The McCurdy Mystery
The Long-Forgotten Story of Archibald
Wool whipcord pants, sealskin sacques, chiffon broadcloth, silk habotai and taffeta: The finest fabrics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries resided within the confines of the multi-story McCurdy Brothers’ department store. Situated at the corner of Front Street and Susquehanna Avenue in Kensington, McCurdy’s was known for drawing crowds. Their fall and spring showcases attracted throngs of shoppers eager to lay eyes on the season’s offerings. Though not as sprawling and ornate as the John Wanamaker or Gimbel Brothers’ stores in Center City, McCurdy’s was a neighborhood staple that enjoyed a level of success most shop owners would envy. Life was seemingly good for the McCurdy family — until it wasn’t.
On February 20th, 1903, shortly before midnight, two plainclothes officers noticed the unlocked rear door of McCurdy’s while on foot patrol. Having known the store’s night watchman on a first name basis, they threw the door open and shouted his name into the void. Darkness and echoes were expected at such a late hour, but a non-response from the watchman concerned the officers enough to make them step inside. Upon reaching the cashier’s desk, which was situated over the cellar stairs in the center of the store, they made a grim discovery: A man’s lifeless body was slouched over, head planted on the cellar floor where blood poured from a gunshot wound inflicted behind his left ear. Although there were no signs of forced entry of the premises, this was certainly no suicide. No gun was found at the scene and the store’s cash register had been pried open and relieved of its change box. Night watchman Archibald McCurdy had been shot and killed in an apparent robbery.
Archibald, known as Archie, immigrated to Philadelphia from Ireland as a teenager. One of eleven children, he had been employed by his brothers, store owners James and Samuel McCurdy. Only 47 at the time of his death, he was known as a quiet man who never drank, made few friends, and had never been married. He lived with his father a short walk away on the 2000 block of Susquehanna Avenue. Archie prided himself on his physical strength so much that he refused to carry a weapon for his job duties. He had no known enemies or lifestyle habits that would have explicitly made him the target of a murder.
Detectives’ initial conjecture was that Archie heard the men rustling about downstairs and was shot when he went to apprehend them. However, information garnered from the crime scene suggested that Archie had been ambushed just as he was about to exit the cellar. He never received the opportunity to face his killers because they most likely entered the store sometime before closing and secreted themselves. The last person to see Archie alive was the closing cashier who locked up the register for the night before heading home. The store was left virtually untouched aside from that register — it had been forced open with a hand tool and roughly $50 in coins were missing. Due to a lack of eyewitnesses, detectives relied on this key piece of circumstantial evidence to jumpstart their investigation.
Professional thieves were not known to resort to such drastic efforts to make off with only $50 in change. A store like McCurdy’s was full of valuable inventory; its textiles and garments would have made for a formidable heist. Kensington had been plagued by a string of petty robberies as of late and police were certain that this was the sloppy work of yet another amateur.
Petty thieves were known to circulate money in places like the Tenderloin district — an area rife with opium dens, bars, gambling halls, minstrel shows, penny peep shows, and various other vices and forms of cheap entertainment. Almost by default it became one of the first areas canvassed by detectives. Search efforts were also concentrated in the blocks surrounding McCurdy’s and the rest of the Front Street commercial corridor. The area was notoriously seedy and home to a number of local street gangs and small-time crooks.
Police’s fervent desire to bring Archie’s killers to justice consequently opened the door to questionable investigation tactics. In addition to their haphazard sweeps of Tenderloin and Kensington, police also enlisted the help of merchants and eager tipsters. Shopkeepers were ordered to report any customers in possession of unusually large quantities of coins. One tip led to the detainment of a man previously convicted of robbery and assault. Archie was rumored to have contributed to a past arrest of the man which potentially would have triggered him to seek revenge. Many of those arrested and detained were still kept under surveillance after their release. A trolley motorman even claimed to have seen three black men near the store the night of the murder. His tip led to sweeps of lodging houses frequented by black dwellers on Lombard Street, and a black man and boy were subsequently arrested and questioned. Descriptions of the alleged black suspects were also telegraphed to police departments as far north as New York City and south as Baltimore.
Within a week of the murder, police managed to detain and question some eighteen people. Within two weeks, police superintendent Harry Quirk claimed that not only had the killers been found, but that the case was also solved.
For now, their desperation was quelled. The break they so desperately sought came from Kensington resident John Sundermeier, one of the many persons of interest rounded up in the aftermath of the murder. He claimed the killer confessed to him following “a drunken orgy” that took place in a home on Waterloo Street near Lehigh Avenue. According to Sundermeier, Harry Sifton was the man who fired the fatal shot. Sifton’s alleged accomplice was Mike Hefferin, colloquially known as, “Big Mike.”
Sifton and Big Mike were no strangers police — they were well-known troublemakers and career criminals who belonged to a Kensington street gang known as “The Battle of Waterloo.” In fact, Big Mike had been arrested just 24 hours after Archie’s murder. He was released shortly after but kept under close surveillance. With witnesses and suspects in custody, the date for the first court hearing was set.
“I can’t get that face out of my sight, I can see him wherever I go.”
