EIGHT POISONED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 957, 28 April 1930, Page 13

EIGHT POISONED

SAILOR CONFESSES TO “MURDER TOUR”

LEFT TRAIL OF DEATH An amazing story is told by a 21-year-old sailor, James Baker, who was arrested near Detroit, V.S.A., on a 1 charge of murdering by poison Henry Gaw, a night watchman, in the Guggenheim Laboratory, New York, in December, 1925, says the ‘ Saturday News.” He declared to the police that he had poisoned eight persons at various times, beginning when he was 17. He dropped cyanide in their coffee to see how they would'die, he said, and had himself tattooed for each murder. Baker is quoted as describing Gaw’s death in the following words: “I put cyanide on the rim of a coffee cup and held it to his lips, but he only spat it out. He was terribly stubborn. “Watched Him Die.” "So I stuck the barrel of my pistol in the cyanide, and then rammed the muzzle down his throat. In a few seconds he sagged to the floor and turned yellow. I put his hand over his mouth so that the fumes would not escape, and watched him die. His victims’ homes were as far apart as from Bombay to Texas. “I was always interested in poisons,” he remarked. “In 1924 I was in Houston, Texas, eating in a sailor’s restaurant. Beside me was a man who had a cup of coffee. “While he was looking away I had a sudden impulse. I put some poison in his coffee. He died almost at once.” After that first experience he had other impulses to poison persons—no one in particular, but anyone who happened to be near. In 192 G he poisoned a man in Hamburg, and in 1927 he poisoned a Hindu in Bombay. Once, when travelling by ship to Venezuela, Baker said, he put poison in a large brew of coffee, causing the whole crew to be ill. Three of them died. A Woman Victim In 192 S he poisoned a woman in the Philippines. At Christmas in the same year he obtained a situation in the laboratoryin New York (where he poisoned the watchman). After describing the murder he added: “When I started to leave, two lorry drivers came to the laboratory. I held them up, tied them up, and was going to kill them: but one said that he had a wife and three small children, so I took their money and left.”