Desperate Fight in a Hut.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXX, Issue 8435, 27 April 1906, Page 2

Desperate Fight in a Hut.

The hacked and mutilated bodies of six Bulgarians, evidently workmen, were found lying in pools of coagulated blood in a little tumble-down house, 245 Tenth Avenue South, on the morning of March 28th. Four of the bodies were found in a sleeping room on the second floor, cut and slashed in a shocking manner, while in the cellar were two others with their throats cut from ear to ear. Near the bodies were found five bowie knives with razor-edged blades nearly eight inches long and a blood-stained hatchet.

The dead men arc : Nikolo Dimitri, Kirle Dimitri, Agne Karofil, Kerstan Yovko, Unka Haudaba, and Baakon Kapanni. The Dimitris were evidently father and son. All of the men were comparatively young. The only clue to the wholesale murder which may If ad to something definite was obtained from a drayman named Mikleberg. He says he was approached by some men, whom he took for Italians or Greeks, who wanted him to take six packages from the house where the bodies were found to the Union Station. On arriving at the house he found there were 12 packages, and after some haggling about the price, he took station. A young man, aged about £ui_R.rs, rode on the waggon with him. The other men walked. The man who rode on the waggon said the party was going to Duluth. At the station he noticed that the men from the house were joined by several other men, a woman, and a little girl.

From this the police believe that the murders were committed some time between midnight Sunday and Monday morning. This suspicion is clinched by the statements of S. Magnuson, owner of the house where the murders occurred. He asked the police to search the house. He said that an aged German, who occupied the lower flat of the house, could not be found. He had notified Magnuson that a light had taken place in the rooms over the ones occupied by the German. The German said he heard scuffling in the rear of the house, but thought nothing of it until hs observed that tenants above him were not moving about usual. After notifying Magnuson, the German disappeared. Magnuson at once notified the police, who broke open tho doors and made the horrifying discovery. Magnuson told the about four months ago a well-dressed-___P_n rented the upper storey of the house and paid four months' rent in advance. The Italian told

him he was foreman of a railroad construction gang and that none of the hotels would keep the men. The next day 12 men moved their belongings in. They went to work each day and returned in the evening. They ■were quiet, never drank, and those living about the place paid little attention to them. Magnuson never inquired their names, and merely entered them on the books as tenants for whom four months' rent had b.-en paid in advance. The "foreman" was never seen again, and the police have absolutely no knowledge of his identity. The two bodies in the basement, according to Coroner Kistler, had been dead nearly two days. The blood surrounding the bodies in the'upper rooms was more fresh than around those in the cellar ; also the wounds on the four appeared to have been made later. The men in the basement had been killed by having their throats cut, and the police are inclined to believe that they were ». murdered for their money and that a free-for-all fight followed over a division of the spoils. This is indicated by the wounds on t bodies found in the upper rooms. Their s were slashed ahnos* beyond recogni- , and their were wounds all over the bodies, all, however, having deep slashes in the throats. One man had fallen against the stove, and the right side of his hie was burned past all identification. Beside this man lay a bloody hatchet. The light for money theory is borne out by the finding near the body of money belts in which was 506 dollars in United. Stales currency and gold. On one of the bodies was found a watch still going. Some of the bodies had been stripped, evidently for robbery. In two satchels found in tho house were, beside some woodsmen's clothing, a curious set of regalia, consisting of caps, robe and kerchief, containing characters and emblems ■which it is thought may have belonged to an order of the Greek Church.