Early on the morning of Aug. 9, 1904, the driver of an electric car in Johnston stopped to pick up a man who was flagging him down. The man was covered in dirt and dried blood. The car carried him to the police station where he made out a report, stating that he had been assaulted and robbed the previous night by a stranger he had befriended.
The man told police that his name was Captain Odell Clock and that he was from Long Island. A 42-year-old yacht captain, he described how he had departed from New York and arrived at a port in Boston the previous afternoon. Leaving his ship docked, he journeyed to Rhode Island to see the sights and perhaps escape his gloom. His wife Jennie, who he’d been married to for 20 years, had died only four weeks earlier.
Clock soon crossed paths with a man of like mind, and they decided to accompany each other to a saloon on Douglas Avenue in Providence. There, they had several drinks before moving on to the bar at the St. Cloud Hotel in Johnston. Clock said that they left the second establishment together in the man’s wagon and that as they ventured through Johnston, the man suddenly stopped in a secluded area and struck him in the head so violently, it knocked him from the carriage onto the hard ground below. Clock explained that the man took from his pockets $50 in cash and a large amount of money in the form of checks before climbing back into the carriage and speeding away. He said that, soon after, he lost consciousness and that, when he awoke, he dragged himself to the main road and the electric car track…