after testifying before congress and making front-page news with the sunnyside case he returned to new york and once again threw herself into the strange and unusual cases that somehow always found their way to her desk which he fought against the same doctor who tormented the famous reporter nellie bly when she went undercover in an insane asylum and was marked for death by the sinister black hand. the italian crime organization that used secret codes and mystical rituals. eventually one of graces rich

society friends mrs. felix adler called to tell her that a girl had gone missing in new york and begged her to meet with the father of the girl one mr. henry krieger. by the time grace agreed to take the case roof repairs photo that appeared in newspapers all over the country. her image even flickered in front of movie theater audiences drawn to the story other. sunday schoolteacher who had vanished openly suspected white slavery for all play and romantic entanglement, sometimes all in the same story. juicy clues were flooding into detector precincts but none of them panned out. but grace took it different approach to the case. she locked herself in her office for a week to study every scrap of paper related to it. grace had been trained as a lawyer but are in ability to trust to the police or even the

law itself had over the last few years turned her into more of a detective. now at age 48 for formula was to search for clues herself, verify them and use them in a courtroom to make her arguments. she didn't trust the police so she effectively just found her own evidence. in this case grace kept coming back to alfredo the man who had sharpened ruth's gate. since being questioned by -- he also disappeared. though most of his neighbors speculated he feared being made escape for the crime especially because he was italian the police had seemed to blame his people or anything in those days and it's true at this time everyone blamed the italians. if anything was criminally related they would just blame the italians. but the coaches place had been searched and his motorcycle shop

was the last place. grace wanted to see it herself. this is how grace ended up standing in the middle of manhattan avenue in harlem and staring up at the motorcycle shop in june of 1917. grace craned her neck and took in the tall glass window that ran almost 10 feet high across the front of the store. the white lettering across the glass red motorcycles tour edge on the left and auto supplies on the right. she sought 10 signs for mobil oil that hung still in the air, the single globe lamp hung on a poll above the entrance and a huge billboard for graham crackers is big and long as the shop itself rows off the roof and into the blue sky. inside of the shop was dim behind the smoked glass. maria kochi all for a does wife had been left behind when her husband disappeared and was now

desperately trying to keep the store afloat. she had two small children. maria who claim to have no knowledge of where her husband was had refused any further searching of the premises. the police were no help either and grace moved from desk to desk in city buildings trying to gain entrance to the store. police officials smiled and said their hands were tied. grace was limited to what she could see from the outside. there were two signs in the window that read mechanics help wanted and selling out. on the outside to the left of the front door with the narrows der welt that went to the ground and served as a separate entrance to the basement. grace walked near the stairs as unobtrusively as possible. grace at new like it or not that all of her misgivings about kochi and the store were all circumstantial. the police had searched the

seller twice and found nothing but abscess. the neck -- the rest with gossip and headlines. why was kochi missing? because he taken the girl? as yet been spirited away by the same thieves at a taken poor ruth or was he just terrified of being blamed by proximity? perhaps there were more sinister forces at work such as the rumor of white slavery that stretched all the way down to brazil or was this the work of a black and? there were even rumors that kochi had been very friendly with the motorcycle cops in his neighborhood. grace knew that those questions might be the most dangerous ones but they still had to be asked. grace popped considering in her mind intersecting with the city itself still struggling to connect its new burrows into one unified whole. perhaps rethink kochi where the

happy couple in this. that version of the truth seemed remote but still. grace went back to her office thinking trying to come up with a plan. when she got to her office she called her good friend the private detective named julius j. crown. cron was a federal agent when he was first assigned to grace during her u.s. district attorney days and grace, one of the things i found out she was the first female u.s. district attorney. this is i think a major historical point and you have to look really, really, really hard to find it. it's a major accomplishment. [applause]