A Bloody Episode.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 6, Issue 48, 18 June 1895, Page 3

A Bloody Episode.

The people of San Francisco have been aroused to a pitch of excitement that savours of lynch law by the committal of two murders m that city during the month under circumstances of unparalleled ferocity. Both the victims were girls in their minority and circumstantial evidence points very directly to a young medical man Theodore Durrant as their murderer; at least he has been arrested on suspicion of having committed the crime. One of the girls, Blanch Lament, disappeared on Wednesday, April 3rd, and when the body was found 11 days later, it was lying in the belfry of manuel Baptist Church in Bartlett* street. The body was entirely nude, and decomposition had already in, but still the evidence of the ferocious manner in which the unfortunate girl had been treated were only too marked. The second sacrifice to the lustful fiend and murderer was Miss Minnie Williams, who had not attained her 16th birthday. Like Miss Lament she had been lured to church, and her outrage and death consumated in the Library on Good Friday. The body had been hacked and scored with a common table knife, and he prevented the child’s outcries by forcing a portion of her underclothing down her throat. When some of the ladies of the Church assembled to decorate the Church for Easter Monday, they found the body lying in pools of blood. A vigorous search of the building led to the finding of Miss Lament’s body as already stated. It has already been brought out that many of the young men of the Church which the alleged murderer and his victims were members were in the habit of making the building an assignation house in a degree. The pastor of the Church (the Eev. J. G. Gibson) has made a statement to the chief of police, as he also was suspected of being mixed up in the affair. G. L. King, organist, is likewise under a cloud for the same cause. Durrant denies roundly that he knew anything ot the murders.