From the November 8, 1895 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Complaints have reached Flatbush that the residents of the northeastern section of the Twenty-ninth ward are annoyed by a man named Thomas McCormick, who is well known to the police. He served two years and a half in state’s prison for highway robbery and two more years for house breaking, beside having been arrested and convicted for minor offenses a dozen times during the last fifteen years. He is 35 years old, powerfully built and as strong as three ordinary men. No particular charge has been brought against him this time for the reason, the police say, that people in his neighborhood are unwilling to appear against him in a police court because they fear his vengeance. Sergeant Zimmerman told an Eagle reporter last night that a few days ago McCormick went into a Flatbush barber shop, the owner of which is a bird fancier, and ate two live canary birds, feathers and all.”