Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 68, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1909 — KIDNAPERS SENTENCED; BOYLE FOR LIFE. [ARTICLE]

KIDNAPERS SENTENCED; BOYLE FOR LIFE.

Wife Goes fog 25 Years and Boyle Makes a Sensational Charge That Implicates Another. The judge sentenced James H. Boyle, the kidnaper of Willie Whitla, to the penitentiary for life, and his wife for assisting in the crime' was sentenced to the penitentiary for 25 years. After sentence had been passed Boyle issued a statement charging that Harry Forker, brother of Mrs. Whitla, had promoted the plan to kidnap the boy and that his purpose was to extract from Boyle letters which the latter held that were incriminating against Forker. Boyle’s story which is generally discredited, state; that Forker knows something about the murder of Dan Reetle, of Youngstown, Ohio, and says that the letters that he held and which Forker wanted to gain possession of, were formerly in the possession of Reeble and were the cause of Reeble’s murder. Boyle stated that he had desired to testify about these matters on the stand but was denied doing it by his council. He gives a full story of the abduction of the Whitla boy anc closes with the words: “This story is as true as there is a God above us.” While generally discredited and while Forker and Whitla and the judge and jurors and the lawyers ai: pronounce it a lie, it is rather i strange story to be made out of whole cloth, and calls to mind the strange words of the Boyles just after their capture. Both Boyle and his wife collapsed entirely after the sentence had been pronounced and 3he had to be carried / .down the steps by the sheriff and his deputy. They were taken to the penitentiary at Pittsburg Monday, and will prbbably never see each other again.