FIRST-DEGREE MURDER

Evening Post, Issue 126, 29 May 1936, Page 9

FIRST-DEGREE MURDER

FIORENZA GUILTY

NEW YORK BATH CASE

(Received May 29, 10 a.m.)

NEW YORK, May 28. John Fiorenza was found guilty,of murder in the first degree.

The jury deliberated for nearly 24 hours. Apparently the question of his sanity was prominent in the discussion, psychiatrists during the trial having testified that he was sane and others that he was insane. .

He will be sentenced to death in the electric chair.

A cablegram from America on April 10 stated that Mrs. Nancy Titterton, the well-known writer of juvenile stories under the pen-name of Nancy Evans, was found brutally murdered in a bath in her apartment in the exclusive Beekman Place section of the city. ' The p6lice declared that she was garrotted with a silk pyjama cord after an attempt had been made to commit a criminal assault. Her clothes were torn to shreds and the condition of her apartment furnishings further indicated that she had put up a terrific struggle for her life. Her husband, a radio executive and former journalist, was at his office.all day,and could give the police no clue as to the possible identity of the murderer. Subsequently the police announced the arrest and confession of the perpetrator of the murder —John Fiorenza, aged 24, upholsterer's assistant. Having called for a chair for reupholstering the day before,, he again called at the Titterton residence next morning. After committing "the crime he calmly returned to the workshop, where he finished repairing the chair. Then,- with his employer, he delivered it, and if was they, who gave the alarm.' A piece of string commonly used by. upholsterers, and which Fiorenza inadvertently left behind him, was the clue on which the police worked, tracing it from the manufacturer into the upholstery shop where Fiorenza worked. Fiorenza, who was engaged to be married, had been arrested four times previously for various offences, including grand larceny, and. was out on parole. The police had early fixed their suspicions upon him, and he and other members of-the upholsterer's shop were constantly under surveillance, but the authorities succeeded in diverting suspicion, giving prominence in the Press to fictitious clues while secretly working on the true ones.