A GERMAN MURDERER.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 269, 13 August 1915, Page 2

A GERMAN MURDERER.

HUNTED BY 500 POLICEMEN. FATE OF WEALTHY WOMAN. A New York message, dated May 1 sa y S: ,— Unexampled activity is being shown by the police in the search for the murderer of Mrs. Julia Heilner, wlio was killed yesterday at her home in Brooklyn under-circumstances of unusual brutality. A week ago Mrs. Heilner and her husband, v. wealthy manufacturer, both of whom are ardent sympathisers of the Fatherland, asked a German relief .agency to send them a needy reservist l as a servant. The agency sent Joseph ' Hanel, who represented himself as a steward in the German liner Vaterland, rendered destitute by the internment of the vessel. As a genral utility man in Mr. Heilner's unpretentious hcusebld, Hanel: appeared anxious to please. He could turn his hand to anything. Yesterday Miss Buck, Mrs. Heilner's companion, left her for a few hours, and on returning in the afternoon she met Hanel hurrying away from the house. All doors were locked but a boy who climbed to the kitchen window saw the body of Mrs. Heilner lying on the floor. When the police forced the door they found she had been strangled with a rope, after having been beaten insensible with a beer bottle.

Her diamond earrings had been torn from her ears and rings from her fingers. The murderer had al\so taken Mr. TToilner's will, a deed to property in Germany inherited by the dead woman, and miscellaneous silverware.

The theft of the will and the deed adds an element of mystery to the crime. Mr. Heilner ,who is an invalid, hns no idea why they were taken. Instead of the usual procedure of detailing a few detectives to investigate the c?se. Police-Commissioner Woods ordered the immediate isue of circulars bearing reproductions of a photograph of the suspect, and hundreds of thousands were posted on railway stations,, elevated subway stations, pawnshops > dginghouses, and at other public places.

He also told off 500 men to run down ihe murderer. Police squads visited the crowded Eost Side lodginghouscs where they flashed electric lamps in L he f- n cs of sleepers in their search for Hanoi.