Captain Joseph Sonnenberg was about to go off duty when the phone rang. Monday, April 23, 1951, had been a busy day, and he was anxious to get home and relax. The moment he picked up the receiver, however, he knew he wasn’t getting any sleep that night.
“Yeah, I got the address,” he said. “Eleven thirty-nine Saint Philip Street, ground floor. Okay, we’ll be right out. In the meantime don’t touch anything.”
Ten minutes later he was standing over the body of a woman in her early 20’s. The fully clothed victim lay face up on the kitchen floor. Tied around her throat in a vicious knot was a short piece of rope. An empty ice tray lay close to her left hand.
Sonnenberg looked up as a bevy of officers entered the room. Captain Dowie, a stocky, florid-faced man, was in the lead, closely followed by two members of his homicide squad, Detectives Arthur Jordan and Allen Dupre. The quartet was studying the body when Coroner Gillespie arrived.
They waited while the medical man made a cursory examination of the dead woman. Finally, he looked up. “Dead about an hour, no more,” he said tersely. “As you can see, she was strangled.”
“Did she put up a fight?” asked Dowie.
Dr. Gillespie examined the dead woman’s hands. “There’s no indication of it.” He pointed to a wet spot on the floor near the ice-cube tray. “She was probably removing the tray from the Frigidaire when her murderer came up behind her and slipped the rope over her head. She didn’t have a chance.”
Dowie nodded. The medical man’s theory made sense. “What do you know about her, Cap?” he asked, turning to Sonnenberg.
“Not much. Her name is Mrs. Mary Balli. She’s 20 years old, married and has a two-year-old son, Joseph, Junior. Her husband’s name is Joseph Balli. He’s a cab driver.”
“Where is he?”
Sonnenberg shrugged. “According to Mrs. Lena Martinez, the dead woman’s sister who lives upstairs, Balli takes his cab out every morning and doesn’t get home until around six P.M.”
Dowie checked his watch. “It’s almost six now. Maybe he can tell us what this is all about when he gets here.”
Leaving Sonnenberg to look after things, Dowie climbed a short flight of carpeted stairs to question the victim’s sister, Mrs. Martinez. The latter, who bore a remarkable resemblance to the dead woman, seemed stunned by the tragedy. She said that as far as she knew, her sister had no enemies. On the contrary, she was quite popular in the neighborhood.
“How did she and Mr. Balli get along?”
Mrs. Martinez hesitated. “All right, I guess. They had their spats like other married folks, but nothing serious.”
“Any arguments between them lately?”
“No, not that I know of.”
Mrs. Martinez explained that her sister met Balli in Galveston shortly after his divorce from his first wife in 1945. Balli was a truck driver then, working at the Navy Air Base in Hitchcock, Texas. They had moved to New Orleans five years ago, but had only been living in the murder house a month.
“Did you find the body?” inquired Dowie.
“No, a man named Robert Williams found Mary. He lives up the street.”
Mrs. Martinez revealed that her sister was employed as a machine operator in a textile mill a few blocks from the house. Because work at the plant was slack, she’d said she hadn’t bothered to report for duty that morning.
“How did your sister get along with the other girls?” probed Dowie.
Mrs. Martinez frowned. “Come to think of it, she did have a fight with one of the girls a while back. The other girl was let go because of it.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know her last name. Her first name’s Stella.”
When Mrs. Martinez promised to check her sister’s things to see if anything was missing, Dowie thanked her and left. He found Williams, a personable young man in his early twenties, on the porch. Questioning him closely, Dowie learned that he had been brought to the house by two neighborhood children.
“They stopped me on the street and said something about a lady being dead, so I followed them into the house,” said Williams. “When I saw they were telling the truth, I called the police.”
“Was there anyone loitering around the house before you found the body?”
“No, sir.”
Dowie took Williams’s name and address and excused him with thanks. He then talked to the two children. They said they were playing in the hall when they noticed that the door to the Balli apartment was open. When they investigated they found Mrs. Balli’s body. Like Williams, they saw no one hanging around the house prior to their finding the body.
Dowie thanked them and rejoined Sonnenberg in the kitchen. He found the precinct captain studying the short piece of rope which was used to murder Mrs. Balli.
“Make anything out of it?” inquired Dowie.
“Not much,” replied Sonnenberg glumly. “It’s about three and a half feet long and has been recently cut from a longer piece. However, it’s ordinary clothesline rope, which practically makes it impossible to trace.”
A thorough search of the premises failed to uncover any additional clues. It wasn’t until they examined the hall outside the Balli apartment that they got their second lead, an odd-shaped piece of worn leather.
“It’s a lift from a woman’s spike heel,” said Sonnenberg quickly.
“It certainly doesn’t belong to Mrs. Balli,” said Dowie. “She was wearing low-heeled sandals.”
Nor did a check of the slain woman’s wardrobe reveal a pair of high-heel shoes. Examination of Mrs. Martinez’s shoe rack also proved entirely unproductive.
“Maybe a woman killed Mrs. Balli?” suggested Sonnenberg.
“It’s possible,” agreed Dowie. “It doesn’t take much strength once you’ve got the rope around your victim’s neck. However, we know it’s got to be someone who Mrs. Balli trusted enough to turn her back on.”
“Maybe she was going with some guy and his wife got sore. I’ve known women to kill for less.”
“It’s a good angle,” nodded Dowie. “Suppose we talk to a few of the neighbors? They may have seen something.”
They did. A woman who lived across the street from the Ballis said that she saw a pretty redhead enter the murder house about an hour or so before the police arrived.
“How long did she stay?” pressed Dowie.
“Five, ten minutes. I can’t be sure.”
“Can you describe her?”
“I think so. She was about five feet eight in spike-heeled shoes. She was wearing a white linen dress and carried a large patent leather handbag. She was about twenty-three years old.”
The woman added that the redhaired woman appeared somewhat agitated when she left.
Another neighbor said that she was looking out the window when a taxi stopped before the house around three o’clock and Mrs. Balli got out. After talking to the driver for a few minutes the two of them went inside. He emerged five minutes later and drove off.
“Did you notice what kind of cab it was?” asked Dowie.
“Yes, it was a Red Top.”
Their informant said the cabbie was about medium height and weight, somewhere in his late twenties, and good looking.
Dowie jotted down the information and left. Outside, he said: “Suspects are popping all over the place. The redheaded woman and the cabbie had good opportunities, and we mustn’t overlook the husband.”
“Whoever did it knew Mrs. Balli wasn’t going in to work today,” said Sonnenberg thoughtfully. “Which means it could be an inside job.”