The History of the Tragedy.
Never in the history of the crimes committed in this section of the country has the same interest or the same deep feeling been aroused as has been in the Ft. Thomas (Ky.) murder.
The fact that the head was removed from the body and secreted or destroyed, and the developments which followed fast upon each other, adding day by day new evidence to show the cold-bloodedness of the crime, the preparations which had been made for its successful carrying out and the covering up of all traces of the identity of the murderer and the murdered. The mystery that still surrounds the hiding place of the dismembered head, have led to this result.
A murder so horrible and revolting as to appear to place it beyond the civilization of to-day, had been committed within ear shot of one of the most popular U. S. Military Posts of this country, and within a few miles of the center of population of this the greatest and most highly civilized nation on earth. The murderer had hacked the head from the body of his victim, and carried it away with him. Whether from pure savagory and demon spirit or to prevent the identification of his victim was not known.
The body was found in an orchard at Ft. Thomas on Saturday, February 1., at 8 o'clock in the morning. The neck, where it had been severed from the body, lay in a pool of blood, and from evidences on the body and in the bush under which it lay, a fierce struggle had taken place before the victim received her death stroke.
BUT SLIGHT CLEW TO WORK ON.
Upon the body or in the clothing there was nothing by which the woman could be identified, excepting the dealers' names in the shoe, and the murder or murderers had left no other clew behind by which they could be identified. Without the head, the mystery seemed unsolvable, and every effort was made to find it in the vicinity.
The remaining details of the crime, as far as circumstantial evidence revealed them, told a story which was truly horrifying. The dumb evidence given by foot prints, blood-stains, broken tree branches, was terrible to reflect upon.
The body was lying upon the bank with the feet higher than the body, and the clothing so disarranged that the officers were at first led to believe that the woman had been outraged before she was murdered. The clothing could easily have been as much disarranged in the struggle which had evidently taken place and when the murderer threw his victim to the ground.