My first inquiry was in the direction of original sources. I sought out
the man in the district attorney's office who had had the widest general
experience and put the question to him. This was Mr. Charles C. Nott,
Jr., (now judge of the General Sessions) who had been trying murder
cases for nearly ten years. It so happened that he had kept a complete
record of all of them and this he courteously placed at my disposal. The
list contains sixty-two cases, and the defendants were of divers races.
These homicides included seventeen committed in cold blood (about
twenty-five per cent, an extraordinary percentage) from varying motives,
as follows: One defendant (white) murdered his colored mistress simply
to get rid of her; another killed out of revenge because the deceased
had "licked" him several times before; another, having quarrelled
with his friend over a glass of soda water, later on returned and
precipitated a quarrel by striking him, in the course of which he killed
him; another because the deceased had induced his wife to desert him;
another lay in wait for his victim and killed him without the motive
ever being ascertained; one man killed his brother to get a sum of
money, and another because his brother would not give him money; another
because he believed the deceased had betrayed the Armenian cause to the
Turks; another because he wished to get the deceased out of the way in
order to marry his wife; and another because deceased had knocked him
down the day before. One man had killed a girl who had ridiculed him;
and one a girl who had refused to marry him; another had killed his
daughter because she could no longer live in the house with him; one, an
informer, had been the victim of a Black Hand vendetta; and the last
had poisoned his wife for the insurance money in order to go off with
another woman. There were two cases of infanticide, one in which a woman
threw her baby into the lake in Central Park, and another in which she
gave her baby poison. Besides these murders, five homicides had been
committed in the course of perpetrating other crimes, including burglary
and robbery.

Passing over three cases of culpable negligence resulting in death, we
come to thirty-seven homicides during quarrels, some of which might have
been technically classified as murders, but which being committed
"in the heat of passion," in practically every instance resulted in a
verdict of manslaughter. The quarrels often arose over