The Preller murder occurred in the summer of 1885, in one of the rooms of the Southern Hotel, St. Louis, Mo. Clarence Preller was a young Englishman, as was also his slayer, Hugh M. Brookes. The discovery of the body, the apprehension of the murderer, his trial and execution, attracted the attention of the civilized world. The true story of the conviction of the perpetrator of this foul crime has never before been published.
Hugh M. Brookes was a native of Hyde Park, a suburb of London, England. His father and mother were respectable people, and school teachers by professions. The young man was about twenty-five or six years of age when he committed this crime. He had never done anything but go to school, consequently was well educated. The last school he attended was a law school. He ran away from this institution, after stealing a lot of property that belonged to fellow students. The plunder he secured consisted mostly of ornaments and bric-a-brac, which he pawned at Liverpool, England, to secure enough money with which to purchase a first-class ticket to Boston, Mass. After boarding the vessel he met and formed the acquaintance of Clarence Preller.
Preller was a trusted employee of a large export establishment of London. His duties required him to travel nearly all over the world, or, at least, to visit the principal cities of the world. He was a young man, being about thirty years of age, and finding Brookes, a fellow-countryman, an agreeable companion, took very kindly to him.
Brookes represented himself as being a titled nobleman, who had just finished his course at college, and was making a pleasure tour of America. He called himself Maxwell.
Hugh M. Brookes, Alias Maxwell
The young Englishman hung for murdering Arthur Preller in the
Southern Hotel.
During the voyage from Liverpool to Boston, Preller told Maxwell, as I will call him hereafter, that after he had attended to a matter of business for his firm at Boston he had to go to Toronto, Canada, where he would be detained but a day or two. Then he would leave Toronto for St. Louis, Missouri, where he also had some business to do for his firm, which would require but a short time, and that from there he would go through to San Francisco, California, and sail from there on the first steamship to Auckland, New Zealand. Maxwell told him that he believed he would go from Boston to St. Louis, where he (Maxwell) would await the arrival of Preller from Toronto, then accompany him to Auckland just for the trip. This proposition pleased Preller.
They arrived safely in Boston, where they remained two or three days together, and where Maxwell learned that Preller had in his possession seven one hundred dollar bills. After Preller had finished his business in Boston they settled their bills at the Adams House, where they had stopped, went to the depot together and separated, Preller going to Toronto and Maxwell to St. Louis. They had agreed that Maxwell was to stop at the Southern Hotel in St. Louis, there to await Preller. Maxwell arrived at that hotel and engaged a room, where Preller joined him a couple of days later. I think it was Saturday when he arrived, and they occupied the same apartments.
On the following Sunday, after they had eaten their dinner and returned to their room, Preller complained of suffering from stomach trouble. Maxwell claimed to have some knowledge of medicine, and administered an overdose of morphia, hypodermically. A short time after administering the drug, and when he saw that Preller was beginning to breathe his last, he poured more than half the contents of a four ounce bottle of chloroform into Preller's almost lifeless lips. When Preller was dead, Maxwell stripped the body and placed a suit of his own underwear on him. Maxwell was small in stature, being only about five feet five inches in height, while Preller was much larger and about six feet tall. Maxwell's clothing was marked with the name of Hugh M. Brookes, and they were entirely too small for the body of Preller.