THE AUSTRIAN THUGS. Murderers by Profession—A Terrible Story of Crime [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 42, 22 March 1884, Page 6

THE AUSTRIAN THUGS.

Murderers by Profession— A Terrible Story of Crime [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.]

Witiiix the past "week Europe lias been shocked by the discovery of a long scries, of appalling murder."-, so diabolically and desperately cruel that it seems utterly impossible to believe in the humanity of the guilty Avretches who committed them. Hugo Schenk, the head of this confederacy of murderers, is a Silesian by birth, but most of hi? victims wcie " done to death" in the neighbourhood of Vienna. This same Schenk, his brothers, and an accomplice named Schlos-=arek are now — thank heaven ! —in prison, and have confessed to a catalogue of unspeakably dreadful crimes. They and their assistants pursued the calling of murder as a regular trade, and for the past three ycais have lived luxuriously on the profits of blood. The Schenlcs, Silesians by birth, are the sons of a .ludgo, who caused them to be ell educated. They have the manners and bearing of men of rank ; and Hugo, the arch-villain, is described a^ tall, handsome, gracious and accomplished — as calculated by nature to please a young girl's fancy and win her love. At home, in Silesia, they behaved themselves so vilely, acquired «>uch drunken and dissolute habits, that their father turned them out of doors, a hopeless disgrace to their family. How these two riotous young Mpendthrift.s first took to the occupation of murder in not know n ; but the autkoritie* have discovered that they associated themselves with Schlossarek, a confirmed criminal, and with se\ eral other bad characters. It is not uncommon in Vienna for female domestic servant^ who have i-aved money to advertise for husbands in the local papers ; and Hugo Schenk— a married man living apart from his w ife — used to answer such advertisement?, sometimes under pietence of being an engineer in receipt of a good salary, and occasionally as a wealthy aristocrat with a contempt for class prejudices. Ho would meet the girls by appointment, and, .ifter paying court to them for a few days or week*, induce the silly, trusting creatures to draw their money out of the bank, and. so provided, accompany him on ,i journey to get mariied. His lying tale -is always carefully prepared and plausible one not likely to attract suspicion, parcularly in a country like Austria, where ihe relations between the sexes are noto1 iously free to a fault. The victim thus secured, the handsome Hugo Schenk would get out at some romantic spot where he had arranged that his accomplices should be in readiness, and together they would strangle or shoot the girl, secure her propeity, conceal her body, and return quietly to town, as if nothing had happened, to i plan fresh murders and to carry on their regular bu»ines> of killing. According to the Victoria correspondent of the "DailyTelegraph, " theganglaid their schemes in a mo^t methodical manner, and sometimes had several projected homicides in hand at once. Hugo has confessed to having planned five murders for last week alone, which he reckoned would have yielded a pi ofit of thirty thousand florins. It seem'?, moree\ er, that he intended to give up business in his native country and cross to America with his mistress, a girl named Emily Hoechsmann. This giil did not know how he got his money until the day of the arrest, when she offered herself as a witness for the piosecution. It appears that Emily Hoechsmann herself had in the fiist place been marked for slaughter ; but Hugo, finding her very poor as well as very pretty, spaied her, and persuaded her to live with him as his wife. One day last autumn he left home for a few hours, arranging to meet at a coffee garden the same evening, and on that occasion was the life and soul of the company — a merry fellow, brimming over with jests and anecdote. Moreover, this jovial boon companion and attentive lover was very hungry, and ate heartily, excusing himself on the ground that he had been hard at work. However, as he said, he had not forgotten his sweetheart, and there and then made her a present of a watch, bracelets, and rings That Hugo had been at work that day is true, for he and his friends had shot a cook named Ketterl, stolen from her the trinkets he had given to Emily, and flung her body into the Danube. It has been stated above that this fiend in human shape was living apart from his wife, but where the wife is at the present time — that is, if she be still alive— remains a mystery. A man somewhat of Hugo's stamp was observed, at one time, from a passing railway train, struggling with a woman, not far from Lundenburg, on the Northern Railway of Austria. The passengers were sure they saw the male figure in the act of rai&ing his arm to stab the female with a dagger which he held in his hand ; but when the police arrived at the spot indicated both were gone, leaving not a trace behind, Hugo now admits that he did murder a woman in that neighbourhood, but declines to say whether she was his wife or a stranger. There can, however, be very little doubt that he killed a great many women besides those whose disappearance has been reported to the police. Two are accounted for in May, done to death after four weeks' courtship ; and at that time the House of Schenk had no fewer than fifty others on their books, with all of whom Hugo corresponded in loverlike terms, while the intimacy which was to lead to their grave ripened. As a rule, thegangpreferred to deal with servant girls, because, from the fact of their being in humble circumstances, and generally living away from their families and removed from early association in the country parts, it became comparatively easy to get rid of them without raising much of a hue-and-cry Since the arrests, however, the Pesth autho-

