Word: musicae
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Detectives went to the house in Bay Ridge, in the stable discovered a trap door and a cache of hair. They also found that Philip Musica had been reading a book on extradition laws, had left it open at a passage about Honduras...
...Philip Musica got out of Elmira in 1910 and before long founded something called the United States Hair Co. Antonio Musica knew about hair and Philip knew a few tricks, so they began dealing in human hair which went into the towering coiffure of stylish ladies. Once more the Musicas prospered. Philip became a man-about-town, lived at the Knickerbocker Hotel, wore high heels and spats to match his trousers, palled around with people like Caruso...
...That year and the next United States Hair Co. borrowed nearly $1,000,000 on invoices signed by branch offices in London, Paris, Naples; lenders were the Bank of the Manhattan Co., the Anglo-South American Trust Co., and J. & W. Seligman & Co., some 20 others. But when Philip Musica tried to borrow $370,000 on a bill of lading for $250 worth of hair, the company fell apart. There were no legitimate offices abroad. There was mighty little hair. There was a sudden shortage of Musicas...
Extradited to New York, Philip Musica took the whole blame, pleaded guilty to grand larceny. The rest of the Musicas dropped out of circulation. Philip stayed in the Tombs, helping the District Attorney's office with the case. "The Human Hair Mystery" got a big play in the papers of 1913, when (according to Who's Who) Frank Donald Coster was a practicing physician in New York...
Spies and Drugs. In 1916 Philip Musica got out of jail with a suspended sentence as a reward for helping to untangle his own swindle. In the meantime he had gone to work as a stool pigeon for District Attorney Charles S. Whitman. He soon was engaged in German spy investigations under the name of William Johnson. As a side line he tried to get a man named Cohen a death sentence for murdering a chicken handler, Barnet Baff. But when an indictment against him for subornation of perjury in connection with the Cohen case was handed down, William Johnson...