Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1916 — Orpet Freed of Murder of Marian Lambert. [ARTICLE]

Orpet Freed of Murder of Marian Lambert.

It seems practically out of the question to convict a person for murder in and about Chicago, providing the alleged murderer has a few influential friends and is able to hire fairly good attorneys. William Orpet, who was tried at Waukegan, IIL, for the murder of Marian Lambert, the Lake Forest, 111., school girl, a few months ago, was acquitted by a jury Saturday. The trial revealed a rather rotton condition of the schools —or the particular school which Miss Lambert attended. She and young Orpet had been criminally intimate for several months, and this fact seemed to have been known to several of her

schoolmates. Young Orpet, who was attending college at Madison, \Vls at the time of the girl’s death, had deliberately set out to ruin the girl, and then, when he had tired of her, "threw her over." The girl had made a secret appoint mentto meet Orpet onte morning while on her way to school, and her dead body was found in the snow several hours later, she having died from poison. The state’s contention was that Orpet had given her the poison when they met that morning, but he claimed that she had the poison with her an’d took it after he had told her all was over between them. The jury evidently accepted hi 3 version of the girl's death and returned r verdict of aequital. But the public stilly believes that Orpet was the actual murderer of Marian Lambert. If not directly so, then by his conduct after having gained her confidence by making love to her, and he should have been punished for the death of the girl.