MISSING KEY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 184, 5 July 1929, Page 8

MISSING KEY.

’VARSITY MURDER CLUE. PROFESSOR’S GUILT. Professor James Snook, former world’s champion pistol shot, has confessed that, using a hammer, he killed Theora Hix, a pretty 24-ycar-old girl medical student, whose body was found, terribly mutilated, in a grassy plot alongside Lovers’ Lane, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A., a few days ago. She tackled him first, he declared, in their automobile, which had been bought with profits from the sale of narcotis, in which they had jointly trafficked in .the Ohio State University. Theora Hix not only sold the drugs, but used them herself.

Snook claims that he made a determined effort to break her of the habit, but could not, and when he refused to get her heroin she started beating him with a hammer. He snatched it from her hands, and killed her with blows on the head. Then he cut her throat with a jack-knife. The 13th key missing from the girl’s key ring furnished a clue for the detectives. Twelve keys remained on the ' ring lying alongside the girl’s body. Who took tho 13th key, which her girl friends knew she carried P Why was this key stolen ? These were the questions that the police had to answer.

An investigation showed that it was thb key to her private apartment, and definite proof was soon obtained that Snook used this key to enter their love-nest on the day following the murder. Although Snook’s wife helped him with his alibi, he wilted under this disclosure. Snook is 53 years of age.