Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1918 — M. H. PIPER COMMITS SUICIDE [ARTICLE]

M. H. PIPER COMMITS SUICIDE

Alleged Murderer Left Note Pro* testing His Innocense. Milo H. Piper, the alleged murderer of Frieda Wiechmt.n of Chicago, who was in jail at Muskegon, Michigan, charged with the murder of the latter, committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell ip the jail at Muskegon -some time Saturday night. He left a note pinned to his underclothing and directed to his family In J which he protested that he was innocent of the crime. I Piper, who then had a wife living at Muskegon, was married to the Welchman girl by Rev. P. C. Curnick, then pastor of the Methodist church of this city, on March 121, 1916, the couple having sei cured a marriage license at Crown I Point and drove to Rensselaer i where the marriage was performed. I The couple then left on an auto- * mobile trip that covered several i months and in September, 1916, , the body of the girl was found juried in a lonely spot along the .right-of-way .of a Michigan railiroad; clothing found on the body j was identified recently by a and her disappearance was traced I to Piper. The body of the young woman was exhumed last week and it was found that her death had been caused from a gunshot wound in the back of her head. Piper’s wife had admitted that her husband took a shotgun with him on the trip on which he was alleged to have married the girl here. Piper declared that a mysterious individual by the name of Sheldon had married the girl, ua-

ing his name, and that after traveling about with her for some time had practically deserted her 1 and that he, Piper, had later traveled over the country with her, but that he knew nothing as to how she came by her death. While the evidence against Piper was wholly circumstantial, it is I generally believed (that |he was guilty of the crime and thought the best way out of it was to end his own life. It had been the intention of the Michigan officers to visit Rensselaer and other towns at which the couple stopped, after the mar--1 riage here, but the suicide of the alleged murderer, of course, ends 1 the affair.