rities are arxious to have likenesses of the accused, 1 ! as of late years, several young women of that city have mysteriously disappeared, and in a manner which would suggest dealings with the Schenk establishment. Yet though, for the reason named, the brothers found it moro convenient and safer to limit their operations within a certain rank of life, Hugo did not disdain to fly at higher game. There was a certain Rosa Ferenczy, a woman of thirty —imaginative, romantic— the illegitimatedaughterof aHungariannobleman, and possessed of some means of her own. The villain laid regular siege to the poor lady's heart, persuaded her to become his mistress, Mid occasionally visited her in the remote suburb where she lodged. Though Rosa Ferenczy was frightened of her lover, and during his frequent absences suspected him of being a scoundrel, yet he had only to show himself, when all her fears and suspicions vanished. About Christmas time he took her to the opera and to the theatres, and must have promised her marriage, for she said to her landlady, on going a journey with him, as she supposed, to visit his sister, " You will either see me happy and married or never again." Schlollarek was with" them when they set off, and within twenty-four hours Mademoiselle Frenczy's corpse was picked up in the Danube, near Presbourg. By that transac tion the firm notted one thousand eight hundred ilorins. The other partners, however, always complained that Hugo was a mean man, and did not make a fair distribution of the profits of the concern. Had these Austrian Thugs—incomparably more base than the worshippers of Bhow ani — continued to conduct their frightful and abominable tiade with ordinary prudence, they might still be at large ; but one of them, having killed a servant-girl, had tho audacity to take her bank-book to the post-office with the object of drawing the deposit standing to her credit. The woman had been missed. Suspicion was naturally aroused at tho poft-office, and the three principal members of the firm were consequently arrested. Of those who were at that time among the first on the Schenks' list, one is tho daughter of respectable parents, and confidential maid to Baroness Malfatti, a benevolent old lady residing in a solitary villa situated near Vienna. Hugo had md uced this girl to steal a string of pearls from her mistress, valued at twenty thousand florins, and he had actually concocted a plan to murder the woman herself, the Baroness, and all the household within a few hours of his arrest. Such cold-blooded malignity is simply appalling, and to compare these devilish monsters with the sect which formerly practised Thuggee would be manifestly unfair to the dark-skinned assassins for conscience' sake. Indeed, we doubt whether the history of crime records any villanies more horrible than theirs. Individual murders as bad as any of those done by the Austrian gang have certainly been committed, and hideous massacres of whole families, as in the caso of Tropmann; but the Schenks md their accomplices killed again and again, in cold blood, for the sako of plunder. Sooner or later they must have come to the scaffold. One or more of the band would have been sure to betray the others. Homicide has, unfortunately, been rife in England of late, and many mysterious murders remain unaccounted for. Nevcitheless, *ueh a long series of crimes of a particular kind as are charged against the accused in this case could not possibly take place here without leading to searching inquiries and consequent discovery. The firm of Schenk Brothers, wholesale assassins, could not, indeed, have traded anywhere subject to the publicity of an active newspaper press. Hugo, the decoy, must constantly have been seen in company with his victims ; and it seems very strange that the Austrian police were noD able, long ago, to trace him and his accomplices to their place of business. That they will be executed is a matter of course. Yet an instant, sudden death seems too light a punishment for such detestable villains.