Eureka daily sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1871-1887, 1876-02-05
MURDER.

There Is q faint OF murder in the air.
The public mind has hardly had time
to comprehend the full measure OF the
Bremenhaven atrocity. and the super
fiendishness of Thomassen, its author,
before it is shocked by the account OF
q murder committed at Green Point,
I1ongIsland, which in the grotesqueness
Of its horror not only surpasses any
thing recorded in the history of crime
but even puts to the blush the bril-
liant, half-crazed imagination of Edgar
Poe. The ourang-outang of the Rue
Morgue failed to develop such BRITISH
ness As characterized the murder of
Simmons. And before the type re-
eording this last horror has been dis
tributed the wires fash to us the intel
ligence of what is modestly put as "a
domestic tragedy" recently enacted in
Vermont. In q quiet New England
village a son and husband brains his
father and mother, each past the al
three-score years and ten, stabs
the wife of his bosom to the heart and
judasizes himself in the barn. All
this in less than fifteen minutes; and
yet nobody is shocked; it is all ac-
cepted as q matter of course, and the
dispenser of news alludes to it ten
derby as q domestic tragedy" Why,
Mark Twain's burlssque account OF
the murder at Dutch Nick's pales
before this horrid fact. 1t appears to us
that these murders, with all their in
human, unnecessary details, are grow
ing upon the world. We recollect no
record Of such crimes in the times of
our youth. We fail to recall a private
murder mentioned in the Newgate
calendar that al compare in atrocity
with those now of almost daily or Jur-
renee. The thing is growing fashion,
able. The murderer Stays by whole
sale and mangles his victims and the
world shrugs its shoulders and passes
O. Indifferent. Brother Moody ought
to take the matter in hand. Perhaps
a fair trial Of Professor Tyndall's pray
er might result In good.
We can not avoid recalli ng to the
minds OF our readers a murder com
mitted in this community over two
years ago, with the details Of which
most are familiar, but which is Illus
trative Of the devilish ingenuity char
acterizing the modern murderer. We
allude to the murder of old man Greer
by Marheney and his accomplice. The
mode of killing was before unknown
to our civilization. 1t was borrowed
from the Thugs of India, with whom
for countless ages assassination has
been q science as we'll as a religion.
The sleeping victim was slaughtered
with an ak, but with the fiat,
not with the edge OIL the poll.
A blow from SO broad a surface
produces instant death, spills no blood,
and gives to the body all the symptoms
of death Of apoplexy. But the ingenu'
ity Of the murder was outdone in the
concealment Of the body. A stream Of
living water was turned from its bed
the body was buried, the water turned
again into its channel, and cattle driven
to and fro over the guilty spo1
obliterated, in few hours, al
traces of the horrid work. Had
It not been for the confession of Math-
eney the remains would never have
been discovered; no corpus deficit could
have been established; the murderer
would have gone free, and the living
waters would have flowed over the
dead body Of poor Green until turned
from their curse by a cyclic change in
the surface Of the earth.
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