The 226 year old unsolved NYC murder case of Elma sands

The Murder of Elma Sands

In a boarding house such as the one the Rings owned, it wasn’t unusual for two boarders to stand closely together to exchange whispers somewhere free from the ears of others. If the relationship between Levi Weeks and Elma Sands, both young and unmarried boarders at the Ring house, had been exclusive to a few stolen moments at the end of a hallway, then none would have had much to say. The end of a hallway, top of a stairwell, or corner of a common room would make for a fine place to chatter in hushed whispers. In the midst of boarders rushing to and from their daily tasks — and the creaking floorboards they walked over — there was always plenty to discuss and gossip about.

But according to fellow boarders, and one in particular, named Mr. Croucher, the flirtation wasn’t exclusive to the odd, less trafficked corner of the house. It didn’t stop at hurried, low-toned flirtations, either. Mr. Croucher offered that he “saw them [Levi and Elma] in a very intimate situation.” Despite the tryst, other boarders swore Elma Sands wasn’t the only one to whom Levi Weeks paid special attention. Apparently, he paid very special attention to her cousin, Hope, too. But Levi’s split interest almost feels fair once you hear that Elma was apparently having an affair with the boarding house owner, Elias Ring.

This last detail is made even more salacious when one learns that Elias Ring was married to Catherine Ring — Elma’s own cousin.

If such things were to be believed, or even speculated, then it may have come as a welcome relief to Catherine Ring that her cousin, Elma, left parentless and now living in her boarding house, was engaged to Levi Weeks.

On December 22, 1799, Elma and Levi were to be married in secret. At least that’s what Elma told her cousin, Hope, the day before. Hope then relayed the information to Catherine. It wasn’t a bad match, really. Elma was a twenty-two-year-old young woman who worked in the store the Rings operated near the boarding house. Levi Weeks was a carpenter who, by almost all accounts, was a good and kind man. I picture him as having a bowl cut and wearing a straw hat, but that’s probably because his name is Levi. For the purposes of this article, let’s picture them as both young and hot — physically in their prime.

That December evening was brutally frigid, with plenty of snow on the ground. The sharp lashing of the wind numbed the face and stung the ears. Both the East River and the Hudson had begun to freeze over. I wouldn’t have left my home to get life-saving medication in that weather, let alone marry a guy named Levi. But I digress.

Elma decided to wear a shawl — Canada Goose hadn’t been invented yet — and borrowed a muff from a neighbor. Catherine Ring had never seen Elma happier than on that evening of December 22nd. Cold snap be damned, she was lively and in high spirits. Around eight o’clock, Catherine bid her goodnight and went upstairs to sleep. Perhaps as she lay down for bed, a warm smile spread across her face. Or perhaps her heart raced just a bit, nervous for her cousin’s impending secret ceremony. The next time she would see Elma, she would be married to Levi Weeks.

But December 22nd was the last time anybody saw Elma Sands alive.

Eleven Tense Days

It’s uncertain if Levi and Elma left the Ring boarding house together that night. But later in the evening on December 22nd, Levi returned home. Elma did not. Upon his return — and even into the next morning — Levi appeared as he usually did: unconcerned. There was nothing to worry about.

Worry and tension began to grow throughout the day among Elma’s family. For certain, they grew disgusted and frustrated at Levi’s nonchalance. Didn’t he care where his supposed wife was? As the hours passed, Levi had to have heard the growing concern among the family. At some point he decided to leave the Ring house. Catherine stopped him. Wasn’t he worried that his alleged wife, or at least fiancée, was missing going on twenty-four hours now?

Evidently, that was the first time Levi Weeks had been informed that he was supposed to have married Elma. Looking around at the faces of Hope, Elias, and Catherine, he made a gut-punch realization: they all believed he had proposed marriage to Elma, and that the two were to have been married the prior evening. Levi had to have realized this didn’t look good. At that moment, “...he turned pale; trembled to a great degree; was much agitated, and began to cry, clapping his hands together, cried out I’m ruined – I’m ruined – I’m undone forever, unless she appears to clear me…”

Who would believe him? Levi expressed that he had not asked Elma to marry him. He would never have done so without his brother Ezra’s approval.

