Deputy Sheriff Robert Berwick was killed in Manhattan in the summer of 1797 while serving a writ on a man named John Young near Broadway and St. Paul’s Church. As the two walked together in the street, Young produced a pistol and fired a shot into Berwick’s chest. Berwick fell mortally wounded; Young fled toward Barclay Street carrying two pistols. A nearby resident, later identified as Mr. Thompson, intercepted Young; in court testimony Thompson said Young confessed he had acted at the instigation of the devil, surrendered the weapons, and warned Thompson to beware.

Young was tried by a jury, convicted of Berwick’s murder, and sentenced to death. Records state he was executed on August 17, 1797; Berwick left behind a surviving wife. Two days after the execution, human body parts washed up at Catherine Slip and were identified as Young’s. Accounts link that discovery to the executioner’s punishment of dissection and to physicians disposing of Young’s dissected remains in a bag that was not properly weighted, allowing the tide to carry them ashore.