Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1884 — More about the Keener township Tragedy. I [ARTICLE]

More about the Keener township Tragedy. I

Nothing new of much importance has developed in the Keener township murder 'case, •since our extended report two weeks ago. Sheriff' Powell' has mad& two unsuccessful trips to Chicago to search for the check which Wartper pretends he gave Dreger, and winch was Jpayabie in Chicago,—The citizens pf—Northern Jasper are very much in earnest in their determination to get the facts in the matter. They are ail united in believing that the services of some professional detective should be called in to aid and direct theix efforts. They have already held several public limitings, and are making an organized and persistent effort to unravel the whole story of the crime, and it Wartner is the guilty man they want .to make sure of his conviction, and if more than one person was concerned in the deed, they intend, if possible, to bring them all to justice. THE MURDERED MAN. John Dreger had lived in Keener township the past 7 or 8 years. He came from Germany, and was temperate, honest, and a hard ivorking man, well, liked by all of his neighbors and without a known enemy in the world. His parents are both dead, he has half sisters living in Germany. Hiewife was a daughter of John Kosky, of Keener tp., and has been dead some two years. There are no children. He was very much attached to his wife, and up to__tlie time of his death, never ceased to mourn her loss. She died in less than one year after marriage. He owned a small farm in the northern part df the county, and had, for some time previous to his death, been living on it alone. His personal property, (which was all found in the possession of Wartner), amounts in value to five or six hundred dollars. THE ACCUSED MAN. Wartner, the man arrested as the supposed principal, and perhaps sole perpetrator of this cold blooded and mercenary crime, is a native of Holland, and has a family of a wife and four children. They have been in this country for about one year and a half and have lived in the house now occupied by the family for about six months. The family are,very poor. Wartner hail been engaged m fishing in the Kanka=; kee river for some time and had a boat and several nets for that purpose- Not owning any team he peddled his fish on foot carrying them in two pails suspended from his shoulders by a wooden neck-yoke- He fias shown him - self a mail of wonderful nerve and will power. The presence of the murdered man’s body and the ghastly disclosures of the post mortem examination were powerless to shake his strong self control. He -evidently has the “nerve” for any deed, however desperate. Sheriff Powell says that in his looks the gleam of his ■cold,' cruel eyes , remind him of Nelling, the murderer of Ada Atkinson, at Oxford,'about a yeai ago.