THE POLAND MURDERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 61, 17 March 1913, Page 5

THE POLAND MURDERS.

SENTENCED TO DEATH

(By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.' (United Press Association.)

(Received 8.5 a.m.)

Berlin, March 16

Sternickel, Schliewenz, and Geoige Kersten have been sentenced to death, and Willie Kersten, who is a minor, to 15 years’ penal servitude, for a crime committed early in January, in Poland.

A stableman murdered a farmer, his wife, and a servant girl, and Haul'd up the house to prevent two daughters escaping. The police arrived when the criminal was burning the bodies in a haystack, but he escaped. It appeared later that the man was one Sternickel, whose fame for eluding the police was almost legendary in Germany, This was the more remarkable because there was no mystery as to his identity or appearance. A world-wide search was made for him in connection with a Silesian murder, yet Sternickel worked in various places near Berlin, and cultivated rather than shunned the police. Ho was twice arrested, and escaped by hoodwinking his captors. His accomplices in the Polish murder stated that Sternickel planned to rob his master, assuring them that no violence would be used. They left without knowing that his victims were dead. Sternickel picked quarrels with his victims in succession, throw a noose over their head®, and quickly strangled them. He intended to burn the house in which the girls were locked.