CRIME CONFESSED

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21088, 14 July 1938, Page 7

CRIME CONFESSED

SEQUEL TO KIDNAPPING OF BOY United Press Assor tlon—By Electric Telegraph —Copyright (Received July 13, 7.30 p.m.) TACOMA (Washington), July 13. Tlie State police have announced that Frank Olson (32), a local farm labourer, has confessed to the kidnapping and murdering of the Mattson boy on January 11, 1937. Another suspect is also being questioned.

Olson described how lie held the boy captive in a cabin after dragging him from his home. Later he strangled the boy, beat him about the head and stabbed him. Olson denied, however, placing the body in the field. He said he had not buried it, but another man who is now held as a suspect, threw the body into the field. Olson’s arrest was due solely to a troubled conscience. He told a farmer from whom he worked, that he had committed a crime and wanted to tell the police who “would keep him from the mob.”

Olson, whose beard is extremely dark, markedly resembles the description of the kidnapper given by the Mattson children. He is alleged to have confessed completely after 36 hours' questioning.

It was reported from Washington on January 11, 1937, that the body of a boy, with the head crushed in as a result of a heavy blow, was found in a field near Everette. The body was later identified as that of the Mattson boy. It was disclosed that Deputy-Sheriffs were hunting an ex-inmate of an asylum who lived near the spot where the body was found. The man had been previously arrested for the attempted kidnapping of a child of a prominent Seattle citizen. The note specified the delivery of a ransom a few hundred feet from the same spot.