The rumor mill surrounding the case drove anticipation for the hearing so high that a large crowd gathered outside the court with hopes of receiving a sensational murder story. Inside, the judge cleared the usual docket of disorderly drunks so quickly they barely had time to process their luck. When the moment of truth finally arrived, John Sundermeier was called to the stand. His account went as such:
After a night of beer, whiskey, and women, an intoxicated and guilt-wracked Harry Sifton broke down and confessed to shooting Archie. “I can’t get that face out of my sight, I can see him wherever I go,” said Sifton, through a fit of tears. Sundermeier prodded some more; Sifton continued. He allegedly confirmed that he was the gunman and began to lay out the sequence of events that transpired on February 20th. Earlier that afternoon, he and Big Mike purchased guns from the nearby W.A. Strange hardware store. After obtaining the weapons they walked into McCurdy’s and hid out in the cellar until the night watchman was alone (Sifton was said to have once held menial employment at McCurdy’s and possessed knowledge of the store’s routines). When Archie completed his cellar inspection, Sifton emerged from the shadows and shot him from behind at close range. He and Big Mike stole $52 in coins from the cash register and fled through the store’s rear door. They tossed their guns into a sewer inlet before running north up Front Street.
Sundermeier claimed to have spoken to Sifton a few days after his confession. Both parties now sober, he asked again about Archie. Sundermeier said that Sifton promptly denied having ever confessed to anything.
While certainly a strong tale outside a court of law, Sundermeier’s account was hearsay at best; it was not nearly enough to incriminate either man. Attorney John McLean, who represented Sifton and Big Mike, immediately took to the task of scrutinizing the testimony. McLean first asked for the approximate time that the meeting in the house took place, which Sundermeier was unable provide. Next, McLean got Sundermeier to reiterate that he was intoxicated during the entire ordeal. Sundermeier then admitted that he did not immediately report the confession to police but instead asked a friend for advice on what he should do. He only came forth with the confession after he saw one of the women present in the house with them that night speaking to a detective. McLean dismissed the testimony as a “secondhand confession of a drunken man.”
The prosecution’s inability to procure corroborating evidence slowly eroded the case. The murder weapon had yet to be found, even after police ordered the dredging of every sewer inlet around McCurdy’s. Shopkeeper W.A. Strange could not confirm whether or not the men had ever entered his store to purchase firearms. The missing cash register box was reportedly found at (what used to be) the intersection of Bodine Street and Susquehanna Avenue, but the killers were said to have fled up Front Street. None of their findings supported Sundermeier’s story.
With each passing day the case continued to flounder and the resolve of the prosecution waned. Two detectives even admitted in private that they believed the case was on the verge of collapse. Despite the weak evidence, prosecutors managed to keep Sifton and Big Mike detained for several more weeks. Police continued to follow up on tips and brought in a few supposed witnesses, none of whom could positively identify the men and link them to the crime scene. In April, a milkman discovered the alleged murder weapon under a platform at the Reading Railroad milk depot, near Bodine and Norris Streets. While stooping down to retrieve a dropped pencil, he spotted the rusted revolver under the rail platform. Unfortunately, it would still not be enough to tie the Battle of Waterloo members to Archie McCurdy’s murder.
After dominating headlines for nearly three months, the plug was inevitably pulled on the case. All of the commotion, anticipation, and hype was suddenly nonexistent. Left in its wake was a cold case and a disappointed family forced to deal with the harsh reality that justice and closure would never come their way. In July 1903, the McCurdy Brothers’ store moved two blocks north to the corner of Front and York Streets. Six years later, they weathered another massive blow in the form of a large fire that ripped through the building’s top floor. The inferno obliterated everything in its immediate path and the water required to extinguish it flooded the rest of the building. $100,000 (approximately $3 million in 2021 dollars) worth of damage was inflicted upon the store. Now involuntarily well-versed in picking up the pieces after tragedy, the McCurdy family immediately commenced repairs to their store. Business eventually resumed.
As for murder suspects Harry Sifton and Big Mike? Well, they both stayed true to their troublemaking roots. Big Mike was arrested in July 1904 for running a counterfeit coin operation from his Kensington residence. He lodged with a woman named Vernie Curren and her 9 and 15 year old daughters. Mike used the fake coins to compensate Vernie for his lodging. She and her daughters spent them at local merchants who eventually became aware of the proliferation of bogus coins circulating their shops. Vernie and her daughters were arrested when the 15 year old attempted to spend a fake half-dollar coin. They were all charged with willfully and maliciously passing counterfeit coins, a distinction that earned them a visit from the Secret Service. Officers searched the home and recovered an apparatus and molds to make fake coins. Vernie implicated Big Mike, who had already skipped town upon learning of the ladies’ arrests. A warrant was issued for his arrest and he was captured three weeks later in Edgemoor, Delaware.
In May 1903, only two months removed from the thick of the McCurdy case, Sifton was sentenced to a year in Holmesburg prison for drunkenly assaulting his parents. Never one to be outdone, he would mastermind a successful escape from the facility. His prison-breaking wizardry was executed with the help of a makeshift saw created from a butcher’s knife and several bars of soap. After cutting out the dirty iron grate of a washroom window, he used it to blacken soap which was then fashioned into imitation grating. He and eight other inmates squeezed through the 20-inch window and dropped 30 feet below to their freedom. Oddly enough, Sifton had only a few months left to serve at the time of his escape. Some of the other escapees had only a day or two left to serve on their sentences. In 1908, Sifton was arrested and jailed again for stealing a gas meter from a residence.
James McCurdy passed away on April 25th, 1929 at the age of 75. His Front and York store would host a number of tenants in the following decades. The structure still stood at the corner until 2000, when a tract of land bound by Front, York, Howard, and Cumberland Streets was acquired by the School District of Philadelphia via eminent domain. All of the remaining properties were razed to make way for Hunter Elementary School.