DYING GIRL INDICTS KU KLUX CHIEF.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17745, 15 January 1926, Page 8

DYING GIRL INDICTS KU KLUX CHIEF.

KIDNAPPED HER; WAS ABOVE LAW, HE SAID, NEW YORK, December 12. The dying statement of a girl social worker made against the leader of the Ku-Klux-Klan in Indianapolis is producing a trial which is being treated as a free entertainment like the Dayton ” man and the ape ” trial. The story is oyie of Oriental cruelty and American defiance of the law. David Stephenson, who is an acknowledged head of the Klan and the owner of an expensive bachelor household. after failing to gain the friendship of Madge Oberholtzer, a pretty girl, lured her out of her house by a false telephone call, seized her with the help of two other men, took her to his home, and forced drink upon her. She awoke in a private room on a sleeper train, with one of Stephenson’s accomplices in the berth above watching her struggle for hours with the Klan leader. Half-unconscious and again bruised and wounded, she was violated and then taken to a private room at a hotel in Hammond, 200 miles away from home. She was refused help as she lay sick all day, Stephenson telling her that no law could help her as he was above all law. Finally she was allowed to visit a chemist’s, where she secretly secured bichloride of mercury and poisoned herself. As she became worse her torturers discovered this. Late at night they set out on the long motor ride home. The girl was thrown into Stephenspn’s garage, and later in the day her parents, who had been frantically seeking her, were allowed to take her to a nursing home, where she died the day she made her statement.