstores is also similar to the East River Hotel but without a vestibule and the roof is different.

[Markus Aurelius Franzoi]

The beauty of a Locked Room Mystery is how it encapsulates everything in a nutshell and how the enclosure acts to compress the big picture and makes it easier to point out the more important issues at play.

Here, you have a crime in a veritable Locked Room. Only the sailor and the victim are inside.

That's the whole picture in the frame and on the wall. Sailor, victim, picture. The police however did everything to get the sailor out of the picture.

But some don't see it exactly that way. They see it not so much as the police doing everything to get the sailor out of the picture but instead see Ali as doing everything to get himself in the picture, on purpose or accidentally. He put himself in the picture and in the frame....

[Howard Brown]

That's the whole picture in the frame and on the wall. Sailor, victim, picture. The police however did everything to get the sailor out of the picture.

The police continued to search for 'C. Kniclo' into May at least a week after Ali had been announced on the 30th as the suspect/killer. It is a fallacy to believe they 'settled' for Ali. He was, however from what I can ascertain, the most likely suspect to the cops 3 or 4 days earlier than the eventual announcement.

But some don't see it exactly that way. They see it not so much as the police doing everything to get the sailor out of the picture but instead see Ali as doing everything to get himself in the picture, on purpose or accidentally. He put himself in the picture and in the frame....

Some do think he put himself in the frame....either by being the killer ( which IMHO, he wasn't) or by coming into contact with her corpse ( which IMHO, he did).
Far less circumstantial evidence has found men convicted of murder than what led the authorities to bring charges against Ali for the same crime of capital murder.