HYPNOTISED TO MURDER.

Shannon News, 8 January 1924, Page 1

HYPNOTISED TO MURDER.

AN INVALID ASTRONOMER AND A PLOT. NEPHEW AS TOOL. People of OregQn are deeply; stirred by a remarkable murder charge brought against a 16-years-old youth, Alton Coveil, and his uncle, Arthur Covell, popularly known as “The Astrologer.” " The uncle is a bedridden man of 47, who, it is alleged, hypnotised his nephew to impel him to kill the latter’s stepmother,, Mrs Fred Covel, after she had threatened to expose the cripple’s plans for the murder of Mr E. J. Pressey, a rich dairyman, his wife, and three children, and of two merchants of Bandon, Oregon. t According to an alleged confession, the hypnotised youth on September 2, while the stepmother was at work in the kitchen, crept behind her and smothered her with a cloth soaked in ammonia. ■ The case has been investigated by a •prominent criminologist named L. S. May, on whose evidence the Coveils were indicted. He tells an extraordinary story of finding hidden in the bed of the cripple a series of elaborate horoscopes revealing dates when various families of the neighbourhood would be under unfavourable planetary influences. With the aid of a typewriter, the type of which could be changed whenever necessary,' the astrologer, it is alleged, had drawn up a number of wills, 'with forged signatures, of his intended victims, making him their sole heir.

The astrologer’s scheme, according to May, was to manipulate the murder of rich neighbours and the ' burning of their residences by the hypnotised nephew.