Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 217, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1912 — FORMER ROSELAWN GIRL FIGURES IN CRIME QUEST. [ARTICLE]

FORMER ROSELAWN GIRL FIGURES IN CRIME QUEST.

Daughter pf Forjner Foreman of Otis Ranch Charged With Responsi- / bility of Two Deaths. A girl who went by tne najpe of “Frankie” Ford in a diveimWest Hammond and who was arrested last week and lodged in a Chicago jail because of investigations started to learn _ the cause of the death of John Messmaker and Ethel Harrison in the dive where she lived, is the daughter of Harry Baxter, for some years the foreman on the big Otis ranch at Roselawn. The girl married a man named Parker at Roselawn andlater drifted about various small cities near Chicago, including Gary, Indiana Harbor and Hammond. She lived in the vilest dives and became a victim of the morphine habit and influenced all of her associates that she could to use the drug. Finally she entered a dive conducted by Henry Foss, a West Hammond Here she lived under the name of Ford. The immorality and crime that has taken place in West Hammond and in the Foss joint has recently been exposed by the investigations of Miss Virginia Brooks and policemen and newspaper reporters. John Messmaker, a married man, became an associate of the Ford woman and-she had accompanied him on a drunken orgy one night about a month ago. The next morning he died in the Foss dive. The Ford woman was arrested as a witness and the theory yas that Foss had caused him to be poisoned. The Ford woman’s mind is distorted as the result of the morphine influence and her debauchery and she told a number of wild tales to the police about the death of Messmaker. The latest theory is that she was his murderer, having caused his death by a “shot” of morphine the night after they returned from their 'orgy. Ethel Harrison, another inmate of the resort, was also found M dead in the place and the Ford woman’s morphine treatment is said to have caused her death. The newspapers of Chicago have sought to make a much greater sensation of the matter than is shown by the investigation of W. H. Blodgett, the Indianapolis News correspondent. They told of a death chamber in the Foss dive, charged that a dozen murders had taken place, that there was a tunnel from the dive to the graveyard and about everything to .add to the sensation. Mr. Blodgett -prints what he claims to be the correct story and he believes that the Ford woman is alone responsible for the two deaths. He tells of much shameful conduct in which the police are alleged to have taken up a collection while protecting the immoral dumps. The work of Miss Brooks and the reporters has been retarded considerably by the dive keepers, who have given them many false clues, and threatened them with murder if they did not suspend the investigation. They are trying hard to find some law that will permit them to prosecute the vice promoting saloonkeepers and divekeepers, so that West Hammond can be cleaned up. The Ford woman is said to have been a bad one from early girlhood and people at Roselawn are little surprised to learn of the depths‘to which she has sunk.