PRESIDENT GARFIELD'S MURDERER.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 233, 30 September 1881, Page 4

PRESIDENT GARFIELD'S MURDERER.

A San Francisco paper says :— With the changes recorded in the President's condition, public sympathy for Mrs Garfield, and indignation against the assassin rose. A subscription raised for Mrs Garfield reached 146,757 dollars, and the promoters think it can be easily raised to 270,000d015. An organization was reported to have been formed in Washington whose purpose is, in the event of President Garfield's death, to break into the jail and put an immediate end to the life of Guiteau. Their desire is to hang Guiteau bj a slow process, and in the meantime each member of the organization is to be allowed to put a bullet into Guiteau' body, taking care not to strike him in any vital part until the last moment. Colonel Corkhill says he has good reason for the belief that the guards of tlic jail, who are all ex-Union soldiers, know of the secret organization and are in sympathy with it. He is further reported to have said that it has been with the utmost difficulty that the warder at the jail has prevented these guards ere this from finding some excuse for killing Guiteau. This, it is alleged, in a measure explains the encounter which took place recenilv between a guard and Guiteau in the latter's cell. Guiteau, it is said, knows that the guards want to kill him, and for that reason he has suffered great mental anguish since the first relapse of the President. He is so nervous that he gets little or no sleep. Colonel Corkhill says, that while he believes that no torture is too great that can be visited on Guiteau, he must see that the law 'is obeyed which protects Guiteau, and secures for him a fair trial before a jury of lis countrymen. He says it would never do to go to the world that in the capital of the Nation the officers of the law were unabie to enforce its mandates and were at the mercy of the mob, and extra precautions have been taken fov the prisoner's safe custody. Guiteau is in dire terror of mind. He usually inquires of the guards as they come on duty, for the latest news from the President, and received the stereotyped answer, "improving at last accounts," to which he replies " I am glad to hear it." He is still engaged in writing. Some of his effusions are directed to outside parties in reference to procuriug bail, while others purport to give an account of an alleged vision that inspired him to shoot the President. Two additional companies of troops have been stationed at the iaiJ.