AMERICAN LAKE MYSTERY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8712, 11 January 1907, Page 1

AMERICAN LAKE MYSTERY.

America’s greatest summer sensation for many a long day was the discovery last July of the body of Miss Grace Brown on the shores of Big Moose Lake, in the Adirondacks Mountains, made famous by their literary association with Eip Van Winkle, who awakened there after his legendary sleep. Miss Brown was a sweetly pretty village girl, who worked in a factory. It was first thought that the girl had been disappointed in love and had committed suicide, but later a canoe, floating , bottom upwards, was found, and later : still, Mr Chester Gillette, her sometime sweetheart, was discovered wandering suspiciously in the woods close by. Mr Gillette is the nephew of a wealthy manufacturer, where Grace Brown worked, and the evidence, it is claimed, connected him with the disappearance of the girl. llt was ascertained that a young j couple, said to be Mr Gillette and I Miss Brown, stopped at a country inn as man and wife the day before, and that they went out together in the same canoe. Nothing but circumstantial evidence is forthcoming, apparently, 1 but the prosecution, who have summoned nearly 200 witnesses, allege that Gillete, who is 23 years of age, and is a morose-looking fellow, , struck the girl over the head with a paddle, and then placed her body in the water, so as to give the idea of i accident or suicide. The girl's parents and friends, with whom she was exceedingly popular, are con-' fident that Gillett was the murderer,, and in Herkimer, a little country town in the State of New York, the feeling is so intense against him that it has taken three days to get a jury together. Gillette’s parents gave a considerable amount of property to John Alexander Dowie, and this fact, it is believed, will be stated by prisoner’s I counsel, if necessary, as “ indicating a streak of insanity in his family.” While on a visit home soon after the time when the girl became anxious that Gillette should marry her, she used the telephone in a local hotel. Her conversation was startling enough to make the proprietor, Mr Rockwell, remember every word that was uttered, but it is questioned whether his evidence will be admitted, as it is a well-established ruling that conversations overheard shall only be admitted as evidence when carried on in the presence or hearing of the defendant. Whether a telephone conversation with the defendant listening on the other end ! of the wire would be considered as having been held in the presence and hearing of the defendant or not is a question which will have to bo decided before Mr Rockwell’s testimony can bo admitted. One very interesting witness summoned by the prosecution is a well-to-do young lady, in whose behalf it is suggested Gillette wanted to jilt Miss Brown.