Page:Newspaper writing and editing.djvu/135

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severely that she died a week later. Schmidt insisted that he had mistaken Miss Martin for a man on whom he sought revenge, and that he had not meant to kill her.

Until Schmidt confessed the police and the county authorities were without a single clue as to Miss Martin's slayer. Bloodhounds and Belgian sheep dogs had been used to trace the slayer, but they had failed. Several men, black and white, had been arrested, but each one proved his innocence. Rewards totaling more than $2,500 had been offered, but not until a day or so ago was the least clue found.

Then Miss Mildred Green, a trained nurse, attending a case on a farm near Richland, noticed that a new farm hand was extremely nervous, and that he talked of almost nothing but the Martin murder. He discussed the probable penalty for such a crime, and was eager to know whether any trace had been found of the slayer. The nurse, convinced that the man, who was Schmidt, knew something of the crime, told Dr. Henry F. Schley, a local physician, of her suspicions, and last night Dr. Schley brought Schmidt here.

The physician got a room for Schmidt in a local hotel, and this morning communicated with Prosecutor Frank Firling. The latter, with several policemen, concealed himself in a room in the hotel through the walls of which holes had been bored into the adjoining room, and then Schmidt was led into this second room. There, under Dr. Schley's questioning, he gradually made a full confession, which was overheard by Firling and the policemen, who entered the room and arrested him.

Schmidt took his arrest very calmly. In fact, he seemed to be relieved after he had made his confession. He even whistled cheerfully as he was taken to jail. Later he was arraigned before the Justice of the Peace and held without bail on a charge of murder, to await the action of the January Grand Jury.

Prosecutor Firling, beyond saying that Schmidt had made a confession, was not much disposed to talk about the case. He said, however, that Schmidt denied that robbery was his motive, and that the prisoner said he did not discover that he had mistaken the woman in the darkness for a man against whom he had a grievance, until after he had felled her.


(2)


Paul Schein, said to have confessed to having illicitly distilled liquor in his home at 421 Maryland street, was arrested today by government officers and is locked up in the county jail. He confessed to Marshal Weed this afternoon, according to the marshal. Held as evidence is a copper tea-kettle still, found in his house. Schein is 25 years old.

The discovery of the outfit came as the result of a fire in the h me of the accused man. Detectives Harry Weiler and Arthur Winter found the tea-kettle distillery. They took the apparatus