A Malevolent Fiend: Jack the Paint Thrower

    

This fashionable dress from 1895 was probably similar to one Bird Bulger wore.

Later, Bird Bulger said she had a premonition. It was a nice night in May and she was out promenading with her sweetheart, Montgomery “Mont” Orff. She had a beautiful new silk dress on, light-colored, her first time wearing it. 

     Clothing was much more expensive in the past, taking far more of a percentage of a family’s budget than it does today. Bird said the dress cost $65. To put that in perspective, Brooklyn schoolteachers with a year of experience in 1897 were paid $504 a year. An elevator boy in the courthouse made $408 a year. 

     For four months, since January 1894, Fort Wayne, Indiana had been plagued by someone the press called “Jack the Paint Thrower.” He would sneak up behind women in the dark and throw a mixture of oil and red paint on the back of their dresses, then slip away undetected. “For months, evening after evening on Calhoun street, the ladies of our city have had their dresses ruined with red paint which was thrown upon them, and heretofor all efforts to catch the perpetrator of this wanton act have signally failed,” a reporter wrote.

     It doesn’t take a modern-day psychologist to recognize the pathology and rage towards women that this demonstrates. It was recognized then for what it was. The Fort Wayne newspapers called the unknown assailant a pervert, and his actions those of “fiendish malevolence.” When the story ran over the Associated Press wire service nationally, editors called him a “mental and moral freak,” a miscreant, a ruffian, a “bad Indiana man who had a curious mania.”

     It was sometime between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m., on Harrison Street north of Main, when Sophia Bird Bulger, 22, known as Bird, noticed that a man was following them. She whispered her suspicions to her boyfriend Mont Orff. Any woman walking along the streets in town at night had started keeping her eyes out for this creepy guy. The man she noticed was short and heavyset.

     She pulled a glove off one hand and put it behind her back, pretending she needed to hold some of the skirt. She did this so she would feel anything splashing, she later said. After all, women didn’t even realize they’d been hit until later. They passed the Randall Hotel and crossed the Nickel Plate railroad tracks. They walked very slowly to give the man ample opportunity to pass them, if he was just another pedestrian. But when they slowed their walk, he did too, maintaining a distance of ten to fifteen feet behind them. 

     They crossed the Wells Street bridge where they lost track of the man. They walked about a block further when Bird became aware of his presence again. Just as they passed a saloon, she felt liquid splash on her hand and turned to see a man dodge into the saloon. Mont immediately ran inside and confronted the suspect. The man denied doing anything.

     “No, you are the man I want! You’ve got paint on your hands now!” Mont shouted. He grabbed the man by his collar and pulled him into the street. At the doorway Mont saw a boy looking on and thought he might be involved. In trying to also grab the protesting boy, the culprit escaped. Bird started off down the street following him. Thinking he wasn’t being watched, the man threw something down. Bird called to Mont to let the boy go, telling him he had the wrong person, and whom to catch. She picked up what the man threw. It was a small bottle with oil and red paint. 

     Mont caught the suspect again and marched him to the police station. The man gave his name: Charles  Roesenor. Another newspaper reported that his first name was Christian. He was a married man, a car inspector on the Pennsylvania railroad, living at 21 Savilla Avenue. In his pocket was a handkerchief saturated with the paint similar to that in the bottle. 

     “The arrest created great excitement and dire threats were made against the man,” a reporter wrote. A rival newspaper reported, “The arrest created as much sensation on the street last night as that of a murderer.” It was such an odd crime, and therefore not a surprise that it was picked up by the wire service. The article appeared all over the country, including places like Passaic, New Jersey; Davenport, Iowa and New York City.(1) Roesenor was charged with malicious trespass. If convicted, the penalty was only a small fine and a maximum of a year in jail, but hopefully that would be a deterrent. His father-in-law bailed him out on a $300 bond the next day. 

     The trial was held that October. Interest in the case was great, and people arrived early at the police court, packing the room. Roesenor arrived late with his wife and his attorney, W.K. Veasy. A reporter described Roesenor and his wife. “He is an ordinary looking fellow, fairly well dressed in dark clothes and has blue eyes and a light mustache. His face is round and ruddy and he probably weighs 200 pounds.” His wife was a “comely appearing young German woman, plainly but neatly dressed.”

     Mont Orff took the stand first, showing the shirt he wore that May night when he struggled with the man. It was stained with red finger prints along the cuffs. The bottle Bird picked up, a three-ounce vial with a residue of an oily red substance, was introduced as evidence. Bird testified that she was positive that Roesenor was the man who followed them and threw paint at her. 

     Her dress was introduced as evidence, and held up for the judge to see. “A murmur of surprise and indignation went over the room. The handsome gown was literally ruined. Great blotches of paint and oil a foot in diameter,” marred it, a newspaper account said. 

     Mrs. Will Heckman testified next. Three weeks earlier, she was walking by the south depot when a man came up behind her and spit tobacco juice all over the back of her dress. She was sure it was the same man before her in the courtroom. 

     Roesenor took the stand and denied all wrongdoing. He admitted following Bird and Mont, but said it was only because he was on business, going to see a fellow car inspector. His wife testified that he’d been home almost every night for the past three weeks. It was established by the prosecution that Roesenor was a car repairer and painter with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and in his job he used paint that looked exactly like the paint used in the attack on Bird.

