Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-01-30
MONDAY, JANUARY so, 1888.
An Anomalous Criminal.

"A mOIt ulluCulI SuuycCt lOI eho
study of the metaphysician than the
murderer Anschlag presents it would
be impossible to find. Generally, a
man fit to conceive and capable Of
executing such crime as the double
murder at Garden Grove would only
have reached that depth Of hardiesse
after long and practical famil-
iarity with the worst practices Of the
criminal class. He would inevitably
start out on his career with perverted
moral faculties. His nature would be
constitu tionally hard and cruel. His
sense of the humanities would be
minimized to the smallest degree. His
conception of right would be blunted,
and his whole being would be concen-
trated on self. Familiarity with ordi-
nary wrong-doing would gradually
carry him from one act of lawlessness
to another. After having outraged
every sense of justice in his minor
criminalities, he would find the step
easy from knocking man down for
his money to imbruing his hands in
human blood to crafty his cupidity.
His first murder would make successive
murders weigh but lightly on his con-
science, providing he escaped the pen
atty. At this stage success would be his
only thought, and to carry out his
plans he would think as little of tax
ing life as he would of "rolling
drunk" We could imagine man,
after such a schooling, crowning his
career with crime SO brutal as that
of the murder at Garden Grove. But
how man like Anschlag, who evi-
IDENTIFY has been well brought up,
whose connections, there is reason to
believe, are respectable, who is well
educated, and who has only attained
his twenty-third year, could have
made his debut on the criminal
stage by committing the heart
less, and horrible double mur-
der he is self-confessedly guilty
of, is one of those anomalies which
put to fight all our theories of the
gradual growth of moral de gravity.
1t does not appear that Anschlag had
been hardened criminal, or indeed
that he had been a criminal at all
until he developed SO fearfully all at
once last Monday evening. He came
to this country little over a year
ago, a graduate from college. AL
though we have no reliable traces of
his movements since that time, he
could hardly have been very deep
in crime or, it would be
known. For all we now know this is
his first crime. But what natural ap-
titudes must be have had for such
deeds of blood to have opened his
career with an act at which the most
hardened criminal would have re-
coiledl The consummation of his |
bloody work was reached through |
q violation of even the COM
monest amenities of our ma
ture. His victims had treated
him with kindness. He had eaten at
their board, slept in their house, sat
with them in church. The images of
the kind old man and his comely con-
sort must have brought back to his
mind faces that. he had loved; vet
while breaking bread with his victims
he had steeled his heart in murder
against them. His treachery and
cruelty point to nature without
pity, and mind into which no tender
thoughts could enter. The monster
was within him, ready to be cailed
forth at the behest of his cupidity.
fortunately such anomalies are rare
II it were not SO, society would recede
within itself and suspicion would tax
the place of confidence, reducing
civilization to the ever-wakeful and
distrustful wariness of savage life.