Читать книгу The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan, or: the Headless Horror - Unknown - Страница 14

Upon the body or in the clothing there was nothing by which the woman could be identified, excepting the dealers' names in the shoe, and the murder or murderers had left no other clew behind by which they could be identified. Without the head, the mystery seemed unsolvable, and every effort was made to find it in the vicinity.

The remaining details of the crime, as far as circumstantial evidence revealed them, told a story which was truly horrifying. The dumb evidence given by foot prints, blood-stains, broken tree branches, was terrible to reflect upon.

The body was lying upon the bank with the feet higher than the body, and the clothing so disarranged that the officers were at first led to believe that the woman had been outraged before she was murdered. The clothing could easily have been as much disarranged in the struggle which had evidently taken place and when the murderer threw his victim to the ground.

The upper part of the woman's dress was open as was the garment beneath, and her bosom was bare. The skirt-band was unloosed, and the skirt of the dress was gathered up about the waist. Beneath the stump of the neck there was a huge pool of blood, and blood was scattered about on the grass and the leaves of the overhanging bushes. One glove lay in the bushes and a piece torn from the woman's dress was hanging to a bit of brushwood several yards from the body. The officers carefully examined the footprints leading to the spot where the body lay, and they found that the man and the woman had walked side by side for a short distance when, for some reason, the woman had attempted to flee and the man had followed and overtaken her. The tracks were especially distinct here, for the woman had run through a very muddy spot, which she would have avoided had she had time to pick her way. The murderer overtook his victim before she had screamed more than once or twice. He choked her into silence and dragged her toward the bushy bank. She struggled desperately, and he tore a handful of cloth from her dress. He threw her to the ground and slid over the bank with her. He must have drawn his knife after the struggle began; otherwise he would have used it sooner. He slashed at her throat. She clutched the knife with the one hand she had free—her left—and three times the blade laid her palm or fingers open to the bone. Her struggle was useless, and in a moment her life blood was pouring from a gaping wound in her throat.

When she was dead, or, at least, powerless to resist, the assassin searched for some article concealed on her person. He tore off her corset, leaving the marks of his bloody fingers on the garment, which he threw a yard or two from him, and then unbuttoned the under garment beneath her corset, where a letter might have been concealed. Whether he found something which aroused him to jealous rage, or whether he finished his awful work in the hope of concealing the identity of his victim, no one knows.

The murder must have been committed Friday night for the clothing of the dead woman was not wet and the rain Friday night had kept up until near ten o'clock.

The struggle between the murderer and his victim was a most desperate one. Half of a man's shirt sleeve was found near the dead body, soaked in blood. The woman had evidently torn it from her murderers arm in her desperate struggle for her life.

The lad Hewling upon discovering the body of the murdered woman, was horror stricken by the sight and ran towards Mr. Lock's house, badly frightened and calling lustily for help. Mr. Lock, his son Wilbert and Mike Noonan, an employ, came running from the house. When they had seen the body, Mr. Lock went direct to Fort Thomas, telephoned the news of the ghastly find to the Newport police headquarters, and notified Col. Cochran the Commander at the Fort.

Jule Plummer, Sheriff of Campbell County, Kentucky, Coroner Tingley and a number of the other County and City officials respondet the telephone summons at once and hurried to the scene. The body had not been touched nor had any one been in touching distance of it when these officers arrived and viewed it.

The body was ordered to be taken to undertaker W. H. Whites in Newport, by Coroner Tingley, at once after he had examined it. Upon this examination he said that there was no evidence whatever that the woman's person had been outraged.

The work of identifying the victim and running down her murderers was at once begun. The entire detective and police force of Cincinnati, Covington and Newport, was put to work to unravel the mystery, identify the remains and capture her murderers.

There was little or no clew to work on. Detectives Crim and McDermott, of Cincinnati, were assigned to work actively on the case, and sent to the scene at once by Col. Philip Deitsch, Superintendent of Police of Cincinnati. Before these sleuth-hounds of the law, Crim and McDermott, reached the place where the headless body had been found, hundreds of persons from the three cities, and every soldier stationed at Fort Thomas, who could possibly get away, had preceded them. The grass and bushes were trampled down by the crowds of visitors who had come to satisfy their curiosity, but who, through their eagerness to see and learn everything possible, had destroyed so nearly every particle of evidence the murderer had left behind him. The foot prints and other evidences of the desperate struggle were all destroyed and but little was left for them to work on.

Relic hunters were out in great numbers and they almost demolished the bush under which the body was discovered, breaking off branches upon which blood spots could be seen. They peered closely into the ground for blood-spotted leaves, stones and even saturated clay. Anything that had a blood stain upon it was seized upon eagerly, and hairs of the unfortunate woman were at a premium, men and boys, and even young women, examining every branch and twig of the bush in the midst of which the struggle took place, in the hope of finding one. The inherent, morbid love of the horrible the mass of humanity possesses was well illustrated in the scenes witnessed. The heavy rain which fell nearly all afternoon was not deterrent to these relic hunters' zeal.