In the autumn of 1940, Washington, D.C., was a city gripped by an undercurrent of fear, though many of its residents did not yet know the full extent of the danger. A predator was moving through its neighborhoods, a man who would later become known as the "D.C. Strangler." On September 28, 1940, this wave of violence claimed the life of Lucy Kidwell, an 82-year-old woman.
Like many of the killer's early victims, details of Lucy's life and the specific moments of her final day were not widely reported, her story tragically overshadowed by the sensational crime spree that her death was a part of.
Lucy Kidwell, a female, was one of the earlier victims in a series of brutal killings that began as early as 1935. Her killer was Jarvis Theodore Roosevelt Catoe, a man who preyed on women across the city for six years. Catoe’s method was chillingly consistent: he would often pose as a handyman to gain access to his victims' homes. Once inside, he would attack, strangling his victims to death. Over his reign of terror, he was proven to have killed at least eight women, though he was suspected in as many as eleven murders.
The investigation into these seemingly disparate crimes was slow to coalesce. For years, Catoe attacked and murdered women, his crimes escalating in frequency. The victims in the early years of his spree, including Lucy Kidwell, received little public attention. It was only after Catoe began to target white women in 1941 that public outcry and pressure on law enforcement intensified, leading to a police shake-up and even a Congressional investigation into the department's failure to stop the killings. The murder of Rose Abramovitz, a young newlywed, and Jessie Strieff, a government clerk, sparked widespread panic and a massive hunt for the man terrorizing the city.
The break in the case finally came not from Washington, but from New York. In August 1941, Catoe raped and murdered a waitress named Evelyn Anderson in the Bronx, stealing her wristwatch. He gave the watch to a girlfriend, who then had it pawned. When New York police discovered the pawned watch, they meticulously traced it back through its handlers until the trail led them to Washington, D.C., and to Jarvis Catoe. On August 29, 1941, he was arrested.
Once in custody, Catoe began to confess, stunning investigators with the scope of his crimes. He admitted to the murder of seven women in Washington and the one in New York. He recounted details that only the killer could have known, such as the location of a victim's lost umbrella and the exact amount of money stolen in another case, corroborating his confessions. He told police he was troubled by "spells," an uncontrollable urge to kill. His admissions brought a horrifying clarity to years of unsolved murders, finally linking the deaths of women like Lucy Kidwell to a single, ruthless killer.
Jarvis Theodore Roosevelt Catoe was brought to trial for the murder of Rose Abramovitz. He attempted to recant his detailed confessions, claiming they were coerced by police, but the jury was unconvinced. After deliberating for only eighteen minutes, they returned a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder and recommended the death penalty. Catoe was also convicted of rape and four counts of indecent exposure from his prior criminal record.
For his six-year campaign of terror, Jarvis Catoe was executed by electric chair at the D.C. Jail on January 15, 1943. His execution closed the case on one of the most frightening periods in the city's history. While justice was served, it came too late for Lucy Kidwell and the other women whose lives were stolen. Her case remains a somber reminder of a serial killer's hidden rampage and of the victims whose stories were nearly lost in the shadows.
