AN AWFUL CONFESSION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11056, 6 May 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN AWFUL CONFESSION.

A GERMAN MURDERS HIS WIFE. the body boiled IN A kettle. Chicago, March 15.—August Becker, the stockyards butcher, whose wife, Theresa, disappeared on January 27 last, and who married Ida Sutterlin, seventeen years old, two weeks later, made a confession to tho police to-night, which the police believe is true. lie says he killed his wife on January 27 by striking her on the head with a hammer. He then cut her body up, and after boiling her remains in a kettle on the kitchen stove buried them in the lot adjoining his house, on Rockwell-street. Becker confessed about a week ago that lie pushed his wife oil the Randolph-street viaduct into the lake, but as the ice on the lake was two or three feet thick that day his story did not meet with much credence. This second confession, however, is so probable that the police believe it. Yesterday they found a piece of the red wrapper the woman was last scon to wear. This crime far surpasses the Luetgert case in it« fiondishness. Oil January 27 Becker and his wife went down town together and quarrelled on the way. When they reached home they were still quarrelling, and Becker, incensed beyond endurance by the woman's sharp tongue, says be picked up a hammer and brained her with it. The day after the murder he called upon little Ida Sutterlin, telling her his wife was merely his housekeeper and had taken it into her head to go away. Ida believed him and married him in two weeks. Two weeks subsequently Becker was arrested for murder, and Ida turned against him. She says sho hates him now, and hopes he will be hanged for deceiving her, Becker's knife was found under the floor of the barn, in tho rear of the house, to-day, It had blood stains upon it, and the police are certain this is what he used to cut the body up with. Becker stood out against the police as long as he could. Day by day he grew moodier and more fearful, and to-night no i surprise was expressed when he said lie I wanted to tell the true story. Ho says ho ■ is ready to be hanged now,