THE ST.LOUIS MURDER. Pittsburg, August 12.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 315, 10 November 1888, Page 3

THE ST.LOUIS MURDER. Pittsburg, August 12.

Just as iif,every other case of public note, fcli ere! wasj a wopan. -in fch6 grotesquely horrible story of crime to which the hauling of Maxwell at St. Louis has put a final period, ami her name was Lillian Hjoyle. The curious episode in which she figured has never before been brought to light, but it is tjy no means tjbe least interesting chapter oi t this strange and celebrated .case. After tho 1 murder, when Maxwell thrust the corpse of his -friend into a trunk and fled, he did iiot .stop to, pause until he reached the city~of Sa.n Francisco, but there he stopped two days before he set sail for Australia. r ' ! °' t ~ ' ' "7 - " ' '" What Avas ho doing ? Hew.as in thaoompany of Lillian Hoyie, a beautiful and abandoned woman, whom he me 6 by chance^" upon the stieets and with whom he , tarried in this perilous time of flight when pursuit might be at any instant close at his heel's. The littje, half demented chloroformer forgot everything in presence of this, wqma.iv She .was. of the Spanish type,; b]ael^/h.air v brilliant eyes, creamy sicin nnd voluptuous form." Moreover, she was gifted with a singular fascination of manner th^t-i'6'ally covered th'e world in the worst n,ccept;anqe of the term. She. was half surprised, half amused at hi&> protestations, and caiefutly^'sounded him to' see how much 'money" he had. ' At this the murderer- siuldenly revealed himself, and in a passionate outburst told her what he had dove, , going into the minutest details and ' Urging her to ioin his flight and go~ i'ifeh lragn, to the southern part of tho Ffcate, which, he fondly believed was a thinly-settled wilderness where they might securely hide themselves. The woman thought" he was crazy — either that or a (irunlvca braggart, and made haste to show him the door. A few hours afterward, upon the impulse of the moment and without a \e.btioe of plan, he bought a ticket for Auckland, 'K. I Z. Thih wus the story learned by the detectives?, and iffe scarcely necessary to add that on the l\sts of. the. prosecution Lillian lloyle figured as a most essential witness. Bui the wat> never called. Tho district attorney who .piosecuted Maxwell at St. Louis was Ashley H. Clovei, a young man not only,, of, great determination, but of considerable wealth : and out of his own pocket 'ho paid many of tho extraordinary expenses of the case. Thus among many other things he deposited, several hundied dollar- to pay the expenses of the Hoyle woman from San Francisco, and it was understood that she would put in an appearance at the proper time. But when the case was called she "had disappeared, and it was finally learned that she had sailed for Pfong Kong the week before with an officer of a Pacific mail steamer. It i^ a fact, not g/enerally known, but China, is, rogardpd as a Mecca, by the upper stratum of tho scarlet women of the Paciiic coast. In nearly all the great cities of the Celestial kingdom are to be found circles of wealthy and dissolute Euaopeans, and at Canton and Hong Kong thier club rooms are,, /ifc.te.d up with princely, luxuriance aiM barbaric splendour. These establishments) are out of tho pale of law, and are unhampered by the canons of civilisation. The inmate.s,. therefore, are restrained by nothing save the bounds of their caprice, and live a perpetual orgie hideous in its realism. It was to this life that Lillian Hoyle was directed. She had with her- a New, York woman knp\vify,svs r .Pearl Arcline, and fate had in roserve a curious career and tragic end 'for both these! women. . „ Conrad <*Hbff, ">• an - agen-t of ' the "German ' Govern.B[}o6)teiocBt6i|d aMSitrga'pore, wrote to a fri'endjjejfe^a letter giving .the conclusion , of their 'caj*ee,T». w hioh was received to-day. He state's that- tKe s 'H.dyle Wtfman 'became a repognised leader of the demi-monde- atHong Kong, and, clad in a nativo dress of extraordinary richness, she finally grew to be such a conspicuous figure upon the streets that the authorities forbade her appearance on them in daylight. On the night of June 4th she was in company with a party of friends', .including Pearl Ardine and a young American named John Ledger, at a nativo r tea garden, which was a large enclosed place thickly planted with fhrubs. Toward midnight , these, two women and" Ledger were' missed, and after a search their bodies were found in a dark corner of the garden. All three wore dead and covered with knife wounds. ' The head of the Hoyle woman was, in addition, entirely severed from ' her body. Who did the. bloody work could not evon be ' conjectured, butitwas charged that jealousy was at the bottom of it. No arrest had. be,en made up to the time the letter was written! '. .This has, of v courso,'but little to dowibh the ease of Maxwell, fbr the evidence of the> woman thus tragically placed beyond the reach of a subpnenawaa, after all, not needful to convict. But it seema a 'strange turn of destiny that' the California, siren 'into who&e ears Maxwell poured the story of his, crime -was doomed to die in- a mid-nighb-reveron the other side of bhe world, where she had refused to go' with the murderer.