Portals of the Past: The Kin-Kin murder case, part two
After a gardener nicknamed Kin-Kin stabbed Augustine Capurro in North Beach, the murdered man’s youngest daughter received a very strange letter.
This is the second part of a two-part story on the Kin-Kin murder case, which convulsed San Francisco’s Latin Quarter in 1894. It’s part of an ongoing history of Varennes and Lafayette Streets, where I lived for 12 years. Part one of this story related how a vegetable gardener named Felice Merlo, known as Kin-Kin, stabbed to death Augustine Capurro, a beloved 64-year-old porter and father of eight, in the back room of a Green Street grocery store over a $5 debt. Merlo ran away, vanished into the crowd on Dupont (Grant Avenue) and managed to flee San Francisco, possibly by boat, probably hiding out for five months at a friend’s ranch at Colma. Merlo eventually got out of the country, and sometime in 1895 appears to have boarded a ship that took him to his native Italy. The Kin-Kin case sheds a harsh and fascinating light on the shaky police practices, dubious legal protections and major journalistic shortcomings that prevailed in the U.S. at the end of the 19th century. We pick up the story here.
“Police officer James Smith, who will go to Rome in quest of a murderer.” The San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 7, 1896.
In mid-December 1895, Augustine Capurro’s youngest daughter Lizzie, who after her father’s death had married and was now Mrs. Lizzie Bacigalupi, received a letter purportedly from Felice Merlo, postmarked from the small Ligurian town of San Pietro Vara, near Varese. It was a very peculiar letter. As usual, the way the San Francisco newspapers covered it leaves it unclear exactly what it said. Although the Examiner paraphrases it extensively, and the Chronicle and Call less so, none of them quote directly from it except in brief snippets. However, the gist of the letter is clear, and contains a bombshell: Merlo had previously proposed to Lizzie Capurro, and killed the old man at least in part because he blamed him for her rejection of his suit. And that wasn’t the biggest bombshell: according to two of the newspapers, in the letter Merlo again proposed to Lizzie, notwithstanding the fact that he murdered her father.
The rest of this story is available only to paid subscribers to Kamiya Unlimited.