Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1885 — THE TRUNK MURDERER, [ARTICLE]

THE TRUNK MURDERER,

Breuer’s Alleged Slayer in Jail at St. Louis—He Befuses to Talk About the Case. ISL Louis special.] Walter H. Lennox Maxwell, alias T. C. D’Aughier, alias Hugh M. Brooks, the supposed murderer of C. Arthur Preller at the Southern Hotel in this city on the sth of last April, arrived here on Sunday from San Francisco in charge of Detective Tracy and Officer Badger, of the St. Louis police force. A crowd of from 2,000 to 3,000 men, women, and children were at the depot when the train arrived, and there was a great scramble among them to get a view of the prisoner, but good order was preserved. The accounts of reporters who rode in from Halstead, Kan., on the train with Maxwell, and had free access to him and to the officers in charge of him, are to the effect that he absolutely refused to talk about his case and positively asserted that he has at no time or place made any statement in regard to it, or in any way acknowledged that he had anything to do ‘ with Preller, or knew anything about it. He says all stories to the contrary are wholly untrue. Detective Tracy thinks th it further developments will show Maxwell to be a weak man, mentally, but that he has got the one idea wedged into his mind that his safety depends on his silence, and that he will startle nobody with a romantic defense. Tracy thinks he killed Preller for money; ’ that the few admissions he has made point in that direction; that his voyage from St. Louis to Auckland was a moneyspending debauch, and not a well-planned escape from justice, and that it was the ludk that takes care of drunkards and fools that stood him in stead, and not any good management of his own. Maxwell was in Chief Harrigan’s office an hour or so this afternoon, and a large number of callers were introduced to him, but nothing regarding his case or what line of defense he will pursue was obtained from him. Charles Bleger, the trunkmaker, recognized Maxwell as the man to whom he sold the trunk in which Preller’s body was found, and a porter at the Southern Hotel recognized him as having been a guest at that house in April last. Maxwell will be turned over by the police authorities to-morrow to the Sheriff and will be placed in jail. What other, if any, legal acti on will be taken, has not yet been determin ed.