The Penn's Grove record., 1904-06-03
LIGHT ON GREEN MURDER
J. R. PIatt, Age IS, Spent $685.,
900 on Hannah Elias.
BRINGS SUIT TO RECOVER MONEY

The Mystery Surrounding the Assassina.
ton in New York City of Andrew III
Green by the Negro Cornelius VIII.
1iams Cleared Away-Kindly Pillar.
thrOpist Killed by Mistake.
New York City.-Cleared at last is
the name Of Andrew H. Green,
Father of Greater New York."
through the revelation that the man
for whom the bullet of the crazed
negro, Cornelius H. Williams, was in
tended is John R. Plat, millionaire
and retired glass manufacturer, who,
in the past eight years has given to
the mulatto, Hannah Elias, at least
a million dollars in money and prop
erty.
The remarkable disclosures came
through a suit flsd by Mr.. Plat
against the Elias woman to recover
the immense amounts out of which
he charges she blackmailed him. He
specifies $6S7, 7OS, and it is estimated
that sums given by him to her of
which he has no record will bring the
total close to 81, 100000.
Hannah Elias is the woman on
whose account Williams declared he
committed the murder. Williams is
now in the Asylum for Insane Grim
inals at Matteawan.
Mistaking Mr.. Green for Mr.. Plat,
Williams shot down and killed a man
whose entire career had been an honor
to the great city he had formed out
of the scattered boroughs about New
York. A man whose honor had never
borne faint or smirch until his death
at the hands of a negro, jealous of a
white rival, had caused his life to end
in a cloud of doubt and suspicion that
could not be satisfactorily cleared
away until the name of John r. Plat
was made known to the public.
To-day every man, and
child in New York can know what the
family Of Andrew H. Green has al
ways knOwn-that he died as he had
always lived, one of the most honor
able and pure-hearted citizens New
York has ever known.
And this shadow removed from the
name of Andrew H. Green has, in it's
blighting course, fallen athwart the
threshold of another home in this city.
Out of the revelation of the identity
of the man with whom Andrew II.
Green was confounded when the bullet
of a crazed assassin struck him down
has come to light a story SO strange,
so weirdly unlike the facts of real life
as known outside the pages of fantas-
tic fiction that it reads like an opium
inspired dream.
The story of the rise to wealth and
luxury of a slave-pen born negress
through her hold upon a senile mil
lionaire is of itself a story almost be-
yond belief, but that her acquaintance
with such a man should have caused
a negro admirer to shoot in front of
his door a man whose fame as the
maker Of the City of Greater New
York had extended across an entire
continent was almost beyond the
bounds of credulity.
Yet these are facts, incontrovertible
and borne out clearly and concisely
by the suit-at-law filed by Mr.. Platt.
Through the filing of this suit has
been learned the secret of the strange
murder of Andrew H. Green.
The suit was brought by John R.
Platt, aged eighty-five, a retired mill
liOnaire glass manufacturer, who lives
at No. Z East Fi~fty-fourth street and is
a member of many clubs, against Han.
nah Elias, the negress whose romantic
history and splendid mode of living in
Central Park West brought her into
prominence at the time of the Green
murder.
This suit explains the rise into
wealth and power of Hannah Elias,
he mulatto woman who was keeping
a boarding house for negroes eight
years ago, and whose husband was a
Pullman car porter.
John R. Plat, who is of about the
same age as l1r. Green and resembles
him somewhat in general appearance,
max affidavit that he has been a
friend of the Elias woman for eight
years, and alleges that between the
years 1896 and 1901 she obtained from
him Through fraud, coercion, duress
and b%lackmail," money and real estate
to the value OF $685. $50.
1T is this man, the lawyers for the
Green estate declared recently, whom
Williams saw going to a-d coming
from the Elias woman's house and
whom he Iistook for Mr.. Green.