Richard Parmelee Robinson Trial: 1836

Brink and Noble questioned brothel proprietor Rosina Townsend, her "girls," and their Saturday night "guests." Most Saturday evenings, they learned, 23-year-old Helen Jewett entertained a man known as Bill Easy. But on April 9 she had told Townsend not to send Easy to her. Instead, between nine and ten o'clock, another young gent who was also a frequent visitor, Frank Rivers, had been admitted. An hour later, when Townsend delivered a bottle of champagne ordered by Jewett, she saw the back of Rivers's head as he relaxed in Jewett's bed. No other man had called to see Jewett. No one had seen Rivers depart. Townsend had discovered the fire, and the body, after a late-arriving customer knocked at the street door.

Brink and Noble soon learned Rivers's business address and his real name: Richard Parmelee Robinson. The 19-year-old son of a Connecticut landowner and state legislator, he was living in a crowded boardinghouse while clerking in a big-city store to learn business. The investigators also learned that Bill Easy was really another young clerk, George P. Marston, whose father was a lawyer and judge in Massachusetts.

At the boardinghouse, Brink and Noble awakened Robinson and his roommate, James Tew. The watchmen escorted both to the crime scene, which Robinson viewed with, they thought, surprising composure. The roommates said they had gone together to Townsend's the night before. Tew said he lingered there briefly, then went home and to bed, leaving Robinson, who insisted he had returned home by eleven thirty.

A coroner's jury quickly concluded that "… Helen Jewett came to her death by a blow or blows inflicted on the head, with a hatchett [sic] by the hand of Richard P. Robinson." The accused was jailed.