Elias Ring straight up told Levi that he believed he was guilty. Levi “...appeared as white as ashes, and trembled all over like a leaf.”

The days crawled by, and Elma Sands still did not return home. Catherine Ring was distraught. Being disturbed by her grief, Levi offered some chilling words on December 26th: he said he strongly felt Elma was dead and in heaven, and that Catherine’s mourning would not bring her back. When Catherine asked why Levi would say such a thing, he stated that he heard Elma say she wished she had never existed.

Elma’s Body Is Discovered

On January 2nd, 1800, the body of Elma Sands was finally found.

It was discovered at the bottom of a well in Greenwich Village — at the time a semi-rural area called Lispenard Meadow. On the evening Elma somehow wound up at the well, there would have been scattered houses and snow-covered roads. It would have been starkly quiet, given the rural surroundings and excruciatingly cold weather. Some claimed to have heard a woman screaming for “mercy” and shouts of “murder” near the well that night.

Elma’s body was bruised on her neck and shoulders. She looked severely beaten. Her hair hung loose, her face discolored and swollen. To most, the markings were definitive proof she’d been murdered before being thrown into the well. Still, forensic science didn’t exist in 1800 — and some reports suggest those marks could have been caused by the rope used to pull her from the well. Eleven days in a well would do heinous things to anyone’s body.

The Ring family belonged to the Quaker community. Quakers are pretty anti-performance. Laying out a body for public viewing isn’t done. But Catherine and Elias made the decision to put Elma’s body on display. Her corpse — smelling, deteriorating, and brutalized — was put outside the home for public viewing in an open casket for three days. Crowds swelled.

According to the family, Levi was the last person to see Elma alive. Needing someone to identify her body, and given the accusation from the Ring family, authorities called upon Levi Weeks. Allegedly, Levi asked if Elma’s body had been found in the well in Lispenard’s Meadow — and was arrested shortly after. After all, how would he have known she was killed and dumped into that well?

America’s first recorded murder trial was underway three months later.

The Trial

The courthouse was packed and spectators stood around the courthouse when they couldn’t get inside. Levi Weeks didn’t just face a trial of jury by his peers, he stood up against a city of people who already strongly felt that he was guilty and wanted to see him hanged.

The prosecution team — Cadwallader D. Colden and DeWitt Clinton (yes, both future NYC mayors) — was dull compared to the defense. They tried to prove something about Ezra Weeks’s sleigh: that it was one of the only sleighs in town with a jingle bell, and that witnesses who heard a sleigh near the well that night heard its distinctive bell. But none of it mattered. Nothing could be proven, only speculated. The whole Frosty the Snowman of forensic evidence.

Were Elma and Levi an item at the time of her murder? Despite what Levi said, everyone seemed to think so. Mr. Croucher offered his piece with the following testimony:

“...in private frequently and all times of the night, I knew him [Levi] to pass two whole nights in her bedroom…I saw the prisoner at the bar [Levi] come out of her room, and pass the door in his shirt only, to his own room.”

Croucher was a weirdo and gave everyone in the house bad vibes. Allegedly, he left New York after the trial and pursued a life of crime in Virginia and England. There’s an allegation of child rape against him too, but no official records exist. Croucher and Levi had words once on the staircase of the Ring house. Evidently, there was a time when Croucher passed Elma on the stairs and she “cried ah and fainted away.”

Levi comes out from his room and says something to the effect of this “not being the first time you insulted Elma.” After a few exchanges, the matter was dropped. Croucher maintains that despite the hiccup, he wished Levi no ill will.

Hope Sands straight up threw the pair under the horse and carriage. During the trial, she had been asked if she observed any acts of intimacy between Levi and Elma. From the transcript:

“I then found Levi and Elma together in her bed-room...I left my shoes at the bottom of [the stairs], and went softly up to listen...I heard whispering and staid at the door a long time, more than an hour.”

Hope then ran downstairs when she heard someone coming. It was the doctor who had come to attend to Elma. Elma Sands had suffered from “cramps of the stomach” for about a year. There’s a novel that recently fictionalized this story and posits the stomach cramps as a miscarriage — interesting, saucy perspective, but with little to no merit.

This same episode was confirmed by another witness, Margaret Clark.

