EIGHT MURDERS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18500, 22 February 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

EIGHT MURDERS.

AMERICAN POISONER CAUGHT. (United Press Association—By Electric Teiegrapn—Copyright, t (Received February 22, 11 p.m.) NEW YORK, February 20. A Detroit message states that the arrest to-day of James Baker, aged 25, revealed one of the strangest and craftiest murders by one who poisoned eight persons cold-bloodedly in various cities of the world from New York to Bombay, Manilla, Hamburg, and shot and killed his stepfather. He had ■worked*at every trade from sailor to farmhand to assistant in a chemical laboratory, and when caught he had enough poison in his room to destroy a thousand persons. The crime which resulted in his undoing, was forcing poison down the throat of a night watchman in a New York building in 1928. He had been sought by detectives ever since. He confessed that he did not kill for revenge or anger, although he said he had quarrelled with his stepfather. “I killed to watch the effect of poison, and anyone who was around when the impulse seized me, would die.”