U.S. MURDER WAVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 39, 16 February 1928, Page 9

U.S. MURDER WAVE.

ANOTHER HICKMAN CASE. LITTLE GIRL KILLED. ASSAILANT NEARLY LYNCHED. fFrom Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, January 25. Two men kidnapped and rffurdered little schoolgirls in thtf United States. The first crimc was committed in California, where they have capital punishment, but with unparalleled fooling in the Courts Hickman has been made almost a national hero. He has been daily having his picture taken and printed in the sensational yellow Press, daily he has been reading hundreds of letters he has received from actual admirers who believe he is being made a "martyr," and all the while the poor wretch has not been much worried about the hangman, while alienists have been workin" him tapping his spine to take tests of fluid as to whether he is insane. His ciime was committed considerably over a month ago. In Michigan, where they have no capital punishment, Adolph Hoteling, an elder in the church of Owosso, murdered a little girl. Three days after he was caught he was in Marquette Prison, to spend the rest of his life at hard labour, and now Americans are asking \vhich is the better system. Hoteling narrowly escaped lyilfching, and a company of National Guard troops were ordered out to stem a menacing mob of more than 16,000 persons gathered about the county gaol at Flint, Michigan, clamouring to lynch Hoteling, the church deacon who had confessed to slaying five-year-old Dorothy Schneider under most revolting circumstances, surpassing almost the notorious murder by Hickman.

. The troops charged the crowd and had to use tear-bombs to dispel the-mob, as Hoteling- was secretly hurried away. to Lansing Gaol. Many ef the tear-bombs were caught by the angry mob and tossed back at the guards before they were exploded, and the police were driven indoors by the suffocating gas. The mob continued its barrage of bricks against the gaol, shattering windows, and the police rounded up 11 of the gathering and incarcerated them. Next the mob turned its attention to the newsboys shouting their extras that the man had been spirited away and roughly handled them. The papers were torn up and the boys chased off the streets, while the mob yelled "Fake." The mob.was at last pacified when permitted to search the and found that Hoteling had been removed to another city for safety. Meanwhile the police at Owosso stated that the murderer had confessed to crimes against children committed there over a period of two years.

The Confession. In his confession, according to the police, Hoteling said he was in Flint on the previous Thursday looking for work. "I don't know what came over me," he was quoted as stating.' "I was driving along and saw Dorothy. I got her in the motor car, thinking 1 would take her home. She cried, but J continued driving on." The slayer said when they reached the creek bank, Dorothy walking the last part of her death march across the field, she continued to cry, and said sliq would tell her father, so he pulled out his two-bladed clasp knife and stabbed her twice. The wounds were fata). Then he proceeded with the task of mutilating the body. "I don't know what came o\'er ine," he kept repeating. Hoteling was impelled to commit tlie •crime by. brooding over the Hickman case, he admitted in his confession. He Said the "terrible Hickman case kept me awake night after night." He said he spent sleepless night after sleepless night turning over in his mind the ghastly details of the Hickman crime. He said he plunged the knife through the heart of the unfortunate victim and said he did not torture her. After he mutilated the body he threw vit in the creek. He said he painted his car oil the following day when the hue and cry about a blue four-door sedan went up. He purchased a can of black paint and hurriedly daubed it on, he said. After the crime Ire drove down to Flint and then to his lioine in Owosso, he stated.

The murderer had only on the previous Sunday been installed as a deacon of the Owosso church, and had presided at a Communion in the morning. He is the father of five children, including two married daughters. Mrs. Hoteling insisted that if her husband confessed to the murder he must have been tortured into doing so. ''He never did anything wrong in his life before," she Hoteling expressed fright when taken into custody. The Court proceedings moved with lightning-like rapidity, and six days after the murder Hoteling was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the five-year-old Dorothy Schneider, the kindergarten scholar. The punishment was decreed on Hoteling's plea of guilty. Leslie Schneider, father of the girl Hoteling admitted kidnapping and killing, attacked the slayer with his bare fists at the door of the courtroom. The two were separated by guards. Hoteling admitted he had attacked other girls before his murder of the Schneider girl.

Curious Contrast. On the other side of the American continent a curious contrast was provided in the fighting over technicalities in the Court proceedings in the Hickman case, and many despaired of ever seeing the prison'er, in Court facing trial. When Thomas Hifckman arrived in Los Angeles to assist in defending his son Edward, charged with the crime of murdering Marion Parker, the son shouted that he did not want to see his father. "He is the cause of all my troubles, and I don't care what he wants to do now to help me. I won't see him when he gets here," the rebellious son yelled when a gaoler told him his father was in Los Angeles from Kansas City. Hickman developed a high fever following the' operation to remove fluid from his spine in connection with tests taken to support his insanity defence. Simultaneously a different scene was bein"- enacted in a San Francisco theatre, where the two Oregon police deputies who arrested Hickman were cavorting on the stage, capitalising their part in the Parker tragedy for the sake of a few dollars, but glorying in the limelight of public display. So disgusted were Southern Califomians at the slowness of the progress of the law and the continued dramatic heroics of Hickman that lie was burned in effigy by a crowd which vigorously applauded the action of seeing the effigy go up in flames. "If the law will not finish him, we will," they shouted as the flames licked up the make-believe Hickman as it blazed near the seaside resort of Venice, near Los Angeles.