But there’s another matter the two didn’t see eye to eye on: there was speculation that Levi and Hope had a situationship.

Hope testified that Levi wasn’t particular to her as he was to Elma — they’d gone to church together and once stopped at Ezra’s house. That was it. Margaret Clark testified that, though often absent from the house, she believed Levi paid more attention to Hope than to Elma.

Was Levi Weeks really just a fuck boy?

Some witnesses reportedly saw Levi probing the well days before the murder to see how deep it was — though there’s no definitive proof.

Here’s a detail with a lot of speculation: during Catherine Ring’s testimony, her husband Elias was asked to leave. Halfway through, he apparently decided, who the hell were these people to keep him from hearing his wife? He came back in, stood behind Catherine, but was reprimanded and ushered out.

I haven’t found a definitive reason for Elias’s initial removal from the courtroom, but the testimony from another boarder, Joseph Watkins, is interesting. Watkins said that when Catherine left the city to escape yellow fever, things got rowdy. One night, he heard noise and the bed shaking in Elma’s room, which was above his. He heard a man and woman’s voices — and it wasn’t Levi’s. He knew it wasn’t, because Levi’s was low and soft. In fact, he knew it was Elias Ring’s because it was high and loud. Watkins told his wife that Elma would be ruined. Asked how many times he heard such noises in Catherine’s absence, he said between eight and fourteen times.

When cross-examined and asked if Hope had reason to believe Elma had been intimate with anyone besides Levi, Hope answered, “Never.”

Elias said nothing on that matter but countered with this:

“At this time, when my wife was gone into the country, Levi and Elma were constantly together in private. I was alone and very lonesome, and was induced to believe from their conduct that they were shortly to be married.”

Around midnight, he said, “I heard a talking and noise in his room. In the morning, I went up into the room and found the bed tumbled, and Elma’s clothes, which she wore in the afternoon, lying on the bed.” When pressed further — did Elma leave his room naked? — Elias clarified that she’d left only part of her clothes behind.

Catherine added:

“After my return I paid strict attention to their conduct, and saw an appearance of mutual attachment, but nothing improper…”

According to nearly everyone, Levi and Elma were definitely entangled. It only gets crazier.

Levi later asked Hope to vouch for him — to go to the Alderman’s office and sign a paper stating he’d paid no more attention to Elma than any other woman in the house. Hope said she couldn’t sign it because it would have been “positive lies.”

Not looking good for Levi. But good thing he had the most insane defense team ever.

Ezra Weeks managed to secure quite the dream team: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Henry Brock Livingston. Hamilton owed Ezra money for building The Grange; Burr joined to protect the reputation of his Manhattan Company — the very one that dug the well where Elma’s body was found. Why were the Founding Fathers always involved in like 700 things? Founding ADHD?

One of the defense’s major arguments was that Elma had been prescribed laudanum and allegedly threatened to drink enough to kill herself. Depending on the source, this story changes — in some, Levi heard her say it; in others, a friend did. The testimony suggests Elma said it at the dinner table. Still, the defense used it to sow doubt in jurors’ minds: perhaps Elma’s death was suicide, not murder.

As for Levi’s comment about the well — he’d heard neighbors discussing that Elma’s shawl (borrowed from a neighbor) was found near it. When he heard her body had been found, he asked if it was that well.

There’s plenty of salacious testimony, but none of it definitively proved Levi Weeks murdered Elma Sands. The prosecution lacked motive, and the evidence was circumstantial. A medical exam revealed Elma wasn’t pregnant.

Levi Weeks was found not guilty. Absolutely nobody in New York was happy to see him walk free. He left the Empire State, moved around several times, and eventually settled in Mississippi. More so than the ghost of Elma who might haunt lower Manhattan, the specter of that trial haunted Levi Weeks the rest of his days.

The so-called “Murder Well” still exists — buried somewhere beneath Manhattan’s cobblestones, another ghost under a city built on gossip, tragedy, and too many people living under one roof.

Bibliography

Colden, Cadwallader D., DeWitt Clinton, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Henry Brockholst Livingston. The Trial of Levi Weeks for the Murder of Gulielma Sands. New York: John Furman, 1800. Digitized transcript available via the Library of Congress.

Editor’s Note:

This article has been cross published with Wanton Republic.