Murder and Mystery: The Tragic Tobin Family

All families experience tragedies, to one extent or another.  However, it is thankfully rare that any clan goes through a string of bizarre misfortunes like those suffered by the otherwise commonplace Tobin family.

In 1885, young Mary Tobin moved from her home in Pennsylvania to Staten Island.  In 1887, she found work as an assistant to a doctor named Samuel A. Robinson.  Tobin was described as an intelligent and extremely attractive girl.  Early in 1889, she excitedly told everyone she knew that she was engaged to be married.  Curiously, however, the identity of her fiance was a mystery to her friends. The only men they had ever seen her with were Dr. Robinson and his son.  By all appearances, Mary was a happy and rather fortunate person, without an enemy in the world.  

Samuel Robinson

On April 13, 1889, she left Robinson’s employ, saying that she was returning to Pennsylvania to visit her family, and would soon return for her wedding.  Two days later, she visited the doctor's office for a second farewell.  She told Robinson that before going back home, she would visit a friend in Long Island, Mrs. Frank McKinney.

That was the last anyone ever heard from her.  A few days later, Mrs. McKinney came to Robinson's office, reporting that Mary's trunk had arrived at her home, but there was no sign of Miss Tobin herself.  A week or so later, Mary's brothers, Daniel and David, also sought out the doctor, asking if he had any idea what had become of their sister.

On May 12, the question of Mary Tobin's whereabouts was finally answered when her body was found off the rocks in Clifton, Staten Island.  The Staten Island coroner stated that she had drowned.  However, another doctor, J. Walter Wood, disputed this, asserting that no water had been found in her stomach, causing him to believe she had been dead before she entered the water.  (Curiously, Wood was not allowed to testify at Tobin's inquest.)  The jury at her inquest gave the unsatisfactory ruling that Tobin had died of asphyxia, from unknown causes.  The mystery of what killed Mary was never definitively solved.  (The entire official investigation into Tobin's death was remarkably slipshod and inept--in the minds of some onlookers, deliberately so.)

A pathologist thought her body had been in the water for eight to ten days.  If so, that would mean her whereabouts were unknown for several days after she was last seen.  The pathologist also addressed some inevitable rumors.  He stated that there were no signs that the young woman had undergone an abortion--in fact, he believed she had been a virgin.  (Dr. Robinson responded to this latter statement by alleging that Mary had been sexually active, earning himself much public criticism for this "breach of good taste.")

It was only after Mary's death that the identity of her fiance finally became known: he was another doctor, William J. Bryan.  As it happened, Dr. Bryan was the last person known to have seen her alive.  After she left Robinson's office on April 15, she went directly to Bryan's place of work, after which he walked her to the train station.  He said that he had left her at the station before her train arrived.  (However, the railroad's ticket agent testified that she had not seen Mary Tobin--whom she knew quite well--on the night of the 15th.)  

William Bryan

Although Bryan conceded that he and Mary had been close, he initially refused to either confirm or deny that they had been engaged.  (A reporter from the "New York World" recorded that when he interviewed Bryan, the doctor presented a strange demeanor for someone whose girlfriend had just turned up dead.  He appeared to be "quite jovial and during the conversation frequently gave vent to laughter.")  Bryan also dished a bit of dirt about Dr. Robinson.  He claimed that Robinson had disliked Mary, and that he had owed the dead woman a sizable amount of money.  (For some years after Mary's death, Bryan and Robinson would keep themselves busy by accusing each other of having murdered the young woman, and then using "undue influence" to stifle the investigation.)

It was noted that there was a problem with Bryan's account of the night Mary disappeared.  He claimed that he left her at the station at 8:54 p.m. in order to make a medical call.  He returned to his office, whereupon an assistant, Timothy McInerney, drove him to the home of one of his patients, E.J. Field, where he arrived about 10:40 p.m.  This meant that according to Bryan, it took one hour and forty minutes to make a trip that should have only taken about half an hour.  (McInerney countered this finding by stating that he and Bryan had made three other house calls before arriving at Field's home, but this claim does not appear to have been verified.)

In May 1891, Bryan's former housekeeper, Mrs. W.S. Glassford, revived the Tobin mystery by going to the press with some scandalous accusations.  She claimed that Bryan had had a most improper relationship with the dead woman.  She also stated that when Bryan walked Mary to the train station, Miss Tobin was crying uncontrollably, and that the girl was "frantic" over Bryan's relationship with another woman.  The incensed Bryan vowed he would make Mrs. Glassford "smart for the lies she has uttered."  "I shall follow her now to the bitter end and force her to prove what she says or suffer."  Bryan went to the DA asking that the examination into Tobin's death be reopened, but he was evidently ignored.

Around this same time, the riddle of Mary's death became even more sinister when the Franklin, Pennsylvania home of her father, N.P. Tobin, caught fire and burned to the ground.  Mr. Tobin’s body was found in the ruins.  However, he had not died from the flames, but had been strangled before the fire was set.

Mr. Tobin had indicated to friends that he obtained some sort of information that would lead to the identity of his daughter’s murderer.  It was speculated that this dangerous knowledge was the motive for his own killing, but this second Tobin death was fated to remain as utterly mysterious as the first.  

This was not the last tragedy to hit the Tobin family.  Four months after N.P. Tobin’s death, the tin shop where Mary’s brother, D.S. Tobin, was a partner also burned down as a result of arson.  This crime was also never solved.  The younger Tobin declared that the same enemy was behind all these catastrophes and the entire Tobin family would be “wiped out of existence” if the fiend was not caught.

The fiend never was.