Gilbert Perkins' House

The house shown below was located on West 3rd Street, in the borough of Waterford, had an owner/renter with an interesting past, Gilbert Perkins, a private detective, was believed to be directly involved with breaking into the Charles Strong mausoleum at the Erie cemetery. Six coffins were smashed open, and one body was missing. It was thought to be the workings of the Black Hand, a type of Italian extortion racket, which days before was involved in a shooting at the foot of Wayne Street in the city of Erie.

Detective Perkins was hired to investigate the break-in, and in the possibility the body of Strong’s sister-in-law was taken for ransom. Perkins and the Police launched a 24 hour search, nothing was found. It turned out that Detective Perkins, owner of the Perkins Detective Agency, and his partner, Detective Franklin, had worked for Strong in the past, and knowing that he was a very wealthy man, they hatched a plot to extort the Strong family.

A ransom for the return of the missing body was received by the Strong family, but the plot fell apart when Mr. Strong began to become suspicious of Perkins and fired the agency because of a letter sent to him warning him about Perkins’ partner, Detective Franklin. Eventually it came to light that Perkins was involved, the body was found in another mausoleum. And on July 29, 1911, both Perkins and Franklin were found guilty only of the crime of mail fraud and were sentenced to Leavenworth prison. Gilbert Perkins was 71 at the time and insisted he was innocent.

Gilbert Perkins’ House, West 3rd Street, Borough of Waterford (1911)