A DIABOLICAL MURDER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 155, 29 December 1911, Page 5

A DIABOLICAL MURDER.

CRIME BROUGHT TO LIGHT BY A FALSE TOOTH. A crime which for diabolical cleverness has scarcely a parallel in criminal history hag been confessed to by Dr. Harry Elgin Webster a well-known Chicago docto.' after nndrag;that the police had succeeded , n bringing his guift home. The story (says the New York correspondent of the Daily Chronicle,) reads like melodrama, for it is solely through a false tooth that the identity of the victim has been proved and the crime brought to light. Webster's victim was Bessie Kent, a professional nurse, with whom the physician had had an intrigue in the days when he was a young student in a Chicago hospital. A week after his marriage to Miss Zoe Varney, an attractive and well-to-do society girl of Cedar Rapids, lowa, Webster married Bessie Kent biganiously He alleges she importuned--him to go through the ceremony COVERING UP HIS TRACKS. Certain it is 'he grew desperate at her threats to expose him as a bigamist, and that he determined to kill her. He made his plans with wonderful care. One morning he and Bessie appeared at the*- > village of Dixon, Illinois, 100 miles from ■"■ Chicago. They hired a horse and carnage, and after driving five miles Webster stopped the horse in a lonely stretch of road, and dragged Bessie from the carriage and throttled her. Then he carried the body to a desolate ravine In order that there should be not the slightest clue if ever she were found he stripped every bit of clothing from'the body and rolled it into a bundle. He even removed the pins from the woman's hair. He then buried the body in the soft leaf mould. Returning with the bundle of clothing, he hid it under the seat of the carriage and then drove on After another five miles had been travelled he hid the bundle in another' thicket, and continued on his way to the village of Oregon, where he paid a loafer to return the horse and carriage to Dixon, while he caught the first train for Chicago. There seemed to be no weak spot in his murder plan. Neither he nor Bessie Kent was known in that part of the State. Their coming to Dixon had scarcely been noticed. A bungler might have used a weapon and stained his hands or clothing with the blood of his victim. Webster strangled her with his hands. FATAL MISTAKES.

What chance was there of the crime ever being traced to him ? It seemed as though, even if the body Were found, the murder would never be traced to the wealthy Chicago physician. But he made two mistakes, 'trivial at' first sight, but fatal. Though careful to remove the clothing, and even the hairpins, he forgot that she had a gold tooth. He also overlooked the fact that the nutting seasonwas at hand,'or he would n-iver have buried his victim under a tree which was heavy with nuts. Ten days 'later Mathias Meyer and his wife were, in the woods, and feeling among the leaf mould for fallen nuts, the farmer was astonished to find.a naked body. The police were informed, and at first were nonplussed, for the body was decayed beyond recognition, there was no clothing on or near it, no mark by which it could be identified. But fate came to the aid of the detectives, and upset Webster's welllaid plan. A tiny paragraph found its way into a Chicago newspaper, aid caught the eye of a dentist. The dentist happened to be a brother-in-law of Bessie Kent, who was missing. This man went to Dixon, saw the body, and iden: tilled the gold tooth as his own handiwork. THE CRIME LAID BASE. From this point what had seemed an insoluble mystery was an open book. Webster's intrigue with Bessie Kent was known. The night clerk at the hotel in Dixon identified Webster as the man who had stopped there in company with a woman. The liveryman identified the physician as the'man who had hired a horse and carriage and driven into the country, accompanied by a woman. A loafer at Oregon identified Webster as the stranger who had come into Oregon —alone. A farmer, living five miles from the scene of the murder, had found a bundle of clothes containing hairpins. At another time the discovery would have meant nothing. He would have left the garments where he found them. Now he turned them over to the police, and they were identified as garments worn by Bessie Kent. At first Webster protested his innocence. His wife, who is loyal to him, and visits him daily in gaol, urged him to tell Mia truth, "whatever it might be. and when he realised the full weight of the evidence against him he, as above stated, confessed.