CHICAGO'S BLUEBEARD.

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 142, 18 December 1905, Page 7

CHICAGO'S BLUEBEARD.

-■ » ■ DEATH SENTENCE CONFIRMED. [PRESS ASSOCIATIONS NEW YORK, 16th December. The Supremo Court has confirmed the sentence of death passed on Johann Hoch for wife-murder. Johann or Jacob Hoch, or Schmidt, was arrested in Now York in February last on a charge of having murdered his wife, and was subsequently found to havo had no fewer than forty-threo wives, whom he had cither murdered or deserted. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but was reprieved as he was proceeding to the scaffold, the prisoner's lady friends having guaranteed funds to secure a new trial. During the last twelve years (according to a New York correspondent) Hoch ,has married forty-three women, and murdered at least twenty of them. When arrested ho called hims-elf Johann Hoch, but it has since been ascertained that his real namo is Jacob Schmidt, that'lie was born in 1862 at Bingen on the Rhino, and that he fled from that place to escape trinl for fraud, leaving a wife and four children. Schmidt had studied at Heidelberg University, and acquired a thorough knowledge of chemistry. Ho appears to have arrived in America in 1892, and it was in Chicago that ho promptly began his series, of marriages and murders. There he found seventeen victims, and there he has now been indicted for bigamy, on the testimony of three living wives, and for murder, upon the evidence furnished by the body of a dead one. It was his custom to tako board and lodging in the house of some middle-aged German widow, selecting the hard-working women wh,o had saved a littlo money, or were carrying insurances on their lives. With his education and glib tongue ho made himself .agreeable to his victims who had a little property, and suggesting marriage, with a union of resources. Such a widow in New York was on the point of accepting him, when fortunately it occurred to her that he roscmbled the picture in a nowspaper of recent date of a man who was accused in Chicago of many crimes. She sent word to "the police, and Schmidt soon found himsolf in gaol. Schmidt's marriugos took placo in several cities—Chicago, San Francisco, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Brooklyn, St. Paul, Cincinnati, and others. At least twenty of the women, in all probability, were murdered by poison; several others nro missing, a fow survive, from whom he ran away as soon- as he had got possession of their savings. In most cases the money taken did not exceed 500dol.; in ono instance ho obtained 6000dol. Seven of the unfortunate women died within three weoks of their marriage; eight were permitted to live for about three months. The prisoner is described as short and stout, and by no manner of means an attiactivo-looking man. ,