Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1889 — BURKE’S STORY RETOLD. [ARTICLE]

BURKE’S STORY RETOLD.

ALLEGED CONFESSION OF THE CRONIN SUSPECT. His Fellow-Prisoner at Winnipeg Repeat* Burke’s Alleged Tale of the Tragedy at the Carlson Cottage—The Horrible Details of the Deed Recalled. • [Winnipeg dispatch.] Assistant State’s Attorney Baker, of Chicago, and Lawyer Howell have secured Gillette’s story of the confession about Dr. Cronin’s murder, which, he says, Burke made b to him while they were confined in the jail together. They had to drive out to the penitentiary to get it. Mr. Baker places considerable confidence in the story told by Gillette, and after his return made the following memorandum of its substance: “Burke began to talk about his mother soon after he got put in the jail. He was quiet for some time after he came, when he began to talk and mix in with us. There were six cells in one-half of the jail, and they opened in a small room which had a door that could be locked when our cell doors were open and we were all outside in the room together. It is one of the jail rules that no man should go into another man’s cell, but Burke used to come in mine and shave himself, as I had the only looking glass. We used to talk about our cases together, and he always seemed to think that he would go free, and so he did not mind talking about bis case. He thought that the Winnipeg court would hold him in the extradition, but that he would be acquitted in Chicago. “When Martinson came here to identify him he asked me to loan him my coat aud hat, and we changed and he put on mine. When we stood in the room outside in the yard he whispered to me when he saw the expressman: “ ‘That’s him; he T s no detective; he’s a Swede. I know him, but he don’t know me. ’ “He talked to us all the time we were in together. There were three of us besides him most of the time and most of us were in before he came “As nearly as l can call the names, he said that the men who killed Dr. Cronin were himself, a Dennis and a Dan Coughlin, a Pat Cooney, and one whose name I don’t remember. One man, he said, who pulled out at the last minute, was a man who worked for McGinnis, a fish and oyster man on West Randolph street and the Haymarket. He did not say what weapon they used, but that it was something like a club. When Dr. Cronin was down they pounded him all over the face, so as he couldn’t be recognized. He said that he was told that Dr. Cronin was to be brought to the Carlson cottage to take care of a woman who was said to be confined. “Burke said that for a time before he had been going with a woman who had been loose, but who was going to reform and whom he meant to marry. He didn’t tell her name, but said that she kept furnished rooms on North Clark street, near Chicago avenue. Dan Coughlin knew her and used to visit her place. Burke said that he was afraid of her; that he had treated her shabbily, and that she might squeal on him. “He would not say that any one struck the first blow at Dr. Cronin, but that he died hard. Dr. Cronin was a more muscular man than they thought he was. Ha said they rented the Carlson cottage and put the furniture in, but said nothing as to where the furniture came from. The corpse was taken away in an express wagon which they hired from an old man on Chicago avenue. They hired it for all night, and drove it themselves. “They took tne Dody aown to the lake and took it out of the trunk. They said that they had expected to find a rowboat there, but there was none there and they threw the body into the water. The shore was shallow and the body showed, and the waves moved it back toward them. There was a lot of blood and a lot spilled in the sand. They used the trunk to scoop water on the body and then put the body back into the trunk and then drove away to where they afterward dumped it. Coughlin knew more about the north side than any one, and he showed the way. “At the catch basin they had hard work to get the body in, Dr. Cronin being a large-sized man. They had to double him up so as to get him in, because he was too long to stand up in it. While they were working at it they got scared at some farmers’ wagons going by, but they went on and finished it He said they went back to the cottage the day after. “The money that they got was given in one lump and was divided among them. It was paid, Burke said, in an office on Dearborn street, south of the Tremont house, over the office of Lazarus Silverman, bauker. “He said that he did not know Alexander Sullivan; that he was a lawyer, and had onlj seen him twice—one time in Sullivan’s office. “He said that when he came to Winnipeg he had a box, bbt he did not say what kind of a box. He said that he had been here two nights before he was arrested. He had a valise, which he said the police took, and a box, which he took to some people in East Bannatyre street in Winnipeg. He wanted to get somehody to take a letter to them, but did not know who he could. He asked me if I could get my lawyer to take it, and I said ‘No, he would not.’ A priest came there, but I think he would not take it. Afterward it was taken by a little old man with long hair, and Burke never talked about it again. He said that there was a good overcoat and some underclothes of Dr. Cronin’s, and they meant to take them away somewhere. “Burke used sometimes to cry a great deal, and did all sorts of things to keep up his spirits. We asked him what they killed Dr. Cronin for, and he said he had betrayed a trust, that he gave away secrets, and that he did not stand by his order, and that he had squealed on a man who was short in his accounts. ’ ’ Mr. Baker would like very much to take Gillette to Chicago, but of course the Canadian authorities would never permit it, as he would at once be taken possession of under a writ of habeas corpus. Baker will remain here a day or so longer, as be is anxious to take Chief Mcßae back with him. Mcßae wants the reward promised for apprehending Burke before he goes to Chicago. Ireland in 1879 Lad 5,265,625 inhabitants, and the population just made up for 1889 is but 4,777,534. A decrease like this is true of no other civilized country in the world.