She was referred to as “fabled and sinister” and “the most fabulous and cunning woman criminal in the annals of the Buffalo Police Department.” Cat-Eye Annie turned Buffalo upside down when she took what would today be $1.3 million in gems from a home on Linwood Avenue prior to ending up being the very first lady to get away from both the Erie County Jail and later on Auburn Prison.
Her label originated from the reality that she had one blue eye and one eye that was blue on the top, chestnut on the bottom. She was understood in huge cities all over the nation by a handful of aliases to the point where it wasn’t actually possible to determine her real name– however her MO was as apparent as that eye. With a falsified list of tough-to-trace referrals and a remarkable understanding of the book of servant’s rules, she would sign up with a popular, rich family as a house maid. As quickly as she might find the family gems she’d pack up a sack and remove.
People are likewise checking out…
After presuming the identity of Mary McCoy, a well-regarded servant in Buffalo, Annie was worked with as a house maid in your house of Lewis Surdam, a vice president for F.W. Woolworth who lived at 464 Linwood Ave. Only hours after being worked with, on the early morning of Dec. 5, 1923, Annie disappeared – together with $75,000 ($1.3 million in 2023 dollars) of Mrs. Surdam’s gems. Among the pieces missing out on was a platinum ring set with a seven-karat diamond surrounded by 60 smaller sized diamonds.
She made a tidy vacation, however Annie was selected of a rogues gallery image lineup by Mrs. Surdam and 2 housemaids. Police right away started their look for the lady referred to as Lillian McDowell, Mary McCoy, Elsie Webb, Martha Conners, and an overall of more than lots names. Her initially Buffalo arrest had actually come a years previously in 1913, however most just recently, she’d leapt a $2,000 bail in Cleveland, coming right to Buffalo to prepare for the break-in here. Immediately, Buffalo polices began an across the country manhunt, with mugshots and a rap sheet sent to police all over the nation.
When word reached Baltimore, authorities there acknowledged the lady in concern as “Cat-Eyed Lil,” who they had actually credited with more than $200,000 in taken gems ($3.6 million in 2023 dollars) in the late 1910s and early 1920s. After 2 years on the lam after swiping the gems on Linwood Avenue, an investigator in Milwaukee saw the lady with the distinct eye board the street car he was riding. He kept in mind the all-points-bulletin from Buffalo and apprehended her.
Returned to Buffalo, under the name Lillian McDowell, Cat-Eye Annie pleaded guilty. As she waited for sentencing, she was being kept in the “first degree murderer’s cell” at the Erie County Jail. In the morning hours of Oct. 25, 1925, Annie selected the lock of the cell, put a dummy on her cot, and made her method to a 2nd flooring window from which she leapt onto Church Street and off into the night.
A city bus driver stepped forward to state he kept in mind getting a lady that night– she was walking with a plainly hurt leg and kept squinting one eye. She took the bus to the city line at Kenmore and vanished. The next day, employees discovered Annie in the attic of a home under building and construction a couple of blocks away on Westgate Avenue. She was feverish and her ankle had inflamed to 3 times its typical size.
After being reclaimed into custody, 2 deputies brought her on a chair into the courtroom, she informed the court her real name was Lillian McDowell, she was 44, and was born in Louisville, Ky., Judge Noonan sentenced her to the optimum – ten years of tough labor at Auburn.
Her last words for Buffalo, as she was being performed of the courtroom were, “If I hadn’t broken my ankle, you fellows would have never gotten a hold of me.”
Six months into her sentence at Auburn, Annie utilized a spoon to tunnel through the mortar of a brick wall and after that climbed up the wall surrounding the jail to flexibility. Twenty-6 hours later on, she was discovered concealing in a haystack on a farm near the jail.
Four years later on, in 1930, Annie left Auburn once again – this time foiled when a man who selected her up hitchhiking, discovered it unusual that she was using a man’s coat and hat and called authorities. Annie was reclaimed into custody using the clothes she took from a guard’s closet on her escape of the jail.
She was paroled in New York in 1935 however dealt with charges in other states. Her sentence was travelled and she was launched from a Missouri prison in 1941. That’s the last time anybody spoken with Cat-Eye Annie. Courier-Express press reporter Manuel Bernstein attempted to track her down in 1961, however neither the Buffalo Police nor the FBI had any record of her location after that release.
Longtime Buffalo scribe Dick Hirsch didn’t have any luck tracking her down either in the mid-’50s, however ended his story with the concept that “she could be the spry, white-haired old lady who shops regularly at the corner supermarket. Perhaps we shall never know.”
