Alice A BARKER
1900

SABATTUS.
... Mr. William Theinart has moved into the Hueu [sic] house...
The Lewiston Daily Sun, Lewiston, Maine, Saturday Morning, October 6, 1900
Note: Should be “Huen house”. Eliza Huen owned a block of rental housing on Main street in Sabattus.

SHE MET "FRED BROOKS" - That Mysterious Factor in the Jessie Cobb Case Seen in Lewiston. Mrs. Theinert Saw and Recognized the Man She Had Seen With Jessie.
He Had Been Pointed Out To Her by Murdered Girl as "Her Friend, Fred Brooks"

After waiting for over a month for "something to happen" in the Jessie Cobb mystery, the police have at last been rewarded. Something has happened of a most sensational and unexpected nature. Fred Brooks, or the man who is known by that name, has been seen on the streets of Lewiston. But the police and other authorities were not identified [notified?] until several days had passed. The thoughtlessness of the woman who saw the man has robbed the police of what might have proved the solution to the case.

It was one day last week when Mrs. Alice Theinert while walking along one of the principal streets of this city came face to face with a man whose face at once struck her as familiar. She turned quickly, but he had passed on. Only an instant she thought and then like a flash she remembered where she had seen that man before, where, in fact, she had seen him several times before.

She had seen him while in the company with the murdered girl, Jessie cobb, and Jessie had pointed him out to her as her "friend, Fred Brooks."

Although Mrs. Theinert realized the importance of the meeting, or rather, passing, the man most sought in the case which is so near to her, since Jessie was her friend and was working for her at her home in Sabatis [sic] even to the day of her death, it did not occur to her to at once take means to have the man apprehended.

The golden opportunity was hers and she let it slip.

Not until several days later did she notify a Lewiston official and then it was too late. However the meeting may yet lead to something tangible for she was able to give the officers a closer description of Fred Brook than they have yet had to work on and if the man is yet in the city they feel sure he will be recognized and given the opportunity to explain his true identity and what, if anything, he knows about the Cobb case.

Fred Brooks had from the very first been the most important and at the same time the most vexing factor in the Jessie Cobb case. At almost every turn this mysterious person, mysterious because the most persistent search has failed to make clear his identity, has appeared. Every friend of the murdered girl has heard his name from her lips, yet one only had ever seen him in the flesh.

During the three months previous to the murder, Mrs. Theinert while on the street with Jessie met a man to whom the girl spoke and when Mrs. Theinert asked who the man was Jessie said he was her friend, Fred Brooks. It was natural that Mrs. Theinert should not at the time take more than a passing interest in the man, for her friend had a number of male acquaintances. But after the murder she has often thought about this mysterious person, the more since the officers have tried to persistently and fruitlessly locate him. And now that he has been seen right here in the city it is a matter of keen regret that he could not have been given an opportunity to clear up a number of important matters.

The police do not look up on the man known as Brooks as necessarily the one who made away with Jessie Cobb and the fact he is in the city tends to weaken any such theory. An the words "in the city" are used advisedly for it is the opinion of the authorities that there is no such person but that some man with whom Jessie Cobb was at least friendly, gave her that name for the sake of convenience in concealing his real identity. It is felt, now more than ever, that he is some local party who lived here before and at the time of the murder and who has not seen flet [sic] to leave since. But who, very naturally, has not seen fit to come forward and tell that he is the much-wanted Fred Brooks.

As the readers of the Journal are aware, a number of Fred Brookses have appeared since the investigation was commenced and that the Journal has run down every such report. If any credence is to be placed in the story of Frank Williams, the convict now in State Prison and a former intimate friend of Jessie Cobb, Brooks must be an acquaintance of many years' standing, for Williams claims to have heard Jessie speak of him six or seven years ago. Viewed from any standpoint, this man Brooks, is a most desirable personage and for a few days at least the police will exert every effort to place a hand upon the man who either owns the name or formerly masqueraded under it.

Lewiston Evening Journal
Lewiston, Maine
Nov 12, 1900