Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 142, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1910 — LIGHT SHED ON CHIME [ARTICLE]

LIGHT SHED ON CHIME

Mysteries of Murders Are Often Revealed by Men’s De. sire to Talk. - -i ESCAPES ABE NOT FREQUENT. Detaction Even Where Dark Deed la Cunningly Planned by the Shrewd Perpetrator. One of the strangest features in all the long history of crime, commented upon by nearly all famous Investigators, to the fact that something the guilty person said or did was responsible for the verdict of guilty, says the Kansas City Star. Murders most carefully thought out, plots conceived in the mind of only one person, so shrewdly and cunningly devised that detection appeared Impossible, have been explained and their perpetrators punished through the operation of an irresistible impulse of conscience which leads men In trouble to talk. Few murderers have gone to their graves without telling some one, some-* where, the secret burden that bore down upon them always. Harry Hayward, a well-bred young fellow of Minneapolis, was convicted and put to death In 1895 for murders of which none would have suspected him had It not been for his unsought confidence to his brother Adry before the crimes tvere committed. Prado, the Paris murderer, put to death In 1888, was convicted by admissions made In moments of confidence. John Higgins of Adrian, Mich., wrote a romance describing the murder of Lafayette Ladd, and was convicted of the crime. Carlyle Harris, in New York, directed attention to himself by involuntarily exclaiming: “What will become of me?” when <told of the death of his unacknowledged wife, whom, as the trial and his subsequent admission proved, he had poisoned. Harris was a medical student. As In the cases of doctors who commit murder,- he might have been expected to so do the work that the cause of death would be "hard to trace, if not Impossible. But luck was against him, as well as his conscience. He gave his wife a box of pills, all of which, except one, were harmless sedatives. By chance alone the fatal pill was not taken until after all the others had been used —and she took it the night Harris called to see her. One of the courtliest and most scholarly scientists in Buenos Ayres in 1894 was Prof. Beaurlgard. He entertained extensively and his invitations were eagerly sought. His chef and butler were from Paris. Attention was drawn to the fact one day that many of his distinguished guests died soon after attending his dinners. After fifteen had died autopsies were ordered, and the discovery made that In every case death had been caused by yellow’ fever, typhoid or cholera. Some one remembered then that Beaurigard had boasted that he could kill a whole city full without being detected. Beaurigard was arrested. When his butler appeared against him he swallowed a drop of hydrocyanic acid which he had carried in a capsule in the hollow of one of his teeth and died. Suicide, In this case, was the only escape, and the suicide was con-* fesslon. After his death It became known that Beaurlgard had amused himself by giving his guests disease cultures, or germs frozen in water, which did not, of course, affect their vitality. When one gets down to the actual figures the world’s murder record Is appalling. Statistics are lacking for the period since 1906, but in the five years preceding that time 45,000 persons were murdered In the United States. With the difference In population considered, it is hardly fair to compare England and Wales with this country, but It is nevertheless noteworthy that in those two countries only 317 murders were recorded In 1905, against 8,760 in • the United States. Thinkers attribute this wholesale slaughter in America to laxity of the law and the innumerable loopholes through which accused persons find a way to liberty. The fear of punishment has never served to keep men—or women—from murder. Each man believes himself smart enough to leave no clew.