That was Colt's story.
Self-defense.
Panic.
A violent struggle that suddenly ended with a dead man on the floor.
The prosecution would later argue that the evidence told a darker story.
But even if one accepted Colt's description of the fight, another question remained almost impossible to avoid.
If Samuel Adams had died during an unexpected act of self-defense, why did Colt not call for help?
Why not summon a doctor?
Why not find police?
Why not immediately tell Wheeler next door?
Why not report the death?
Instead, John Colt began solving a different problem.
How to make Samuel Adams disappear.
The Blood
Colt later described a horrifying amount of blood.
He worried that it might seep through the floor.
That fear forced him to move quickly.
A dead body can be concealed temporarily.
Blood is different.
It spreads.
It stains.
It leaks.
It creates evidence in places the killer may not immediately notice.
So Colt cleaned.
He scrubbed.
The room where Adams had entered alive began to be transformed back into an ordinary office.
But cleaning a room is not the same as erasing an event.
Wheeler had already heard the disturbance.
Other people could establish that Adams had gone to see Colt.
And the body still remained.
According to historical accounts, Colt briefly considered destroying the evidence through fire.
He abandoned that thought, reportedly because other people in the building could be killed.
Then his attention turned toward an empty wooden crate.
The solution was sitting inside the same office.
A box.
The Box
The dimensions later reported for the crate were only a few feet long.
A container meant for cargo.
Not a coffin.
That difference created a practical problem.
Samuel Adams's body did not simply fit neatly inside.
Colt stripped the body.
He bound it.
He forced it into the confined space.
Historical accounts describe the knees protruding enough that Colt had difficulty closing the box.
He forced them down until the lid could be secured.
Then the box was nailed shut.
The dead printer had been transformed into cargo.
Salt was added.
Sawdust appears in accounts of the discovered contents.
The body was wrapped in canvas or awning material.
Colt removed clothing and possessions that might make identification easier.
He disposed of items elsewhere.
He cleaned himself.
Then he wrote the destination.
The crate was addressed to a supposed recipient named Gross in New Orleans.
The destination was false.
The addressee could not provide any real connection between the box and a legitimate shipment.
That was the idea.
If the crate reached Louisiana, nobody there needed to know John Colt.
Nobody needed to know Samuel Adams.
A mysterious box could arrive at a destination that did not truly exist.
And by the time anyone became suspicious, the trail back to Manhattan might already be cold.
It was a remarkably modern criminal idea.
Not destroy the body.
Move the problem.
Use distance as concealment.
Let the transportation system become part of the crime.
New York's enormous commercial network gave Colt the mechanism.
Thousands of pieces of cargo moved anonymously through the harbor.
One more box did not matter.
At least, it was not supposed to.
The Night After the Killing
There is a disturbing period between the killing and the shipment.
Adams was dead.
His family had no idea what had happened.
Colt still had to live through the night knowing the body was associated with his office.
Historical accounts describe Colt leaving and attempting to speak to his younger brother Samuel, who was in New York pursuing financial backing for his firearms business.
John appeared agitated.
Samuel was occupied.
John eventually returned to his problem.
The corpse remained.
The box remained.
The harbor waited.
The following morning, the city woke to bad weather.
For John Colt, rain may initially have seemed unimportant.
His most difficult work was already done.
Adams had disappeared.
The office had been cleaned.
The body was sealed.
Now he only needed transportation.
Around nine o'clock on Saturday morning, September 18, a thirty-four-year-old cartman named Richard Barstow was driving through lower Manhattan.
Near City Hall, a man signaled to him from the entrance of the Broadway and Chambers Street building.
It was Colt.
He asked whether Barstow was busy.
He needed a box taken to a ship.
For two shillings and sixpence, the driver agreed.
This was another critical moment.
Colt could hide blood.
He could dispose of clothing.
He could invent a New Orleans address.
But the moment he hired an independent cartman, he created a witness.
Barstow saw him.
Saw the box.
Saw where it came from.
Knew where it went.
John Colt had solved the transportation problem by creating a human chain of evidence.
He just did not know it yet.
The Ride to Maiden Lane
Barstow helped move the heavy crate.
It was taken from the office building.
Loaded onto his wagon.
The horse moved south.
Through Manhattan.
Toward Maiden Lane.
Toward the East River.
Toward the Kalamazoo.
There was nothing obviously criminal about the trip.
That was its genius.
Nobody was sneaking through an alley at midnight carrying a body.
A legitimate cartman was performing a legitimate commercial service in daylight.
A box was being shipped.
The city itself helped hide the crime because the behavior looked completely normal.
At the waterfront, the crate was unloaded.
It went aboard the Kalamazoo.
Down into the hold.
Now Colt needed only one final event.
Departure.
Once the ship left New York, the investigation would become dramatically harder.
But it did not leave.
The storm continued.
The Kalamazoo stayed.
The crate stayed.
New York still physically possessed the evidence Colt had tried to send away.
Weather may be the most accidental detective in the entire story.
No police strategy kept the ship at dock.
No brilliant investigator ordered the harbor closed.
Rain and poor conditions did what law enforcement had not yet realized needed doing.
They kept the body within reach.
Samuel Does Not Come Home
Meanwhile, the Adams family began asking the simplest question.
Where is Samuel?
People disappear differently in a world without telephones in every home, digital records or instant communication.
A missed evening did not automatically produce an electronic trail.
There was no cell phone to locate.
No bank card to trace.
No surveillance network covering Manhattan.
No text messages.
No GPS.
Investigators had people.
Paper.
Memory.
Witnesses.
And Samuel Adams had left one extremely useful clue before disappearing.
People knew he had business with John Colt.
His absence began circulating publicly.
Newspapers published notices.
Friends and relatives searched.
The printer had not simply gone on an unexpected trip.
Something was wrong.
His father-in-law, Joseph Lane, became involved.
Employees and acquaintances began looking through Adams's business affairs.