PRISONER FOUND DEAD

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17918, 24 October 1932, Page 7

PRISONER FOUND DEAD

MURDER ALLEGED U.S. DEPUTY SHERIFF CHARGED NEW YORK, Sept. 7. 0. 0. Skinner, a Deputy Sheriff of Tazewell County, Illinois, was arrested to-day on a charge of murder in connection with-the death of a prisoner named Marlin Virant, who was found, hanged, in his cell. ' Virant’s body, it is alleged, bore marks of a severe beating, and a pathologist who examined it for the •State declared that death had not been caused by strangulation, but had resulted either from beating or from the effects of the “knock-out drops,’’ sometimes used by the police to get fingerprints from an unwilling prisoner, or a combination of the two.

Virant had been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in a murder in a “speakeasy.” At the coroner’s inquest he alleged that the police had “nearly kijled” him in an attempt to get a confession from him, though he knew nothing of the murder. “They hit me on the head, and I think tbev broke two, ribs,” fie said. . “They took turns working on me. Skinner knocked mo down, and kicked me, and jumped on my neck. I couldn’t talk because I didn’t know anything. They kept kicking me and calling me a damned liar..”

After the inquest Virant was taken back to his cell. Tt was decided to let him go free, but when an officer went to release him after a few hours he way found hanging in an improvised noose from a window bar.