TO PROVE HER LOVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 289, 6 December 1928, Page 19

TO PROVE HER LOVE.

AMERICAN'S FLAME DEATH.

FIRE TEST FOR EELIGION.

WOMAN'S WEIRD ACTION

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SAN FRANCISCO, November 8,

Of the numerous cults practised in America, that which resulted in the death of Miss Elfrieda Knaak, a young woman of Lake Forest, Illinois, aroused more the" passing attention throughout the whole country. Miss Knaak had been selling for a Chicago publishing house an encyclopaedia and, under the heading "Brahmism Authorities;" discovered a paragraph which is supposed to have sent her off on a most weird experiment, resulting in maiming her own body under extraordinary circumstances. On the basis of her story the police abandoned the first theory of attempted murder and turned instead to literature in which Miss Knaak was said to have studied "fire tests" among ancient religious zealots. Miss Knaak, who was lying near death in a hospital in Lake Forest, admitted that she had burned herself in a hot water furnace in the police station at Lake Bluff, Illinois, to prove her love for a 52-year-old man who has five children. Miss Knaak revealed that she tortured herself slowly in the basement of the Lake Bluff police station, exposing her shoulders, feet, arms and then her head to the flames. The man with whom she was in love was Charles W. Hitchcock, night policeman at Lake Bluff, who was at the time lying at his home with a broken leg. Miss Knaak had been taking elocution lessons from Hitchcock. He has been married for 18 years, and when told of Miss Knaak's statement, Hitchcock said: "Poor girl, I did not know she had a crush on me." While physicians declared her legs might have to be amputated, throughout the night Miss Knaak muttered unintelligible phrases, but it was not until the next morning that she came out of her stupor. "I did it myself, for faith, for purity," she said several times. "For four years I have known Hitchcock and have studied in his school of elocution. Knew Policeman Spiritually. "A few years ago I got to know him spiritually — understand this was no material love affair. I understood him through my knowledge of advanced psychology." Then, in a weak voice, she completed her story: "I have heard a voice for a week, saying, 'Have faith, have faith.' It was his voice. Hβ did not keep an appointment with me on Monday night. (She was not aware Hitchcock was in : bed with a broken leg.) "When he did not appear, I heard the voice again. 'Have faith,' it said. To prove my faith I thought of the fire. I removed my clothing. And then I burned myself. I survived, and I proved by faith that I will live. There was no suicide in it." Miss Knaak was a book agent, and her friends described he as a shy, quiet woman who "had never had a love affair." She was about 29 years old. Dr. James Kissinger, her physician, doubted the woman's story. He pointed out that to believe the story one had to believe that she had placed one foot in the furnace, held it there in the flames for some time, removed it, and placed the other one in. "Then she would have had to thrust in her head and arms, and to have held them there under what would have been the most intense pain," he said. "It does not seem possible that anyone, even in a trance, could have stood it. Muscular reaction would have made her jerk back in spite of herself." State Attorney Smith agreed with Dr. Rissinger, who telephoned other physicians, and they all agreed with the doctor. Miss Knaak, however, insisted she was telling the truth. Hitchcock denied having a love affair with Miss Knaak—spiritual, material or otherwise. Miss Knaak continued to lay at the point of death, and it was only by the application of drugs to ease the pain of her burns that she did not succumb directly after she was discovered in the

furnace room. Authorities eventually discredited her .statement that she had passed through the ordeal of fire to test her love for Hitchcock, claiming that she was not responsible for her statement when under the influence of the drug. Suicide Theory Doubtea. Apparently dissatisfied with the progress authorities made in the investigation of the mystery, relatives of Miss Knaak had called in private detectives to hunt down every clue in the belief the girl was murdered. After first telling the authorities that she had burned herself to "purify a spiritual love," she changed her statement and her dying words were: "I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" Alvin Knaak, brother of the girl, had been the most insistent of all throughout the investigation that it was humanly impossible for his sister to have forced herself into the furnace unaided. His belief was supported by some of the authorities of Lake County and by the attending doctor. Psychiatrists held, however, that it was possible for the girl to subject herself in the furnace under a "psychic influence." An autopsy performed on the girl showed she had not been beaten or attacked, and that death was due solely to the burns received in the furnace. Dr. C. A. Barnes, Lake County coroner's physician, who conducted the autopsy, explained that the broken arm of Miss Knaak resulted from a fall after she had attempted to walk upon her seared feet. Hβ said he was satisfied the young woman thrust her arms and then her legs into the furnace until they were burned to the bone. Hβ said Ins post mortem examination disclosed "nothing whatever" to indicate she had been attacked or beaten. Once she said she had used a key, but only once. She said she first took off her clothes, that she might.atand, unashamed 'in the sight of God.' After burning her feet, she said, she rested, and then burned her head, and then her arms, keeping the parte of her body in the fire from a kneeling position. She insisted that while she was resting, the 'mysterious hand' closed and locked the furnace room door, which had until then been open." Dr. Kissinger pointed out that the Knaak case was the first "progressive burning" case in medical history. Hitchcock added nothing to the evidence. He disclaimed any knowledge of the girl's love and stated that on the first night she was burned he was confined to his home with a broken leg. A MYSTERIOUS HAND. SAN FRANCISCO, November 12. The inquest into the strange death of Miss Knaak, held on November 10 at Lake Forest, Illinois, brought fresh evidence that the girl voluntarily offered her body to a "test of fire" to purify her "psychic love" for Charles W. Hitchcock and had predicted the day on which she would escape her sufferinc in death. Dr. Rissinger, who attended the girl and was with her almost constantly from the time her nude body was found beside the furnace until she died, was the chief witness of more than thirty called. The physician declared that, ruling out the hypnosis that one could not ba induced to harm themselves as Miss Knaak was harmed, "I would say that the girl might have inflicted the torture upon herself." The phyeician recited his conversations with Miss Knaak while the girl was in the hospital. "Why did you burn your clothes ?" I asked her. "I was in the presence of God," she answered. "Did you love Hitchcock?" I asked. "Yes, but not in a physical way. I talked with him that night—but not physically. We understood each other and did not have to see each other to talk." "She said she entered the basement through the open door," the witness said.