Читать книгу The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan, or: the Headless Horror - Unknown - Страница 17

The authorities then turned their attention to the only tangible clew, the shoes. Sheriff Plummer, of Campbell County, accompanied by Detectives Crim and McDermott, of this city, proceeded on Monday night to Greencastle, Ind., to interview the dealers from whom the shoes had evidently been purchased. They also took along the dead girls clothing. At the store of Louis & Hayes it was found that the entire lot of shoes, one dozen pairs, had been purchased by them from Portsmouth. Nine of these pairs had been sold, and all but two purchasers were readily accounted for. Then an attempt was made to locate these two pairs, one of which had, without doubt, been worn by the murdered girl. This seemed impossible for a time. In the meanwhile every girl who had left the Depauw Seminary, near Greencastle, was traced down, and found each time.

In the meantime every thing possible was being done at the scene of the murder. Two tramps were arrested at Ludlow, Ky., as suspects, but were afterwards released for lack of evidence. Crowds flocked to the morgue in Newport, where the headless body lay; it being identified a number of times as the body of some one who after the identification would turn out to be alive and well.

Probably the strongest case of identification, which did not identify, was that of Mrs. Hart, of Cincinnati, who identified the remains as those of her daughter, Ella Markland. Emil Eshler, a friend of Mrs. Hart, and William Hess, a saloon-keeper, both thought it was the body of Mrs. Markland, and were so strongly convinced of it, that they told the mother of their opinion. She and her husband then went to Newport, where she made a very careful examination, which resulted in her declaring that beyond a reasonable doubt the body was that of her daughter. The woman called at the Cincinnati headquarters and in a long talk with Chief Deitsch declared that she was fully convinced the body was that of Ella Markland. Her story of the identification was told at considerable length and between many sobs.

She said she had been allowed to thoroughly examine the body at Newport and that she identified it by the peculiar shape of the legs from the knee down and by the general contour of the breast, waist and limbs. In talking to the chief she was asked when she had last seen her daughter and replied that it was New Year's Eve that she last saw her alive. Mrs. Markland was afterwards found on Ninth Street in Cincinnati, where she was working as a domestic.

Without question the most sensational clew upon which the detectives had to work, was the unearthing of a true life story, in which passion and crime were involved, and which for days promised to bear fruit of a most sensational character.

This clew was, that the headless body, was that of Francisca Engelhardt, who had not long ago been married to a Dr. Kettner, who deserted his first wife in Dakota, and whom she had never seen until he came to Cincinnati, to marry her, the acquaintance and engagement having been made through a correspondence advertisement in a Cincinnati newspaper. The pair were married by Squire Winkler, the girl never knowing that her husband was a bigamist.

Three months afterward the first wife, at Mitchell, S. D., heard that her husband had married a woman in Cincinnati. She wrote but received no answer, then came on to Cincinnati, and on finding that the report of her husband being again married was true, she sued for divorce.