Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1903 — GRAVES OF 1,200 ARE ROBBED BY GHOULS FOR PAY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GRAVES OF 1,200 ARE ROBBED BY GHOULS FOR PAY

Wholesale Work of Humaji Jackals Arouses Outraged Residents of Indianapolis.

The most amazing story of ghoulish vandalism ever told in connection with any medical college in the civilized world is being recited by witnesses in the case against Dr. Joseph C. Alexander, now on trial at Indianapolis on the charge of being the chief instigator of wholesale grave robberies. The prosecuting attorney declares that he will prove that at least 1,200 graves were despoiled by the human

jackals said to have been employed by Alexander, and that more - than 1,200 bodies of men, women and children were pickled in the vats of the medical colleges and were cut to pieces by boisterous medical students and the remains dumped into cans and carted off for disposal as garbage.

There is no telling how many families of the Indiana city have unknowingly and involuntarily contributed their beloved dead to Alexander’s chamber of horrors. The outrage is so widespread and affects so many families—some of them of high social standing and great wealth and influence—that a fear is expressed that the medical college itself may be wiped out of existence. The state declares that it will show that it was under Dr. Alexander’s direction that a half dozen corpses, stripped of their shrouds were taken from the vats and thrown into an alley when the investigation of the police drew too close a scrutiny to the affairs of the college over whose dissecting room Dr. Alexander presided. The state will insist that Dr. Alexander himself assisted in the midnight robberies and drove to various cemeteries surrounding Indianapolis and not only directed which graves were to be despoiled, but assisted in the work as well.

Facts also will be brought to light, it is said, to indicate that Dr. Alexander was the head of the business which developed later into an established traffic in human cadavers, the cemeteries in the neighborhood of Indianapolis supplying dissecting material for the colleges of surrounding cities. The body Dr. Alexander is specifically accused of stealing was that of Mrs. Rose Neldlinger, which had been taken from the coffin and had- beet buried again.

It was through Rufus Cantrell, a negro, that the truth finally reached

the grand jury. The revelation made oy Cantrell so startled the community that scores of graves were examined to ascertain if the bodies of relatives remained. Cantrell confessed that more than 1,200 bodies had been taken from graves for the dissecting tables of colleges in Indianapolis and other cities. He said that colleges from New York to San Francisco had been supplied by tbe gang of grave robbers. Seven men, including the surgeons mentioned, were arrested as a result of Cantrell’s revelations. One of the most pathetic instances of grave robbery referred to the removal of the body of Miss. Glendora Gales, a beautiful young woman of twenty, who had died after a brief illness. The body of pretty Sarah Matthews was another which was taken from Its grave and dissected without the knowledge or consent of the girl’s relatives.

Shortly before Cantrell's arrest he went to a small Indiana city for the purpose of pillaging graveyards there. On his return he found a message from Dr. Alexander awaiting him. The demonstrator of the college wanted a grave robbed that night. Cantrell demurred, but finally consented to undertake the job in spite of his weariness.

It was dark in the graveyard. He could not see the .face of his victim. He did not care to then. Her identity did not matter to him. But when the body was stretched on a slab in the medical college Cantrell turned on the light. in its glare he saw the face of Stella Middleton. He did not know until then that she had died during his absence. Then and there, he says, he vowed to end his work. He found a way to notify the relatives of his sweetheart where her body could be found. When his continued exposures of the fact led to arrest, he confessed. At the trial there have been admissions made and statements advanced that brought tears to the eyes of a hundred men who were brothers or fathers of girls and women whose graves had been desecrated, and whose bodies were torn from their resting places' to form material for the dissecting knives of medical students.

Women in the courtroom from time to time added tneir sobs and at moments even Cantrell, “King of the Ghouls,” felt the sorrow and hesitated in his answers to the brusque questions of the lawyers. Mason Neidlirger, a witness, testified that he found the body of the woman whom he. bad loved for fifteen years thrust roughly in a barrel in tne medical cohege. Neldlinger was telling the grewsome facts that surrounded the finding of his wife’s corpse. He said: “We went to the Darrels. There

were at least a dozen of them. We looked into each, the heads of the bodies coming to the surface of the brine the moment that the heavy stone covering was removed.

“Finally, after / we had examined eight barrels, I saw a face in one that

made my heart stop beating. There was a scar on the cheek. I knew that scar. My wife had carried It for 12

years. I ordered the body lifted from the barrel. In a moment the sickening realization came that I had come to the end of my search—l had recovered my wife’s corpse. “I told Dr. Alexander then, and 1 tell him now, that if this court fails to punish him I will seek ‘just vengeance for his terrible desecration myself. I will take the law into my own hands.”

Six cemeteries were desecrated. Twelve hundred bodies were taken. Bodies of women and children stolen. Robberies covered five years. Negro ghouls were employed. Bodies shipped to medical colleges all over the country. Prominent surgeons in Indianapolis implicated.