GIRL’S LIFE OF CRIME.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 October 1921, Page 6

GIRL’S LIFE OF CRIME.

STOLE £20,000, AND KILLED A MAN. The inhabitants of West Palm Beach, a fashionable residential suburb of the famous Florida winter resort, are ed to learn that a quiet, pretty young woman who has officiated behind the counter of the post office, and has been known to every citizen as a religious girl of spotless reputation, has not only been leading a double life for months past, but is now in prison charged with theft and murder, says the correspondent of the Weekly DispatchThe girl’s name is Lena Clarke, and she is the daughter of a Congregational minister, a member of the local church, and closely identified with all its activities. Yet when she was supposed to be safely in bed she was leading a life of pleasure in night resorts at Palm Beach, where she had relations with all kinds of dubious characters of the upper and under world. During the last 18 months thefts have been going on in the mail consigned to and from West Palm Beach office, which resulted in a loss of over £20,000 worth of money orders and other valuables. Post office inspectors watched for months before deciding that the pretty young postmistress was the thief, and they breathed no word of their suspicions until they raided the studio where she lived and wrote poetry. There they discovered apparently conclusive proof of her guilt. When she was arrested she denied everything, and was released on bail. Two days later the town received a second shock when a local restaurant proprietor, named Miltimore, was found shot a through the head in a hotel at Orlando. Nobody connected Lena Clarke with the crime except the police, who had the girl under observation while she was on bail. Taxed with causing the death of Miltimore, the girl confessed everything. She admitted that the dead man had been her secret associate for many months, and that he had been her accomplice in robbing th’e mails. -She told the police how by promises she had enticed him to her room in the Orlando Hotel, and begged him to sign a statement admitting that he was her accomplice. When he refused to do so she shot him.

A curious feature of the case is that since Clarke’s arrest two prominent men, one a president of the local bank, and the other a man from whom Clarke rented a studio, have disappeared.