Bread and bones seem to be accountable for causing everything to come crashing down for Milton Franklin Andrews. After the brutal attack on Ellis, Milton and Nulda fled the Berkeley area stopping long enough to change clothes and appearance, Andrews visiting a barber and Nulda doing some quick clothes shopping.
In his book The Man Who Was Erdnase Barton describes their flight as a scene straight out of a movie, with the couple employing multiple modes of transport and doubling back on routes to stay a head of the police who were not too far behind. In a sign of the times, even though they took a roundabout and complicated route, they only traveled from the Berkeley rental at 2214 Ellsworth St a total of about 14 miles to 748 McAllister St in San Francisco where Nulda rented an upstairs room and managed to sneak Milton in a back door.
Police were out in force but it took three weeks for them to finally catch up to Milton Franklin Andrews. By November 1st Ellis had recovered enough to leave the hospital and give his deposition to the police, he then headed to the racetrack to study the action on the local tracks, and at the same time Detective Charles Schultz arrived from Colorado Springs where Milton was wanted in connection with the murder of Bessie Bouton. Police had displayed posters of the wanted couple and eventually were tipped off about Nulda’s whereabouts due, in part, to her shopping habits.
Nulda it seems was buying an unreasonable amount of bread for a single woman and this aroused suspicion at the local bakery. Milton was dyspeptic and lacking access to the health foods he consumed he was apparently living off the crusts of bread that Nulda was buying. Even though the woman in the posters police were putting up was not actually Nulda it was close enough to cause someone to contact the authorities.
Police contacted the family that lived in the main floor of the house Nulda was renting and arranged a plan to apprehend the suspects. Four officers arrived at the McAllister St home were one of them pretended to be a plumber to gain entry to the apartment. After a bit of protesting Nulda let him in to look around but still Milton Franklin was not seen (it is assumed that he was hiding in the closet at this point). The officer exited to the hallway and while discussing their next move two shots were heard from within the apartment. When the broke open the door the discovered Nulda dead on the bed, her hands clasped as in prayer, and Milton Franklin Andrews dead on the floor with a gun in one hand and mirror in the other that he used to make sure the self inflicted shot was perfectly aimed.
In one of Nulda’s stockings was found a letter written by Milton confessing to some of the crimes he was accused of and attempting to distance Nulda from any blame. It also mentioned that had he know that Ellis had an exceptionally thick skull, about twice what is normal according to a doctor that attended him after the attack, that he ‘would have used a pile driver instead of a hammer’.
I expected that The Man Who Was Erdnase would start off much earlier in Milton’s life and lead up to the murder suicide but it turns out it leads with that part of the story as well so I still don’t have much info on the connection that Milton Franklin Andrews has to The Expert At The Card Table as I am just a handful of pages into it. It does give a much fuller picture of Milton, Nulda and Ellis than the initial newspaper articles that I had read but I am looking forward to getting into the connections between Milton and the book.
I tracked down a copy of the September 2011 edition of Genii Magazine that was devoted to Erdnase. It looks at a different candidate so I have not yet delved in to it as I don’t want to focus on more that one theory at a time right now but am very happy to have it waiting for me.
