NEGRO MURDERERS

Evening Star, Issue 18534, 17 January 1924, Page 1

NEGRO MURDERERS

A MYSTERIOUS YENDETTA. POLICE WITHOUT CLUE. The murder of Mrs Frank Romeo, a grocer’s wife, at Birmingham, Alabama, is the latest of a senes of mysterious crimes that have bafiled the police for three years. In each case the assailant was a negro with an axe. Altogether twenty people have been killed and eighteen wounded. The assailant has often been seen, but never identified.

Tho elusiveiioss of the criminal, or criminals, recalls the Jack the Ripper murders in London, and one theory is that the crimes were committed by met negroes who have recurrent periods of lucidity, when they arc ordinary, peaceful citizens.

There have been two separate senes of axe murders. In one senes grocers and their families are the victims. The other series is directed against while, men and negresscs accused of immorality. In the grocer senes, thirteen people, including four women, have been lulled and sixteen injured, including nine women. In the other series, five while men ami two negresses have been killed and two negresscs wounded.

The police have not the, slightest cine why grocers should have incurred the enmity of the criminal or criminals. The assailant of Mrs Romeo ordered some fruit in tho shop and then drew an axe and struck Mrs Julius Vigilant, her daughter. Ho then rushed into the back part of tho shop, where Mrs Romeo was in bed with her three-year-old grandchild. He cut Mrs Romeo’s throat with his axe, but did not harm the grandchild, and escaped. Mr Bernard Vigilant, husband of the injured woman, returning soon afterwards fioia tho kmenia, discovered his wife unconscious and his mother-in-law dead. His wife was removed to hospital, where she gave a vague description of the negro, and then became unconscious. The police arrested a suspect, but obtained no information from linn. ,