CRIMES THAT ALARM AMERICA

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20207, 29 May 1937, Page 14 (Supplement)

CRIMES THAT ALARM AMERICA

Triple Murder Hunt Raises New Issue.

Legislators In New York and Pennsylvania are now considering the introduction ‘of measures which may stop a certain class of crime that has caused anger and alarm throughout ■the length and breadth of the United States, says the B.U.P. The recent triple murder In a Manhattan apartment-house, in which Veronica Gedeon, 20, a beautiful artist’s model; Mrs Mary GedeOn, 54, her mother; and Frank Byrnes, 35, a native of Liverpool, were the victims, has brought the question to the forefront. The police are still searching for Robert Irwin, a 29-year-old sculptor, who was once a divinity student. In the course of the hunt they mistook John Fletcher, a 36-year-old convict on parole, for the man they wanted. As the police were taking the exconvlot for interrogation. Fletcher wounded Captain Earl Grimes, leader of the patrol, with a bullet from a sawed off shot gun which he had wrapped in newspapers. Immediately another policeman shot Fletcher and clubbed him so severely that he died in hospital. Following disclosures concerning the Gedeon affair Judge George \V. Martin, of Brooklyn County, has commented on I lie ease of Salvator Ossido, who Is on trial for the murder of nine-year-old Einer Sporrer. Body In a Sack. Ossido, an Italian immigrant barber who is the. father of two small children, is alleged to have killed little Finer Sporrer, daughter of Bavarian Immigrants, with a hammer and then left her body in a sack on a doorstep two blocks from her home. He was quoted by the police as confessing I hat he lured I he little girl lido the room behind his shop on the pretext of employing her to clean 11. At the time lie was out on bail on charges of impairing the morals of a 12-year-old girl, and he had previously served a sentence of 18 months for assaulting a minor. Commenting on this case, Judge Martin asserted that, because of the weakness of the law, there were between “50 and J 00 men of this type loose in Brooklyn, and he urged the enactment of laws to create institutions for the segregation, and. if necessary, the sterilisation of all men convicted of sexual offences.” New York police authorities contend that such murders seem to come in cycles, with one inspired by another. Three married women, four single girls, and three children under ten years of age were victims previous to the Gedeon crime. First of the crimes was that for which Alfred K. Volektnann, butcher boy and \ iolinlst in a church choir, was executed at Sing Sing on February 17. Yolrkmnnn, an Introspective youth of 19, assaulted and stubbed to death Helen Glenn, nine-year-old daughter of a Methodist minister at Greenville, New York. The tlrsi “bathtub murder” was that

of Mrs Nancy Evans Tltterton, 33-vear-old writer and wife of an English wireless broadoastlng expert. Clue of the Twine. She was strangled in her New York flat, and a strand of upholstery twine used to bind her hands led the police to arrest John Fiorenza, 24, a former convict, who confessed and was executed at Sing Sing. Next in chronological order was the murder of Helen Clevenger, aged 19, who was shot and beaten to death In an hotel at Shelville, North Carolina, after midnight on July 16, 1936. She was on holiday with her uncle, who found her pyjama-clad body in a kneeling posture by the bed when he went to awaken her. Officers found a blood-stained gun in the shack of 19-year-old Martin Moore, former “buttons” at the hotel, and the youth confessed to the murder. He met his death in a gas chamber. •On January 11 this year Mr F. W. I Case, a young official of a New York hotel, found his 26-year-old wife murdered in the bath 'of their flat. She had been beaten with a hammer. A hammer and blood-stained trousers in the incinerator of the block of flats led the detectives to Major Greene, 33-year-old negro porter of the building. He confessed, stating his motive j as theft, and is now awaiting execution ; at Sing Sing. Then, on the night of February 5. Mary Ellen Babcock, aged 18, of Buffalo, New York State, was attacked while walking home, and next day her body, with nearly a dozen stab wounds on the face, neck and chest, was found ; on a vacant plot of land. “Uncontrollable Impulse.” ' Afler a long hunt the police obtaln- ' oil a confession from 18-year-old Thomas Smith, who blamed the crime to "an uncontrollable impulse.” He had -been arrested for stabbing a 14-year-old girl with an ice pick | when lie confessed to the murder. On February 10, Alexander Meyer, a stocky youth on parole from a reformatory, to which lie had been sent for assaulting two Philadelphia girls, deliberately ran down beautiful 16-year-old Helen Moyer, drove her, injured and unconscious, to an abandoned farmhouse, where he assaulted her, threw her body down a well, and drop- , ped dynamite on it. Now be lias been convicted, and i laces execution. i Next came the murder of four-year--1 old Joan Morvan, who died in her New York home on March 1, after a crlmi Inal assault. | Howard Magnussen, aged 26, who is ! described by the police as “looking ' 17 and having a mind of 8,” confessed i to the crime. } Joan was the daughter of George Morvan, aged sf£SviUi whom one of Magnussen’s sisters was living, i Three of Magnussen’s oilier sisters, all under 15, told of numerous criminal attacks by their -brother. Mugnus- > sen now awaits trial.