Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1908 — GIRL WHO SHOT MAN IS FREED [ARTICLE]

GIRL WHO SHOT MAN IS FREED

Liberated After Hearing by Coroner’s Jury. PHOTO CAUSE OF TRAGEDY Estelle Stout Declares She Used Revolver Because She Saw Man Grappling with Her Sister After Quarrel Concerning Style of Frame on an Enlarged Picture—lnquest Brings Out Peculiarities of the Business of Reproducing Picture* of Departed Persons. Chicago, Dec. 4.—A coroner’s jury freed Estelle Stout who shot and killed Henry M. Hornberger, following a dispute over an enlarged and framed picture of a dead relative of the girl. It was brought out that all over the Country there are men whose business is to obtain photographs of dead persons, agreeing to enlarge them at a trifling cost. The pictures are returned in frames for which exorbitant amounts are demanded. The agents then declare that unless they get their money for picture and frame they will keep theoriginal photograph and the enlarged picture. Sometimes they state the original was destroyed accidentally, or lost. Often it happens the victim has no other portrait of the departed one, and rather than lose the picture pays for a frame worth a very small fraction of the stun demanded. In this case Mrs. Mary Chambers, a sister of Miss Stout, ordered a photo reproduced and a frame with a mourning border placed around it. Hornberger called to deliver the picture in a heavy gilt frame for which was asked a sum far in excess of what Mrs. Chambers expected to pay. Words followed. Miss Stout saw the man grappling with her sister and shot him. Hornberger’s widow in the inquest room spoke to the girl. “You are the one who murdered my husband. I will tear your eyes out! ’’ she said.