Dark Will Find You: The Forgotten Death of Frank Byrnes
I am compelled to write this story — this murder of three people in New York — not because it’s sad, heinous, pointless, troubling, or anything along those lines, which it most certainly is. I am compelled because one player in this tragedy is unremembered, no one recalls his name; a British guy with bad hearing who chose the right place to be a border, but the wrong time to board, through no fault of his own.
March 28th, 1937. Easter Sunday. 216 East 50th Street, New York. The temperature was about 34 degrees. Gas coast 10 cents a gallon back then. The 17th Precinct responds to a crime scene at this address. And it is most certainly a violent crime. Three people are dead, killed inside an apartment building on the 4th floor. Mary Gedeon, her daughter Veronica (commonly called Ronnie) and Frank Byrnes, a guy who rented a room from Mary.
Long story short: Robert Irwin was infatuated with Ronnie’s sister, Ethel. He goes to Mary’s apartment to see Ethel because he planned to kill her, and he mistakenly believed that Ethel still lived there. She didn’t. He stays in the apartment a long time and finally Mary and Irwin have an argument and Irwin kills her. The front door opens, Ronnie comes home, and he kills Ronnie. Believing that the border, who was asleep in his room must have heard all the commotion, Irwin sneaks into Frank Byrnes’ room and stabs him about the neck and face, 11 times. Byrnes, most probably did not hear the commotion that Irwin caused. Frank was sleeping on his side, his bad/deaf ear upwards. He never saw the end coming; he never heard his death approach in the night.
Ronnie was known to the public in that she posed, scantily, for cheap detective magazines like True Detective, and Inside Detective, all of which used highly stylized images on their covers — and shameful headlines — all in order to sell true crime stories. Media reports of the day captivated the county and they all mentioned Ronnie, Ethel, Mary and Irwin. They merely wrote the name Frank Byrnes. Frank was a nobody, an unknown, a pawn in a chess game of valued kings and queens, bishops and rooks, the kind of players that mattered. The Chicago Tribune reported on June 27th, 1937 that Byrnes was “unassuming and unobtrusive.” That’s pretty much all there is. Life Magazine glossed over any detail about Frank other than he was a “border,” and other publications called him nothing but a ”lodger.” In the 1950 book, Courtroom by Quentin Reynolds, the author writes; “That night he (Irwin) went to the Gedeon home. He went looking for Ethel, but she never came. And so Ronnie, Mrs. Gedeon and the harmless Frank Byrnes had to die.”
The harmless Frank Byrnes; the same man who had nothing to do with Irwin and Ethel. He was a 35 year-old guy from Britain, living and working in the U.S., most recently as a waiter at the Manhattan Racquet and Tennis Club. And he died sleeping on his one good ear. It pains me, saddens me, that in the turmoil of life and death, and the flamboyancy of true crime reporting and tabloid “journalism,” that Frank Byrnes was left aside, a third wheel in a story with no room for miscellaneous characters. It was a tragedy all the way around, no question about it. After all Ethel and her father had to live the rest of their lives with this unyielding pain. But Frank belonged to his parents too, his loved ones and friends. As you read this, Frank Byrnes comes back to life, however fleeting a moment, however unrecognizable a name it is, and however soon you forget it again. And there are thousands of others like Frank who are cast aside by history. But not today. Just saying his name…Frank Byrnes…does immeasurable good in keeping hope and goodness alive.
