Elsie Sigel

Elsie Sigel (1889 – June 1909) was a granddaughter of Union Army General Franz Sigel, and the victim of a notorious murder at the age of 19 in New York City in 1909.

The Chinatown mission at 10 Mott Street where Sigel volunteered, viewed from the balcony of the Port Arthur Restaurant. Sigel, who had been a missionary in Chinatown, was found strangled inside a trunk on June 18, 1909, in the apartment of the prime suspect, a Chinese man named "William" Leon Ling, a waiter in a Chinese restaurant. Sigel had been missing since June 9, when she was last seen leaving her parents' apartment to visit her grandmother. while Sigel did missionary work at the Chinatown Rescue Settlement and Recreation Room, Four years prior to the murder, Leon had kept a chop suey restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, close to the Sigel home, and Sigel and her mother had first met Leon there during missionary rounds of the local Chinese restaurants.

Aftermath Sigel's murder gained widespread notoriety due to the interracial aspects of the relationship as well as the fame of her grandfather, Franz Sigel, who was a U.S. Civil War general. The murder set off a wave of anti-Chinese hysteria, as well as suggestions that the murder was Sigel's own fault. The murder became the subject of a play, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery, which was performed around the country. Bayonne, New Jersey banned screening films about her murder, several of which, probably newsreels, existed.

Popular culture references

This subject of her murder along with the names were also used as a leitmotif Jed Rubenfeld's blok "The Interpretation of Murder" which had been published on 2006.