AMERICAN ITEMS.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1924, Page 3

AMERICAN ITEMS.

AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION MURDERER BAYS I’RICF. (Received this day at 10.25 a.in.) NEW YORK, dan Cl. Alexander Kels. the Haystack murderer, expiated his crime on the callows at San Francisco, for one ol the .strangest and most callous erimes ever committed in America. Kels who was a fairly well to do merchant in the town of Lodi, Caliiornia, col irll«> financial trouble and decided to cash his insurance. To do this he had to obtain a dead Ivnlv. so he literally killed the first man lie met. When riding in an automobile in the country, he encountered a tramp, whose name lie never inquired. Kels invited him to ride, killed the man an hour later and dressed hint in Ins own clothes. He burned the- body in a haystack, keeping sufficient mementos to cause the insurance companies to admit the identity of the remains ns Kels own. The insurance conmauies paid twenty thousand sterling, but an investigation resulted in the arrest ol Reis, who confessed and pleaded insanity. The physicians finally tested the spinal fluid and finding a negative decided he was sane. While Kels was nominally dead his wife gave birth to a son. Ihe insurance companies practically decided not to attempt to recover payment, for the execution to-day would probably, in any event, force them to pav the widow what she laid already collected. THE LIQUOR. TREATY. - -BRITAIN'S ATTITUDE. (jteca> T ed this day at 9.25 a.mA Y NEW • YORK, January 0. 'The “Tillies” Washington correspondent states that the British Government feats that the lanted States SuimW <3> urt " i!l < l «' lare the proposed JaLSwfeareh treaty as unconstitutional. Government is extremely Cjpßntioiis that the treaty should become elective in the "hole or not at all and has asked the United States to agree, if the Supreme Court declares that part of the Treaty is unconstitutional, especially the provision permitting British liners to bring liquor into HkT United States’ territorial waters under bond, that the whole treaty should become inoperative. The British fears are based on the Supreme Court’s decision in the so.flatted liquor transit ease when it ilecidliquor could not- be carried on rail road through the United States from Canada to Mexico. Although under bond, the British liners liquor might be considered violative of this principle, but the State Department holds that this is not applicable to liners' liquor not being consigned anywhere,