The Team
John Schuyler Moore—the narrator; a thirty-something journalist for The New York Times
Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—an alienist (that is, a psychiatrist) and friend of Moore’s; they’ve known each other since college where Kreizler studied under *Professor William James
Sara Howard—an old friend of Moore’s who’s working as a secretary at Police Headquarters but has ambitions to be a police detective; [her ambition is more than a decade ahead of the times since the first woman police officer (not even a detective), Alice Stebbins Wells, isn’t hired until 1910 (by the L.A.P.D.)]
Sergeant Marcus Isaacson—a newly hired detective with a specialty in criminal science, backed up by his previous studies in law and his work for Pinkertons
Detective Sergeant Lucius Isaacson—Marcus’s brother and a newly hired detective with a specialty in forensic medicine, drawing on his medical education and his work for Pinkertons
The Police and Government Officials
*Theodore Roosevelt—head of the Board of Commissioners of New York City’s Police Department (1895–97)
*Colonel William Lafayette Strong—New York City mayor (1895–97) who appointed Roosevelt as police commissioner in his largely unsuccessful war against graft
Detective Sergeant Patrick Connor—a detective who works at Police Headquarters where Roosevelt has his office
Sergeant Flynn—a police sergeant from the 15th Precinct who might have too-close ties to Biff Ellison
*Thomas Byrnes—the creator and former head of the police’s Division of Detectives, who had retired when Roosevelt was appointed but was still influential in some circles; he popularized the practice of “rogues’ gallery”
Moore’s Acquaintances & Family
*Jacob “Jake” Riis—a photographer and journalist at the rival New York Tribune
*Joseph Lincoln “Link” Steffens—an investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era (early 20th Century)
Harriet—Moore’s grandmother’s housekeeper
Kreizler’s Household
Stevie “The Stovepipe” Taggert—a reformed juvenile delinquent who works as a driver and errand boy for Kreizler
Cyrus Montrose—a former patient of Kreizler’s who now works for him as a sort of bodyguard and driver
Mary Palmer—a former patient of Kreizler’s with motor aphasia and agraphia (unable to speak and write), who now works as Kreizler’s housekeeper
The Victims
Giorgio Santorelli—aka “Gloria”; a 13-year-old Italian immigrant who sometimes works as a cross-dressing prostitute out of Biff Ellison’s Paresis Hall
Benjamin and Sofia Zweig—a brother and sister found murdered 3 years earlier whose murders seem similar to the Santorelli murder; Kreizler has their bodies exhumed for forensic study as one of his first acts in investigating the Santorelli case
Ali ibn-Ghazi—aka “Fatima”; a 14-year-old Syrian immigrant who’s been sold by his father to Scotch Ann at the Golden Rule
Joseph—a 10-year-old boy prostitute from the Golden Rule who gives Moore information about a man that ibn-Ghazi trusted and called “the saint”
Ernst Lohmann—a 14-year-old German immigrant who works as a cross-dressing prostitute out of the Black and Tan
Others Connected with Bars and Brothels
*James T. “Biff” Ellison—owns Paresis Hall, one of three or four saloons in New York’s Lower East Side that catered to prostitution
*Paul Kelly—works for Ellison and oversees operations at Paresis Hall
*Jack McManus—aka “Eat ‘Em Up”; a former prizefighter who is currently Paul Kelly’s “enforcer”
Scotch Ann—runs the Golden Rule, a basement brothel of cross-dressing boy prostitutes
*Frank Stephenson—owns the Black and Tan, another of the saloons catering to prostitution
Members of New York Establishment and Society
*Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan—Roman Catholic archbishop of New York who seems to be playing a part in thwarting investigations into the “boy murders”; [historically, he was rebuked by the Vatican (1887) for neglecting the spiritual needs of Italian immigrants]
*Bishop Henry Codman Potter—bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York who seems to be playing a part in thwarting investigations into the “boy murders”; [historically, he was a champion of the working class and labor unions]
*Anthony Comstock—a “special agent” of the United States Postal Service in New York [and author of the 1873 U.S. Comstock Act, which makes it a crime to deliver “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material by U.S. mail]
*John Pierpont Morgan—a financier and investment banker with outsized local influence; [historically, he assisted the government in plans that averted several financial crises]
Others Interviewed by Team During Investigation
*Jesse Harding Pomeroy—an inmate (since the age of 14) at Sing Sing Prison for the murder and torture of children; [note that the historical Pomeroy was never incarcerated at Sing Sing]
*Franz Boas—a friend of Kreizler’s and the assistant curator of ethnography at the American Museum of Natural History in New York
*Dr. Clark Wissler—an anthropologist/ethnologist and assistant to Boas; [historically, he was not hired at AMNH until almost a decade after the events of this book, after which he eventually replaced Boas]
Hobart Weaver—a friend of Moore’s who works in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C.; he helps Moore locate the file that identifies Corporal John Beecham, a military officer who had been a patient at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in D.C.
Adam Dury—a farmer in Newton, MA, originally from New Paltz, NY; his parents, the Reverend and Mrs. Victor Dury, had been murdered years before in New Paltz, and his younger brother, Japheth, had supposedly been kidnapped by Indians and never found
Captain Frederick Miller—an Army officer serving at Fort Yates, ND; a decade earlier, he’d discharged Corporal Beecham to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital following an incident in Chicago
Charles H. Murray—superintendent of the Census Bureau in New York
Other Historic Figures
*Herman Webster Mudgett—aka “Dr. H. H. Holmes”; a serial killer on death row in Philadelphia (and reported executed in Chapter 26) whom Moore’s grandmother worries about; [find an account of Dr. H. H. Holmes’s murder spree, coinciding with the 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago, in Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City (2003)]
* Indicates real, historic persons; for interesting real-life backgrounds, check out their biographies in Wikipedia
