AMERICAN HORROR

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10722, 24 December 1927, Page 5

AMERICAN HORROR

"I KIDNAPPED HER"

“BUT SOME FIEND KILLED HER.” Electric Telegraph —Tress Association NEW YORK, December 22. A message from Pendleton, Oregon, states that the sheriff has announced that he had arrested Edward Hickman, suspected of the Parker murder. Hickman admitted that he knew Parker and confessed that he kidnapped the girl, but denied that he murdered her. He said: “Some fiend killed her. I know who he is.” He refused to divulge his name. Hickman said he kidnapped the girl in order to get money to pay his way through college. He asserted that wire bound round her throat caused the death of the girl and not chloroform. He declined to discuss the matter further. The officers state that they found fourteen hundred dollars of ransom money in Hickman’s pockets. The police are questioning him further. A great crowd of officers, reporters and others are round the gaol. The youthful kidnapper was near collapse and showed its effects in an attempted escape by a long'drive in a stolen automobile. The officials are keeping a heavy guard in and outside the gaol at Pendleton pendqig instructions from Los Angeles. Hickman is showing no wish to attempt to escape. The police have chequed the money found in Hickman’s pockets and state that they have identified the gold certificates as Parker’s. The officers said there is not the slightest doubt about the prisoner’s identity.’ When arrested by two officers Hickman had two companions in the automobile. One was armed with a sawn-off shotgun and the other with a ihstol belonging to Hickman. They surrendered quietly. SAN FR ANCISCO, December 23. Hickman repeatedly denied the murder. He said another man and woman whom he refused to name were responsible for thy act. He said: “They bound wire round her neck and choked her to death.” In a recital of the facts of the abduction to the officials Hickman was always smiling, but was unnerved at the mention of the gruesome details. He said: “I really did not intend to be a crook because you Ml be found out soon enough. You’ll get caught. But I wanted to go back to Kansas City and go to work there to get enough money to go to college. “I thought if I was able to get enough for my tuition that it did not matter how I got. it. I would go straight, from then on. “This man asked me wliat 1 thought of kidnapping someone. I said I would not mind doing it. and 1 remembered Parker’s daughter. It will probably be the chair for me uow.” A special session of the Los Angeles Grand Jury is called for tomorrow to vote on the murder indictment. John and Jane Doe are also likely to be named. The indictment is to cover the unknown man and woman. Extradition papers to bring Hickman back to California were rushed to Oregon by airplane. Hickman’s mother in Kansas Citysaid she was not familiar with her son’s desire to attend college. She was glad her son was not guilty of the murder.

Hickman’s father, a steam shovel engineer, said: “I want to see my soii punished to the extent that lie is guilty. I will be ready to help him .all I can.” The sheriff’s officer at Los Angeles has identified the alleged murderer as a youth who came to Los Angeles with Hickman from Kansas City.