AMAZING REVELATIONS

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1928, Page 7

AMAZING REVELATIONS

3ERLIN MURDER SENSATION £ViDENCE APPALS PUBLIC GIRL S BRAZEN MENDACITY By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. ' Received Feb. 13, 8.5 p.m. S. and iN.Z. Berlin, Feb. 13. 1 Revelations in the Kranz murder trial ; case continue to appal the public. The ! frivolous indifference and brazen mendacity with which Hildegarde Scheller answered the questions of the vice-pre-fect of police are regarded as most shocking when it is remembered that her Brother and boy lover were killed, practically in her presence. The girl’s callousness is partly explained in the disedvery made by a policejwoman who went to the Scheller home io inquire regarding Hildegarde’s antecedents. She found the girl’s father bent aver a table with his head in his hands. He was not bowed down by grief, however, but was solving a crossword puzzle. Elinor Ratti, a girl friend of Hildegarde, who visited the house on the Slight of the murders, was ruthlessly , cross-examined when she attempted to ■ exonerate Kranz at the expense of Scheller.

' The case of Kranz, a schoolboy who is charged with murdering his boy .friend, recalling the Leopold Locbe case in Chicago, has caused a sensation in Berlin. It will form a standard document for the historian in social life since the war in Germany, particularly as regards the consequences of the precocity of a youth playing on passions which he was unable to control. Leading sociologists, doctors, authors, lawyers and professors were present at the trial, analysing the physiology of the drama. Kranz was visiting the house of a schoolboy friend named Scheller on the night of the tragedy, others present being a third schoolboy named Stephan, and Scheller's sister Hildegarde, aged

w. The girl’s parents being absent, the tovs sat up all night drinking liqueurs end talking of love. The discussion finally turned on death, and Scheller proposed that all four should die. He wrote a letter “to the universe,” beginning: •‘Dear Universe, a single portion of your organism perishes; don’t worry, lime ■will roll on.” The letter ended with the intimation that Stephan and Hildegarde would be killed and that the ethers would commit suicide. With a smile, Kranz states, Scheller shot Stephan and committed suicide, and be was about to commit suicide himself when the girl snatched the revolver. ■Some of the evidence suggested that Stephan, being found in Hildegarde’s bedroom, precipitated the tragedy. There was also evidence that some of the boys belonged to a juvenile club the statutes of which strictly enjoined that all members who were deceived by men or women friends must avenge themselves upon their rivals.