A CHICAGO HOTEL TRAGEDY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 6930, 2 February 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

A CHICAGO HOTEL TRAGEDY.

A despatch from Chicago, dated Dec 9, atya :—" If I am only a working girl," cried Sadie Reigh at the Brigga House last evening, "my honor is dearer than my life and I will kill the man who slanders me." A moment later ahe discharged four shots from a revolver at Patrick runsley, and ere the echo died away the man fell to the floor with a bullet in his brain. This tragic occurence took place a few moments before the supper hour last evening at the Brigjrs house, where Kinsley for the past five months has been employed as head waiter. The girl worked as a dish-washer in the hotel, and had suffered keenly for some days past on account of a damaging story whicu it is Slid Kinsley circulated against her good name. The story charged her with having been unduly intimate with a waiter in the house, named Joseph Leitz. The girl is of a highstrung, sensitive nature, 22 years old and has always Dome an exemplary character. It maddened her beyond endurance to hear the taunts of the other girls in the house, who artfully made such additions to the original story as feminine ingenuity could contrive to create the most trouble. She felt mortified all the more at a sense of her inability to defend herself. She is a slender little woman, not weighing more than 120 pounds, and has no friends in the city who would defend her good name. Very little sympathy is wasted on Kinsley, who is said to has been addicted to practices so vile j that if only half be trne of what is told about him, he deserved killing. The girl accases him of a nameless offence and attributes his evil stories against her to jealousy of the attentions of the waiter Leitz. Sho asked Kinsley to retract what he said, but be only laughed at her and said his statements were true. Thursday night the girl was compelled to lißten to a fresh batch of lies, which angered her so that she resolved to act at once. Yesterday morning, after attending to her duties of the hour, she again besought Kinsley to set her rigt before her associates, bnt in vain. He would gi*e the girl no satisfaction and she determined to have his life. She drew her time at the office and with the money, about 12 dollars, she bought a revolver in a State-street pawnshop and returned about 3 o'clock to tbe hotel. She asked the pawnbroker to load every one of the five chambers, and with the revolver concealed beneath the folds of a plain black shawl, she entered the and sent word to Kinsley to come and see- her in the office. He paid no attention to the summons, and the girl went out and did not appear again" until about 5.43 P.M. She then entered through the hotel office, walked hurriedly across the rotunda and descended a flight of stairs leading to the kitchen. As she reached the bottom of the stairs she saw Kinsley on the top and called on him to make an apology to her. Without turning his head he said in a contemptuous voice, "Ob, go on; don't bother me," and proceeded towards the dining-room. "I am going to shoot you, you scoundrel !" cried the girl, in a voice full of rage. "Turn your face; I don't want to shoot you in the back." At the same instant she pointed the revolver at him. At sight of thi3 Kinsley started to run, but before lie had taken a second step a bullet whizzed past his shoulder. Two more followed in quick succeesion and the fourth bullet took effect just as Kinsley had pushed open the dining-room door, The ball struck him in the head at a point a little above and behind the right ear and ranged inwardly, lodsing in the brain. Four shots were fired, so rapidly that the reports sounded almost simultaneously. Kinsley used all speed to get out of the way, but the woman advanced, tiring at him as he retreated. Only one other person,- besides the principals, was present in the s:om, He is the second steward—Ed. Chadbourne. Chadbourne said that neither Kinsley nor the woman exchanged a word alter the first Bhot was fired, and that as toon as she saw him fall wounded she fled down a back stairway leading to the rotunda on the main floor. On her way down she was met by the engineer of the hotel, Sam Andrews, who wrenchad the revolver out of her hand. The girl told Andrews she had shot the head waiter, and theu presented herself to Mr Upman in the office, telling him, also, that ahe had killed her traducer. She said she wished to surrender herself and asked that an officer ba called. Constable Frank Berry happened to be present and took the girl into custody and locked her up in the Armory, while toe victim was removed to the Aloxian Brothers' Hospstal. Kinsley was 40 years old, unmarried, and had worked in Chicago some years ago but had only within the past six months returned from the South.