Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1875 — A Hunchback’s Revenge. [ARTICLE]

A Hunchback’s Revenge.

In August last great alarm was created in the village of Incisia, near Florence, by the disappearance of two children—a boy nine years old on the morning of the 21st, and another boy of eight the following evening. It was supposed they might have fallen into the stream, where they went to fish and bathe, but no traces of them or their clothes could be found. AU kinds of exaggerated ideas got afloat in the village, more particularly as these were not the first children who-had suddenly disappeared, and ft Wm asserted that there were children-killers in the adjoining wood. On the 29th, while one of the women of the village was arranging her hair at the back window of her room, she heard frightful shrieks, and recognized them as coming from Amerigo Turchi, a boy nine years old, and that they proceeded from the workshop of one Cario Grand!, a cart carpenter. She ran dow into the street and alarmed the neighbors, who made for the workshop, which they found closed, the boy crying loudly for help from within. After vain attempts to get Grand! to admit them they burst open the door and found him struggling to force the boy into a hole. He had cutthe child fearftilly about the head, and from his mouth blood was flowing, caused, as the boy afterward narrated, by a wedge Grandi had tried to force into his mouth to gag him. After the man was secured it was observed that some of the bricks of the flooring were loose, and on these being removed the first thing seen was a child’s hand. The place was quickly dug up, and the mutilated bodies of the two boys who had disppeared ten days before were discovered; andon the hole into which Grandi was trying to force Amerigo Turchi being examined, a number of other children’s bones were found in the bottom. No sooner was the thing known than the village became a scene of the wildest excitement, and the authorities had to send off in hot haste for whatever military and police there were in the vicinity, and a sufficient force arrived lust in time to save the wretch from beingtom to pieces by the populace. It seems that the murderer, Grandi, was a deformed manof a diminutive stature, high rounded shoulders, very large head, upon which there was not a scrap of hair, and repulsive features. As is too often the case in Italy, such unfortunate creatures become the subject of open public ridicule. The boys of Incisa had been in the habit of teasing and tormenting Grandi and playing all kinds of practical jokes on him, and it was in revenge for this that he had, as opportunity offered, enticed now one and then another of the ringleaders into his workshop, and there murdered them, burying them under the floor. Amerigo Turchi said that Grandi had invited him into his workshop under the pretext of having some fun with the other boys; that to accomplish this he was to hide in the hole Grandi uncovered, but that immediately he entered Grandi attempted to strangle him.— Rome Cor. London Timet.