The Man Who Shot J. P. Morgan

The thrilling, true story of a prolific criminal’s many identities and exploits

On the morning of July 3, 1915, John Pierpont Morgan Jr., one of the most famous names in finance, was entertaining guests at his sprawling Long Island estate when the doorbell unexpectedly rang. An armed man forced his way inside. At the same time, authorities in Washington, DC, were investigating a shocking bombing at the US Capitol. While no one had been killed, the blast had destroyed the reception room, and DC citizens were on edge.

Nine years earlier, in 1906, Leone Krembs Muenter had fallen ill and died shortly after giving birth. Her husband, Harvard professor Erich Muenter, blamed his wife’s Christian Science religious beliefs, which prohibited medical intervention, for the death, but an investigation suggested something more sinister: arsenic poisoning. As suspicions mounted, Muenter vanished.

In Texas, a mysterious man calling himself Frank Holt wooed Leona Sensabaugh, and after their marriage, they moved to Ithaca, New York, as he pursued a career at Cornell. But some of Holt’s colleagues found he reminded them of someone they’d worked with before, a man who had been suspected of murdering his wife. Could Frank Holt and Erich Muenter be the same person? What were they to make of it, later, when they saw a familiar face in the papers following a bizarre attempt on a finance tycoon’s life?

Mary Noé is a lawyer and a professor at St. John’s University. Her article “Murder at Madison Square Garden: A Dream Team’s Insane Game of Judicial Cat and Mouse” is featured in Judicial Notice: A Periodical of New York Court History. She has also published several legal articles and a book on special education.