     A great deal of stock was placed in the nineteenth century on being “respectable.” This was why great importance was placed on how one dressed. Being respectable and coming from a respectable family made it hard for others to believe that someone could do something bad. The urban poor, however, and whole groups such as blacks and the Irish, lacked respectability. The poor were referred to as the “dangerous classes,” and it was eminently believable, then, that a poor black or Irish person was guilty of wrongdoing. It was in their very nature. The middle class regarded it as their duty to teach the lower classes such virtues as honesty, thrift and a work ethic because it was assumed they were lacking in these areas. 

     Roesenor was “well known about town and has never been considered a mean fellow,” a reporter wrote. He was bound over on a sum of $500. 

     In the maddening way that was common of newspaper coverage of the past, nothing more was reported about Roesenor. In fact, his name never appeared in the city newspapers again. But “Jack the Paint Thrower” struck again. 

     In January 1895 Miss Sophia Brandt, a housekeeper for Miss Polly Schilling, attended a social event downtown. As she walked home, she noticed a man standing by the gate of a home. There was something about it that made her think of a peeping tom. She just had a feeling he had been looking in windows, and was now standing by the gate, trying to look casual and like he belonged there. She walked on a few blocks when the same man passed her. When she got home, she saw the back of her coat and her dress were covered with an oily red paint. The article said there hadn’t been enough evidence in an earlier case – clearly the Roesenor case, and that the police had no suspects. 

     It seems incredible, given what was reported, that the police court judge didn’t think there was enough evidence, but prosecutors settle all the time because juries are unpredictable. Maybe defense attorney Vessey was exceptionally skilled in creating doubt. Although this case wasn’t tried by jury, a Kansas editor said if women were allowed to serve on juries, Roesenor would be harshly dealt with. Roesenor’s seeming respectability - a reasonably well-dressed man with a wife and good job, well-known and not considered mean - probably worked in his favor.

     After that, there were no more mentions of paint throwing in the press. A Charles Roesener was living in Indianapolis in 1896. It would make sense that the Roesenors would want to get out of town. 

     Bird and Mont married in November 1894, just after the trial. The marriage evidently was brief and Bird married again in Chicago in May 1896. 

1. Most newspapers ran the same brief version of the story. Others added editorial commentary. Quite a few had errors, such as saying the paint thrower plagued the city for two years instead of four months. This newspaper also said some forty Fort Wayne women were the victim of the paint thrower. I wish the Fort Wayne newspapers provided a number. Roesenor's name was changed to Reasoner and Seasoner; Bird's name was changed to Dottie. Roesenor was also reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as the owner of a fine, handsome house, something never mentioned in Fort Wayne. Several said Roesenor was married and "had a large family," while one said he had a baby. Neither were mentioned in the Fort Wayne press. Other versions of the story presented Bird in a very passive way and had Mont noticing the man's presence and single-handedly capturing him, when the local papers had details about key ways Bird participated in catching him.

Family Note: Sophia Bird Bulger was born in Fort Wayne in 1872, the daughter of Eliza “Lida” Bird and Martin Bulger. Her father was, at one time, a well-to-do grocer, though by the time of the story, her mother divorced her father for "failure to provide." She was the granddaughter of Ochmig Bird and Ann Suttenfield.

Ann Suttenfield was the sister of my great-great-great grandmother, Jane Suttenfield. Bird was Jane’s great-niece. She was the second member of the family who went by the name Bird. Jane and Ann had a nephew named Bird Suttenfield, who I wrote about in “Bird Suttenfield, Ella and the Foundling.” 

Mrs. Will Heckman, who also testified at the trial, is another member of the family. She was Alice Elizabeth Hanna. Her grandmother was Eliza Taylor Hanna, who I wrote about in "Eliza's House." Eliza's sister, Laura Taylor Suttenfield, was Bird's great-grandmother.

     Bird Bulger’s trail grows cold after 1911 when she inherited money from her mother; I simply couldn’t find anything else about her or her second husband Lewis Strader. Mont Orff, son of a prominent miller and dry goods merchant, died sometime before 1910.

Side note: The city of Fort Wayne purchased a plot of land from Mont's father, John Orff in 1892 and created Orff Park, site of the Old Aqueduct Memorial, still standing today.

Sources:

     “Caught In the Act. Jack, the Paint Thrower, Is Caught By Mont Orff,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, 27 May 1894, p. 5. 

     “Paint Fiend Caught. Christian Roesenor on Trial For Ruining Ladies’ Dresses,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, 28 May 1894, p. 1. 

     “Jack, The Paint Thrower. Capture of a Man From Whom Fort Wayne Ladies Have Suffered,” Indianapolis Journal, 28 May 1894, p. 2. 

"Jack the Paint Thrower," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 28 May 1894, p. 3.

     Mental and Moral Freak and Women Jurors: Emporia Daily Republican (Emporia, Kansas), 2 June 1894, p. 2. 

     “Another Jack. Miss Sophia Brandt’s Dress Smeared With Paint. The Costume Ruined. Followed By Fiend,” Fort Wayne News, 10 Jan 1895, p. 1.

     “Teachers’ Pay. Women Instructors in the Public Schools,” The Standard Union (Brooklyn, New York), 1 March 1897, p. 1. 

Copyright Andrea Auclair  © 2023