BESPERATE ACT OF LOVERS.

Evening Star, Issue 11452, 21 January 1901, Page 1

BESPERATE ACT OF LOVERS.

A DEPLORABLE FAILURE-OF JUSTICE. ■>»' An appalling and exfcraonßnary crime, committed in Minnesota, has now "been followed (writes the ' Argus's' New York correspondent, under <late«Jfc&ember 7) by a deplorable failure of justice, two yonng men,< undoubtedly guilty : of the murders with which they were been acquitted by a jury. Tie scene-of the crime I was the town of An.ofca, which is situated in one of the richest'arid most beautiful agricultural districts At nine o'clock on a Simday*evening William Wise, a farmer, his wife, and their four children were seated around the evening lamp. One of the boys was plajdng cards with his father. The two daughters, one seventeen years old and the other fifteen, left the group, ostensibly to- close the outer door, which had suddenly opened, apparently moved by the wind. The girls did not return, but passed into an adjoining room. A few minutes later those remaining at the lamp-lit table were stricken down by repeated volleys of bullets and buckshot, which came through a window .near at hand. The youngesfrboy was killed instantly; his brother, shofthrough the lungs, died a few days later; the mother, terribly wounded, gave up her life before morning; the father still survives, a helpless paralytic. At first suspicion rested'upon no-one; ,but the poor mother must have felt that the murderers were the men afterwards arrested and tried, for almost with her latest breath she urged her daughters to tell nothing, because there was already "trouble enough." The girls obeyed her for a time, asserting that they had no knowledge of the crime; but at last Eliza, the younger, confessed that she and her sister had conspired with their sweethearts, Joseph Hardy and Elmer Miller, to murder their parents, in order that both couples might be married speedily, and might enjoy a few hundred dollars which the mother had laid away. The parents had not forbidden the girls to marry, but they had objected when the young men who were courting them remained at the house until a late hour of the evening. Eliza told the whole story of the conspiracy, with every detail, and was corroborated in every part of it by her sister Martha. It had been agreed that the parents should be shot that Sunday evening, and that the opening of the outer door should be tie signal to draw.the girls away from the family group. Just before the signal was given, Martha, at her father's request, had been singing 'Nearer, my God, to Thee.' Bath of the girls testified in court without the slightest trace of emotion, recounting: all their conversations with Hardy and Miller and describing the wounds and sufferings of their relatives in the coolest and most matter-of-fact manner. The paralysed father was borne into court on his bed. His testimony did not harm the defendants, of whom he spoke without resentment. The young men attempted to establish an alibi, but were not successful. They were acquitted, however, because the laws of the State of Minnesota say that no one shall be convicted of murder on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice. The jury were instructed that the girls were accomplices. For this reason, and because the defendants had a- host of friends, the verdict was one of acquittal. ','