MURDER BY IMPULSE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 904, 22 February 1930, Page 1

MURDER BY IMPULSE

NONCHALANT CONFESSION OF CRAFTY CRIMINAL POISONED EIGHT PERSONS United P.A.—By Tele graph—Copyright NEW YORK, Thursday. A message from Detroit says the arrest there today of James Baker, aged 25, has revealed one of the strangest and craftiest murders by a man who had poisoned eight persons in cold blood In various cities of the world, from New York to Bombay. Manila and Hamburg, and who had shot and killed his stepfather. Baker had worked at every trade, from sailor and farm labourer to assistant in a chemical laboratory. When caught he had enough poison in his room to destroy 1,000 persons. The crime which resulted in his undoing was that of forcing a deadly poison down the throat of a night watchman in a New York building in 1928. He had been sought for by detectives ever since. He has confessed that he did not kill for Revenge or anger, although he said he had quarrelled with hi 3 stepfather. "I killed to watch the effects of poison,” he said. “Anyone who was near when the impulse seized me would die.”