Levittown Library To Host True Crime Author Talk

LEVITTOWN, NY. — Levittown residents will get to hear new details on a hundred-year-old crime saga this month, as Brooklyn native and Glen Cove resident Mary Noe presents details from her book, "The Man Who Shot J.P. Morgan."

The book tells the story of Erich Muenter, a Harvard professor whose wife had died of arsenic poisoning nine years before the 1915 shooting. According to the book’s publisher, the Kent State University Press, Muenter skipped town as suspicions began to mount that he had poisoned his wife, and a mysterious man named Frank Holt surfaced in Texas a short time later. As Frank Holt married and pursued a career at Cornell University, suspicions began to arise that he may not be Frank Holt at all, but the long lost Harvard professor Erich Muenter. In 1915, relatives of Muenter's late wife saw a familiar face on the front page of newspapers, as news broke that a man had forced his way into the home of J.P. Morgan, Jr. and attempted to assassinate the finance mogul.

The presentation at the library, Noe told Patch, will feature a series of photos and primary sources, some of which made it into the book while others didn't, displayed for the audience in conjunction with a bare bones review of the book's plot.

Noe is a St. John’s University professor, teaching several law classes at the Queens, NY, university and writing the book outside work over the past 12 years. For Noe, the journey to writing the book started at her home in Glen Cove, on an island locals still refer to as “Morgan’s Island.”

“I live on East Island, East Island is where [J.P. Morgan] Junior had his estate. I don’t live in the estate…but the locals still call East Island Morgan’s Island. So, when I moved here, of course, I was curious about Morgan’s Island, and I never knew that he was shot,” Noe told Patch Monday. “And then I went around to my neighbors, and most of them didn’t know he was shot, and so that spurred me. And then, of course, there is this incredible person who is not just any criminal that you can imagine, but quite a sophisticated, educated person, first at Harvard, and then at Cornell."

As for Muenter, Noe said it was the complexity of his character that first stood out to her as a research subject a dozen years ago. The idea of an educated, sophisticated, by all accounts charming man being capable of the horrible things Muenter did, Noe said, fascinated her. In recent years, however, Noe said a similar figure became a household name, serving as a reminder of what even the most educated, sophisticated figures are capable of.

“Let me just first say: Luigi Mangione. The man who shot J.P. Morgan is handsome, he's educated, he's sophisticated. When I think of, traditionally, a person who's a criminal, who would be violent and shoot someone, I don't think of someone who is charming and sophisticated and educated,” Noe said. “The other thing that was amazing to me was that he was able to, for lack of a better word, fool so many people along the way...He was able to hide in plain sight, which is so interesting to me, and sometimes a little scary, because I think to myself, there are people out there that are not who you think that they are. And, you know, because they have this air of sophistication, because they have the degrees from Harvard to Cornell, you assume that they are someone who is honorable and a good character. But this person, he poisoned his wife right after childbirth, their second child, and watched her die, this grueling death from arsenic poisoning, right after she gave birth to the second daughter, that's pretty gruesome…And Luigi, at least some people believed as handsome and charming, and certainly, after researching this for 12 years, I believe the man who shot J.P. Morgan was also quite handsome and charming.”

While the man who committed the crime is in the title, Noe said one of the most rewarding parts of her writing journey was connecting with the family of Leone Krembs Muenter, the woman who died by arsenic poisoning nine days after giving birth to her second child. In 2019, Noe was able to travel to Wisconsin and attend a family reunion with some of her descendants, gaining access to letters and diaries from the early 1900s.

“That's where I was able to get her letters and her father's diary, which was so essential for me, breathing life into into her story, into who she was, and what she was thinking. So I really, I was very lucky,” Noe said.

Noe said that family’s historian, a California resident, even flew across the country to attend the book’s launch. When asked what it was like meeting the family of a woman who had died so tragically and asking to tell her story, Noe said the family couldn’t have been kinder.

“They were so happy that someone was going to give voice to this family member. They are very, obviously a very close knit family. Their documents and history are now being saved in the University of Wisconsin. And so they were so happy that someone was willing to take on the story and tell her story, of this tragedy, in this very sophisticated family," Noe said. "Even though it was such a long time ago, they were really thrilled. They even made me an honorary member of their family, because I was going to give life to this story of their family member who died tragically at the hands of this man who really reinvented himself, who, nine years later, shoots J.P. Morgan.”

From the library’s end, the author talk came together rather serendipitously. A synopsis turned into a contact, which begat the Jan. 29 engagement.

“It was a new book, and I just sort of read the synopsis of it, and I don’t know whether she reached out to us first or it was on a list, and I was sort of interested in it, if she was available. And she is, so she’s going to be with us that evening,” one library official said.

Library officials added that attendees will have the chance to ask questions of Noe at the discussion, noting that registration ahead of time is preferred and attendance is free of charge.

When asked why it’s so important to tell stories like the one found in her book, Noe referenced the same “hiding in plain sight” principle.

“I think it's so important because I think there are people like this today. And so we do have Luigi Mangione, and we do have people hiding in plain sight who are sophisticated and intelligent and educated,” Noe said. “And we're not even aware of who they are. And I unfortunately, I think this still goes on as we recently had heard with Luigi. It still goes on today. It's a really interesting part of history, but I don't think it's one that ended when after this story happened.”

More information about Noe's presentation at the library can be found here.