Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1907 — A CRIMINAL ENIGMA. [ARTICLE]

A CRIMINAL ENIGMA.

Constantine, Alleged Slayer of Mrs. Gentry, Soon to Be Tried. The authorities of Cook county, Illinois, must soon deal with a criminal enigma whose crime shocked the whole country and led to the crusade against law-break-ers which for the time being almost freed Chicago of criminals. This man is Frank J. Constantine, slayer of Mrs. Louise Gentry. The fellow has spent several months in jail and his trial is about to open. It will be one of the hardest fought on record in Cook county, for, though there is little doubt in the public mind that Constantine is the murderer, he will be ably defended and the evidence against him is all circumstantial. The prisoner is of Italian birth and his mother runs a grocery store in New York. Although he admits nothing, the police assert that they have him positively identified and that they not only have his own admission of his identity, made when he was arrested in New York, but that he made statements about the crime. Mrs. .Gentry Was a young woman, married but a year, and lived in a flat where there were other occupants of similar tastes. Her husband was a man of some means and they lived in a refined manner. In the latter part of 1905 a young man named Constantine came to live in the same flat and made the acquaintance of the Gentrys. He spoke of fine family connections and conveyed the impression that his people, who, he said, lived in New York, were rich. About 11 o’clock in the forenoon of Jan, 6. 1906, Mrs. Gentry, fully dressed in street attire, dashed down the stairs from her apart,ments and rang ,the bell of a doctor’s office on the ground floor, who, upon opening the door, saw her fall to the floor. Her throat was slashed almost from ear to ear and there was blood all about her and trailing down the stairs. She pointed up the stairway in mute testimony that the attack had occurred there. In four minutes she died. Suspicion at once pointed to Constantine because he had disappeared, leaving his hat behind. From that time on for well over a year Frank Constantine was hunted as suspected criminals seldom are hunted, the chase leading through three continents, being participated in and urged on constantly by an aggravated police force aroused by a series of dastardly women murders in Chicago. According to the story Constantine ia alleged to have told the New York police after his capture he went from Chicago to New York; thence to Naples, remaining a mouth in that city before going to Argentina, South America. After five weeks he returned to Italy, went thence to London, where he remained until he sailed for New York in January, 1907. His relatives hid him in New York, but when he was about to return to Italy he was captured on the docks April 2 by an Italian detective of the New York force. Constantine’s shrewdness in evading arrest, his composure and alertness when under questioning by the police, and his present attitude of nonchalance and almost absolute silence show him as a man of self-composure far beyond what might be expected of a man of his years.