After crushing in the head of his superior officer with an axe, James Layton, boatswain of the Liverpool sailing ship Colony, refused to submit to arrest, and, still waving the bloody weapon, committed suicide by jumping into the sea.—New York Mail.
Motive:
In revenge for a beating he received the day before, Gaetona Ambrifi yesterday shot and instantly killed Frank Ricciliano, a sub-section foreman on the Pennsylvania Railroad, while they were working on the roadbed near Peddle street, Newark.—New York Sun.
Prominent name:
Mayor William J. Gaynor of New York City was shot and seriously, perhaps fatally, wounded on board the steamer Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse at 9:30 as he was sailing for Europe.
Resulting pursuit:
The police of Brooklyn have another murder mystery to unravel through the finding early today of the body of Peter Barilla on Lincoln road, near Nostrand avenue, Flatbush. There were two bullet wounds in the body and four stab wounds in the back.—Brooklyn Eagle.
Attendant circumstances:
A hundred or more persons who were about to take trains witnessed the shooting to death of a Jersey City business man in the Pennsylvania Railroad station there this afternoon.—New York Mail.
4. Suicide.—What is true of murder stories is also true of suicide. Each individual case has an unusual feature of its own. We ordinarily find a good beginning in the manner of the suicide, the name of the person who has killed himself if he is well known, the reason for the act, or some one of the attendant circumstances—often the manner of resuscitation if the crime is unsuccessful. For some unexplained reason many papers do not print accounts of ordinary suicides, except when the individual is prominent. At any rate the story must be told without gruesome details and as briefly as possible.