KU KLUX KLAN BARBARITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18292, 8 January 1923, Page 5

KU KLUX KLAN BARBARITY.

TORTURE BEFORE MURDER. PUBLIC INQUIRY OPENS. TROOPS GUARD COURTHOUSE By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright. (Received '9.25 p.m.) A. and N.Z. NEW YORK, Jan. 6. A public inquiry into the deaths ofWatt Daniels and Thomas Richards, who are alleged to have been kidnapped and murdered by the Ku Klux KJan, opened at Bartrop, Louisiana, on Friday. The courthouse was surrounded by machine-guns and soldiers, and deputysheriffs searched every person who entered for weapons. The State attorney gained an important victory in easily proving corpus delicti, which the Klan had claimed would never be proved, since the bodies of Daniels and Richards were so l terribly mangled. Dr. McKoin, former Mayor of Mer Rouge, who still protests his innocence of the murders, or any connection with them, returned from Baltimore to-day, and declared he was ready to give whatever evidence was necessary. Pathologists testified that the murdered men were fiendishly tortured with specially-built machines before being killed- Daniels' father and a man named Andrews, who were among the five kidnapped men of whom Daniels and Richards never, returned, described how they were seized and beaten by men in black masks. They declared that because Richards and Daniels, jun., cried out the names of' some of their assailants whose masks slipped from their faces, they were killed. The Court adjourned till Tuesday.

The bodies of Watt Daniels and Thomas Richards were found at the bottom of Lake La Fourche on December 23. Pieces of wire were fastened to their feet, indicating that the bodies had been weighted. The discovery of the bodies was made under amazingly . sensational circumstances. Convinced that the bodies lay at the bottom of Lake La Fourche. detachments of troops and divers encamped the previous night preparatory to dragging the lake. During the - night they were startled by a terrific explosion. Simultaneously other troops'.2o miles away, at the other end of the lake saw mysterious flares on the water, which revealed a number of hooded men wading in the swamp. The troops opened fire, whereupon th<» men vanished. , Next morning jthe two decomposed bodies were found'floating. It is alleged that the murderers, fearful of their victims being discovered, sent up flares in order to attract the attention of the troops, and then exploded dynamite in the hope of burying the bodies in tlie mud. A few days later, Dr. B. former Mayor of.Mer Rouge, Louisiana, was arrested at Baltimore, Maryland, on a murder charge laid by the Governor of Louisiana, in connection with Ku Klux Klan murders.. Dr. McKoin, who is now a post graduate student at a hospital in Baltimore, described an attempt on his life by an ambush last August, and declared that he would not return to Louisiana without military protection. He declined to answer a question" concerninghis membership of the Klan, but told how decoy calls were made to him by members of the Klan on behalf of negro patients On the outskirts of the town. When he went .out in response to these calls he was subjected to hostile revolver firing from ambush while returning in his motor-car. Later, he received a warning that his assailants intended to continue their attacks, under which threat he left the town. ...■;■.,•*. - ..-.■■'...