The New York herald., 1871-05-19
The Lasf Of RuIloG.

The last Of Rull0f was his execution yester-
day at Binghamton. He met his fate with
out whining" As he had said he would, he
faced his death with the stoicism Of an Indian,
but without the Indians faith in q future ex-
istence. He had nothing to say on the scat
fold; he had no delay to ask with the rope
around his neck; he had declined any assistance
in the preparations of his toilet for the hang
man ; he had refused any religious advice or
consolation on the brink of the dark valley; he
had lived the life Of an outlaw, and he ''died as
the fool dieth." Yet this man wanted to live,
if only a few weeks longer, professedly to
finish his great work on the origin of languages.
but really because even to him the life Of an
outlaw under the sentence of the gallows
had its attractions, and death had its terrors.
When informed that his last hope was gone
and that his last day In this life had come he
was excited into violent rage, and devoted the
day mainly to cursing and swearing against
his counsel and the Governor and all con-
cerned in his case, not forgetting his victim
and his cOnfederates In the crime which had
caught him and brought him at last to his just
deserts
This Rulloff was a strange character. He
was scholar and ambitious of distinction, yet
by nature he was a villain and devoted to
crime. He wanted to flourish as gentleman
and savant while pursuing the career
Of the burglar and the murderer. By day he
cultivated tie arts and graces of polite society,
yhi hyu i~It bo 1Iu fod uUifh
thieves aud felons, whose only education was
that of the State Prison. His vicious nature
drew him into crimes apparently without an
object beyond the excitement Of the dangers
they involved and the pleasure which it gave
him to murder. It is seldom that we meet
Commune, and yet he was wholly destitute of
the political excuses of the Jacobin fanatic.
We can imagine no incentive to the mysterious
murder Of his wife and child In the outset Of
his guilty career, in 1916, except that of q
monomania for human blood. The story is
that in the night he murdered tho mother and
her babe, and, putting them in chest, with
their bodies bound round with iron wire to
prevent their rising, sunk them in the deep
water of Cayuga Lake, where their remains lie
to-day. AS their bodies could not be found
the crime Of murder could not be fixed upon
Rulloff in this case; but he was tried and
convicted and suffered ten years at hard labor
In the State Prison for the abduction of his
wife, the circumstantial evidence of the murder
being regarded as morally, if not legally, con-
elusive. He was tried for the murder on the
expiration Of his State Prison term, but there
was still lacking the evidence to convict him.
With frequent narrow escapes for burglaries
and other crimes, he is at last, by some
remarkably keen detectives, captured as one
of the gang Of burglars concerned, last August,
store in Binghamton. The bodies
of two Of the burglars had been
found in the river, drowned In their efforts to
escape after the murder. They had been
severely wounded in their fight in the store
with Mirrick and his fellow clerk, or by the
third and chief burglar, Rulloff, in the river,
to get them out Of the way, and some of the
articles found upon them furnished the clue to
Rullof's detection, arrest, trial and convic-
tion Of the murder of Mirrick.
Now, for these and other crimes of Rulloff,
with his qualifications, advantages and oppor-
tunities for comfortably supporting himself
and family in honest pursuits, we can supply
no motives except those resulting from natu-
rally vicious nature and disordered mind, i'm
properly trained and delighting in the dangers
and excitements Of murders and burglaries,
and believing that the life of man is like
that of dog in this world, and that there is no
future existence or responsibility for either
There was no escape for such villain from
the hangman, considering the method which
controlled his madness but still there is some
thing of value to society furnished from his
shocking career and his miserable ending in
the moral that the ruffian by nature needs
something more than Greek and Latin to save
him from the State Prison and the execu-
toner.