From "Illustrated Police News," Volume 22, Issue 547, April 21, 1877
It was a story as old as time: A beautiful young country girl, seduced and abandoned by a wastrel suitor, condemned to a life of shame. But that wasn’t the whole story.
Alice Nace was born and raised in Allen County, Ohio, where, in the early 1850s, she succumbed to the pleadings of a silver-tongued wastrel and found herself completely cut off from family and friends. Her father threw her out of the house with curses and her friends ostracized her, turning deaf ears to her pleas for solace. Her heartless beau, scoundrel that he was, brought her to Cincinnati and dumped her at one of the Queen City’s most notorious brothels, the infamous “Twin Bricks” on the north side of the Canal, east of Elm Street.
The Twin Bricks was the sort of establishment in which the vilest crimes were rarely solved because no one ever saw anything. It was the last place visited by George Tabor, a still-respectable young man exploring the seamier side of town. He fell into a dispute with another patron, who shot George in the head at point-blank range. An extensive inquest failed to uncover a single credible witness.
Alice soon gained a reputation as a force to be reckoned with. Bill Haley, from Cairo, Illinois, had a ferocious reputation up and down the Ohio River as a gambler and a sure shot. He dropped an opponent once by firing through his overcoat from a gun concealed in his pocket. But when he attempted to ignore a debt he owed to Alice Nace, she shot him in the neck with a derringer. It was a clean shot that failed to connect with artery or bone and Haley survived. Alice was never brought to trial.
Some months later, Mary Brennan, another of the “frail sisterhood” housed at the Twin Bricks, inadvisably called Alice a liar. Alice promptly picked up a chair and swung it into Mary’s head. Mary died from her injury a week later.
A dispute over some kid gloves ended Alice’s Cincinnati career. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [July 19, 1853]:
“Alice Nace and Elizabeth Rogers, girls of bad character, on Saturday night last, had an affray in a house of immoral character on the Miami canal, between Race and Elm-sts., and during the melee Alice stabbed the other girl in the abdomen with a large bowie-knife, inflicting a horrible wound. Her recovery is not expected.”
Contemporary accounts claim Alice slashed her from right shoulder to left hip, so it is not surprising that Elizabeth Rogers died. Police offered a $1,000 reward—very large for that time—for the apprehension of Alice Nace. By the time the wanted posters were tacked up, Alice was in the wind. According to the Cincinnati Post [June 11, 1883]:
“Alice cooly walked into the house, got her jewelry and her money, and lit out.”
Cincinnati marshal James L. Ruffin launched a search for Alice that went on for years and miles. Ruffin was impressed that the murderess had vanished so thoroughly, leaving not a hint of her trail and for years all of his investigations led nowhere. While chasing another fugitive up into the mountains of East Tennessee, Ruffin found solid evidence that Alice was hiding nearby. He told the Post:
“What was she doing? Why teaching school as large as life, and had a capital reputation, too. But she got wind of my coming, and cut for it.”
From "Harper’s Weekly," November 9, 1867
Ruffin picked up Alice’s trail again a few years later outside Fort Smith, Arkansas, but her situation there so touched the marshal’s heart that he decided to keep Alice’s secret as his own. As he recalled years later:
“She had preserved her personal beauty wonderfully, and, having thoroughly reformed, was really a very estimable woman to those ignorant of her record. Mr. _____, an Episcopal clergyman, became deeply enamored of her, and again and again asked her to marry him. She liked him, but liked him too well to handicap his life with the possible discovery of her past life. And so it went till at last one day she told him the whole story, omitting or concealing nothing, and I’m blowed if the fellow hadn’t grit enough to stick to what he said, and they were married. Yes, sir; I’ll be hanged if I wasn’t at the wedding.”
Detective Ruffin refused to divulge Alice’s husband’s identity, but let on that he was well known in church circles and his name would be familiar to anyone who followed ecclesiastical activities in the newspapers. At the time Ruffin related Alice’s story, in 1883, her husband had been dead for some time, but the detective had maintained contact with his erstwhile prey and told the Post reporter:
“I saw an old lady about three years ago with a pleasant home, three grandchildren around the house, and every evidence of refinement and culture about her; a good mother, and excellent wife, and regarded as a mother in Israel in the community; and—would you believe it? Nearly thirty years ago I chased that woman through three states as a murderess.”
From "Illustrated Police News," Volume 21, Issue 531, December 30, 1876
Although Ruffin maintained his reticence, enough of Alice’s story circulated that it was recorded in William DeBreck’s 1867 classic compendium of outrageous crimes from Cincinnati’s early days, “Murder Will Out.” After recounting dozens of unsolved homicides, or crimes leading only to the gallows, DeBreck seemed positively giddy to relate one story with a happy ending:
“Thus we see one who was for a time lost to society, restored to the association of respectable people, and now acting the part of a good and pious woman. Would that we were able to record many such cases!”
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