WOLTER'S CRIMES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 372, 25 April 1910, Page 5

WOLTER'S CRIMES

A REVOLTING CASE. MURDERER TO BE ELECTROCUTED. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright Received April 2-1, 5 p.m. New York, April 23. Wolter swore that he had never seen Miss Wheeler. The name was given to him by a friend in connection with a school of shorthand. The jury found Wolter guilty of murder of the first degree. The prisoner went sound asleep during the two hours' deliberation, and was unmoved when sentence of death was passed. He will be electrocuted on the 27th of April. Writers' arrest, trial, and sentence in point of time constitute a record for New Yoi\k.

l The Wolter crimes are among \.he [most revolting in the annals of evil I deeds. Wolter is a mere youth, who [ occupied offices in New York and adj vertised for typistes. The disappearance of many of these girls threw suspicion on Wolter, and cue subsequent allegations showed that he atrociously assaulted them, finally murdering and* then burning them. It was also asserted that tins young fiend was an agent for the procuring of young women. In the case of the death of Ruth Wheeler, a surgeon in. Court displayed the hand of the dead girl. In it was grasped a bunch of hah- not her own. The police resorted to the method known as the "third degree" to sheet home the charges, but although Wolter was roused trom sjeep every hour and confronted with evidences of his crime he retained his demeanor of coolness and -strongly denied his guilt. Mr. H. C. Weir, an American writer, brings against American civilisation in The World To-day a terrible .picture of the triumph of crime in the United States. His paper is a yirini confirmation of what ex-President White, ot Cornell, has been saying concerning the increase of murder iii America. Mr.Veir says the United States citizens are murdered at the rate of 200 per week, nearly 30 per day, and that crime costs the Republic £275.000,000 per annum, or €700,000 per day. Mr. Weir says: "The police administration of the ' average American city is so thoroughly entrenched behind the menacing power of the corrupted ballot that it can literally snap its fingers at any raw that would set itself above it. Do you know -that 75 per cent, of the criminals who are arrested for petty larceny, pocketpicking, holds-tip, and the Irke irom the red-light districts of New York are freed by the ward politicians!" The breakdown of. the official guardians of law 1 and order has led to voluntary organisations for the detection of crime." Mr. We,ir says:—"A number of years the jewellers of America were forced tp form a national detective organisation to guard their pronerty.'"' The bunkers of America 1 have done likewise. Sojiavo the hotelkeepers. So have the railroads. They could not depend on the public police. It was, cheaper to maintain a police system of their own. Will the people of America also be forced to employ private watchmen?" Mr. Weir says: |'Ten thousand persons are murdered in this country every year—shot, strangled, poisoned, stabbed.'or beaten with a -club or sand-bag. Of the murderers, two in every 100 are -punished. The remaining OS escape absolutely free! In many of our States-the proportion of convictions is only half a s great."