Bohemia Historical Society
The First Murder in Bohemia
December 27, 1890 — a confession, a community, and a pair of rusted handcuffs
By 1890, Bohemia was a tight-knit, industrious enclave — a place where neighbors knew each other’s names, where Czech was still spoken on porches and in fields, and where serious crime was virtually unknown. That would change, two days after Christmas.
1855–1890
A Village Built on Hope
On March 5, 1855, the hamlet of Bohemia was founded on the South Shore of Long Island by Slavic immigrants — John Vavra, John Kratchovil, Joseph Koula, and their wives — settlers who had crossed the Atlantic from a mountainous village near Kadam in the Eastern European province of Bohemia. They had come seeking something the Old World could not offer: freedom from the Habsburg Empire’s stranglehold on central Europe, and a quiet patch of American soil they could call their own.
The little community began to grow as many newcomers found jobs in oil and fish factories on Fire Island, a few miles offshore. Others brought their cigar-making skills from the old country, and eventually cigar factories opened — by the late 19th century, there were eight of them.
In its early days, the settlement was informally known as “Tabor” or “Bohemia Village.” As the community grew, residents established prominent local organizations, including the Shooters’ Club in 1868, the Czech Farmers’ Club in 1872, and the Czech-Slovak Benevolent Association in 1887. This organized growth gave the village the political influence needed to petition for an official post office by 1885, when residents voted to formally name the village “Bohemia.”
December 27, 1890
The Crime
December 27, 1890. The holiday warmth had barely faded when word spread through the hamlet that something terrible had happened: a man was dead. Vaclav Kroupa had been stabbed to death. It was, according to local records and later chronicled in The History of Bohemia, the first murder ever committed in the hamlet.
The impact on the small, close-knit community was profound. In a village where everyone was a neighbor, a countryman, often a relative — where disputes were settled over shared meals and community meetings — the violent taking of a life struck at the very heart of what Bohemia had been built to be. The founding families had fled violence and oppression in Europe. They had not expected to find it here, on their own quiet stretch of Long Island, in the week between Christmas and the New Year.
The accused was Frank Krulish. He did not flee, and he did not deny what he had done. He confessed.
The Arrest
The Arrest — and Its Absurd Complication
What followed the confession should have been straightforward. The responding authorities came to take Krulish into custody. They reached for their handcuffs.
The cuffs wouldn’t close.
They were rusted solid — so corroded and neglected that they were completely unusable. In a scene that might have been darkly comic if the circumstances hadn’t been so grim, officers found themselves unable to physically restrain a confessed murderer because their equipment had been allowed to decay into uselessness. The solution, ultimately, was to soak the handcuffs in kerosene to loosen the rust enough to make them functional.
It is a detail so strange that it reads like fiction — and yet it was preserved, apparently because it was simply too remarkable to omit, in The History of Bohemia itself.
The Reckoning
A Community Forced to Reckon With Its Own
The murder of Vaclav Kroupa forced the hamlet of Bohemia to confront something every close-knit immigrant community eventually must: that isolation from the outside world does not guarantee peace within it. These were people who had built their community around shared culture, shared heritage, and shared ideals — and still, violence had found its way in.
The names involved — Kroupa, Krulish — were Czech names, immigrant names. This was not an outsider’s crime visited upon the hamlet. It happened between neighbors, in the shadow of the Christmas season, in a village that had spent 35 years building itself into something its founders could be proud of.
In 1872, a Czech Farmers’ Club had been founded in the community, and a Czech periodical reported that by 1883 there were 150 Czechs living in Bohemia. By 1890, this was a mature, established community — and the murder of Vaclav Kroupa left a mark on its collective memory significant enough to be recorded for posterity.
After 1890
Bohemia After 1890
The hamlet endured, as communities do. The cigar trade that had sustained so many of Bohemia’s immigrant families eventually declined, with the last factories shuttering around 1930 as mechanized production ended the era of hand-rolled cigars. The 20th century brought suburbanization, new waves of residents, and the slow dilution of the hamlet’s distinctly Czech character.
The Bohemia Historical Society was founded in 1984, dedicated to preserving the rich heritage of the hamlet. It was within that tradition of preservation — of insisting that the full story of a place be told — that the account of Vaclav Kroupa’s murder, Frank Krulish’s confession, and the infamous rusted handcuffs survived.
In Memory
A Footnote That Refuses to Be Forgotten
History is made of milestones, and not all of them are noble. The first birth. The first school. The first church. And, in Bohemia’s case, the first murder — documented in a local history book, preserved across more than a century, passed down because someone understood that a community’s story must include its shadows as well as its light.
In a hamlet founded on the promise of a peaceful new life, December 27, 1890, stands as a reminder that no place is entirely immune from human failing. Vaclav Kroupa, a man whose name had already been woven into the early fabric of Bohemia’s Czech community, died by a neighbor’s hand. Frank Krulish confessed and was taken away — eventually, once someone found enough kerosene to free the rust from a pair of forgotten handcuffs.
It is, in its own strange way, an unforgettable story.