CARNIVAL OF MURDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 75, 29 March 1928, Page 9

CARNIVAL OF MURDER.

GHASTLY AMERICAN TRAGEDIES.

HTJMAN TORCH MYSTERY.

SELF-IGNITING FLUID. (From Our Own Correspondent.) * SAN FRANCISCO, March 7.

Life is daily becoming cheaper in these United States and ghastly tragedies are becoming occurrences of everyday life in the land of the Stars and Stripes, family slayings being particularly numerous., One of the most peculiar is that known as the "torch murder," which now has become a scientific crime puzzle of the sort usually assumed to be born only in the mind of a master of fiction. The long arm of circumstance in New York drew into the range of police .curiosity a man of three names. With smashing suddenness, then, one of these mystery personalities was revealed as the inventor of a "self-igniting fluid." Dr. Louis Clements was the inventor the police sought for questioning.

Miss Margaret Brown, 40-year-old spinster and Park Avenue governess, of New York, was found along a lonely stretch of New Jersey road a human torch, and died without speaking. Clements' solution, if poured over a substance, will ignite it by contact with the air. It includes phosphorus in a mixture of carbon and tetrachwride and toluol, and burns with little or no odour. According to the police, Clements is known to have several aliases. Charles A. Levine, trans-Atlantic passenger fiver, disclosed that "Clements" and a man known to him as "Dr. Grunett" and "Count Kanitz," signed a contract with him for the establishment of a 4,000,000 dollar air line. Levine declares the last he saw of the man was on February 19, one day before the gasoline soaked body of Miss Brown was found in Bernards - ville, New Jersey.

Delving into the mystery surrounding Miss Brown's murder, police at first took into consideration the character of the man who would attract a woman of her type. She was highly-cultured, spoke four languages and was employed as governess by a wealthy family on Park Avenue, New York.

"Dr. Clements" is described as a man of evident education, and possessing an ingratiating character. His real name is said to be Armgaard Karl Graves, former self-styled German spy, whose history is traceable through many lands. His checkered career includes arrest and charges of blackmailing the wife of Count von Bernstorff, the German ambassador to the United States in 1917. This episode caused a social furore in Washington, D.C. Made Sons Walk Plank.

Another strange murder, which has agitated the minds of criminologists in America, was that which occurred at Indiana Harbour, Indiana, and has resulted in a father confessing that he had Caused the death of his two sons by tricking them into casting themselves into the Indiana Harbour ship canal on a promise that by so doing they would see their grandmother, who is dead.

Chisholm, who was known in Indiana Harbour as Smith, said he decided to kill his three sons, George, junr., nine, and Edgar and Robert, twins, and himself, because he did not believe he could provide a home for them, and thought all would be better dead. He said he took them from Montreal where they had been with relatives, after his wife and he had quarrelled, and she had returned to England, and on February 6 took George and Edgar to the Ship Canal after dark, bound them together with wire, and placed a plpnk over the canal, along which he induced them to walk promising them that if they jumped in they would see their grandmother, whom they had begged to visit.

George toppled in, pulling Edgar after him, Chisholm said, and the father watched them drown, intending also to kill his other son and himself, but lost his nerve. Chisholm, who said that was his real name, although he had lived in Indiana Harbour three years as George Smith, told so many versions of his story that the police were not certain what parts were true.

There were so many discrepancies in Chisholm's story that the police expressed the belief that he had not told the entire truth, and went on continuing the questioning which started after his neighbours had identified the bodies of the two boys, one of which was floating in the canal on February 22, and the other of which was found on March 1. In order to try to induce him to tell more, Chisholm was taken subsequently to the morgue, where the bodies of his sons lay. He broke down and sobbed as he looked down on the eldest son. While in gaol, after his arrest, Chisholm made two attempts to rommitt suicide, being prevented on each occasion, once when he was trying to hang himself with his suspenders. Hammer Murder.

Another sensational murder trial has reached the courts in Painesville in Ohio, in which Velma West*has appeared on a charge of slaying, with a hammer last December 6, her husband, Thomas, and she has found her 21-year-old closest friend, Miss Mabel Young, aligned against her.

Kisses, which the avers, were exchanged by West and.Miss Young at numerous house parties are counted upon by Prosecutor Seth Paulin to establish jealousy as a motive for the slaying. It was to Miss Young's home in Cleveland that the 21-year-old Velma went after the slaying of West at their cottage at Perry, Ohio.

The State will seek to show that Mrs. West danced, sang and played bridge a few hours after the slaying occurred.

Reputed details of Velma's confession were revealed by Sheriff Rasmussen, who quoted her as saying she had secretly nursed for weeks a desire to kill her husband. Mrs. West told him, the sheriff said, that "she struck West with the hammer after he refused to give her the keys of the roadster automobile, which she intended to drive to Cleveland.

"She said that when he refused to give her the keys he struck her on the nose and drew blood. Velma declared she struck him then with the hammer," the sheriff recounted. "He fell to his knees and started to rise, and she felled him again. Half a dozen times she felled 'Eddie' when he tried to rise to his feet until seven or eight blows were struck and he lay still.

"Then according to the girl, she tied his hands and feet, covered him with the quilt and blankets from the bed, and proceeded to change clothes and wash her hands. She admitted burning her blood-stained clothes in the furnace," .Sheriff Rasmussen asserted.