Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 271, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1916 — GIRLS KILL CHUM TO GET SAVINGS [ARTICLE]

GIRLS KILL CHUM TO GET SAVINGS

WHEN BERLIN YOUNG WOMEN FIND ONLY |lO THEY BELL HER JEWELRY AND CLOTHING “BASKET MUROER" MYSTERY One Said to Hava Declared they Wanted Their Friend's Money to "Flnance" Soldier Berlin—The Berlin detective force has, after weeks, solved the “Basket Murder Mystery.” Two young women named Ullman and Sonnenberg have been arrested and are declared to have confessed to the murder of Martha Franzke, their chum, for her supposed large savings. Finding that these amounted to only >lO, the Ullman and Sonnenberg girls, while the body still lay in the Ullman girl’s house, raided their victim’s lodgings, and sold to pawnbrokers and peddlers everything she possessed —jewelry, clothing and household effects. Miss Ullman, 25 years old, conducted a hair dressing shop in the East End of Berlin in the absence of her sweetheart in the trenches. She is alleged to have declared that it was in order to finance him that she and Miss Sonnenberg decided to put Martha Franzke out of the way. Martha Franzke lived with a girl named Bahl,.the four women being chums, who made the Ullman place of business their headquarters. One morning a letter forged by the Ullman and Sonnenberg girls, purporting to come from a barber named Schulz In Miss Ullman’s employ arrived at the Franzke and Bahl lodgings, inviting Miss Bahl of whom Miss Franzke was very jealous to meet Schulz for coffee, at the Tauentzien Palace, a popular West End resort. The two girls had thus planned to insure Miss Franzke’s being at home alone when they should arrive for the purpose of killing her. But Miss Bahl had only left her home a few moments to keep the supposed appointment when Miss Franzke arrived at the hairdressing shop. She was angry, and felt that Miss Bahl was “stealing Schulz’s love.” The Ullman and Sonnenberg girls encouraged her wrath, berated Miss Bahl and finally induced Miss Frankze to sit down and calm herself over_a cup of coffee in the bitting room. Miss Frankze after sitting down to coffee, was facing a wall. Miss Ullman paced up and down behind her with a razor poised so as to cut Miss Franzke’s throat just as she was about > drink coffee. After this was done, Miss Sonnenberg threw a noose over the girl’s neck. Miss Franzke, choking and bleeding to death, fought her assailants, and gasped, “You shall not get my money after all.” Miss Ullman then slashed the girl’s wrist, almost cutting her hand off. When the girl was dead the Ullman and Sonnenberg girls ripped open her bodice, knowing that she had been accustomed to carryig her money around her neck in a pouch. It contained two 20 mark notes, They carried the body to the bedroom, covered it, returned to their sitting room, and partook of coffee. Afterward they took a latchkey from the girl’s dress, went to her home and ransacked it. Next day they packed the body into a traveling basket and texpressed it as ordinary luggage to Btettin, marked “To be called for.’’ When the basket murder was discovered and solved after several weeks, the girls confessed that they bad intended at first to shoot Miss Franzke and had taken lessons in revolver shooting. Then, when they decided to use a razor, they perfected themselves in the handling of a razor and the tying of a stout noose.