The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1889-12-08
BEAUTIFUL VAMPIRES.
HOW FEMALE BLACKMALERs
FAsCINATE THEIR VICTIMS.


FAsCINATE THEIR VICTIMS.
The Romantic Southworth Pettus
Tragedy Still the Talk of the Me-
tropolis-The Blackmailing Frater-
nifty and Their Methodist Wall
Street Adventure-A Pious Hunga-
rian Fraud-The Book Canvassing
Widow,
(Copyrioht.)
NEW YORK, Dec For the past two
weeks New York has been in the full tide
of a Partisan sensation. In a city
whose conditions are SO prolific of
crime, it is seldom that a mere murder
attracts more than passing interest. But
the shooting of Stephen Pettus by beauti-
full Hannah Southworth was more than a
mere murder. 1t had all the elements of a
tragedy, such as Dumas and the mod
ern school of realistic novels delight
in. 1t was romance within a
romance; tragedy within tragedy;
and it disclosed a page of human inter-
est which every one read and shuddered at
OF course, public opinion is divided over
the Southworth-Pettu affair, as it always
is when pretty and clever woman is &C
cused of crime, and yet has some apparent
justification for her act. A high-spirited
Kentucky girl, after she had fallen a vic
tim, as she asserts, to the wiles of Pettus,
she vowed to make his life burden by con-
tinual upbraidings aud to take out her
vengeance in abuse. After three years of
this sort of thing, she shot him in cold
blood, having learned, SO her relatives say,
that the statutory period had elapsed, and
that, Pettus' crime being outIawed, he could
now laugh at her threats and compel her
silence
There are others, however, who take a
different view and who hold that the hys-
terical and suffering woman now in the
Tombs is not the innocent victim who for
eight long years kept her secret until she re-
vealed it to her friend, Rosa Lloyd.
Rosa was herself prey to the
wiles of Pettus, who seems 60 have
been a sort of Don Juan in a small way.
There is a strong flavor of Brooklyn
morals about the mutual confessions of
these two women, made some ten
months ago, to each other. Pettus' friends
assert that Hannah Southworth had been
''bleeding" him for years before the final
exposure, and that he, not she, had been
the victim. Indeed, they declare that he
had given her thousands of dollars, and
that the climax was reached only after his
absolute refusal to pension her with 500
week. The letters published would seem
to prove that Pettus was anything
but pattern of morality, even for
Brooklyn, but at the same time the
whole case has drawn attention anew to q
class of men and women, who. Jekyll-and-
Hyde-like, lead double lives that are fire.
quently unsupported even by their nearest
relatives, and whose real characters only
come to be known when an accident, or
ho tP,o vadw laus IA hpr 10
the gaping world.
There are in New York hundreds of pro-
fessional vampires, the majority OF them
unknown to the police, who live at home
and to all appearance lead respectable
lives. 1t is to this class that the friends of
Stephen Pettus will endeavor to prove that
his slayer belongs. But there has been
show that Mrs. Hannah Southworth was
blackmailer. or that she ever accepted
dollar from the man she afterward
killed in cold blood. She gave
no indications of belonging to the frater-
nifty of those who live by their wits and on
the follies of the opposite sex, as so many
women do in the metropolis. They are to
be met everywhere; but their chief stamp
ing-grounds are the hotels and Wall street
in winter, and the seaside and mountain
resorts in summer Coy and fasci-
mating enough, they are gener
ally mature beauties. and in
vestigation would probably show that a
large proportion are widows, who have
seen the world and know the foibles of the
opposite sex accurately. They do not set
their traps for the young men, but rather
choose the benedicts as their more profitable
prey, for there the fear of exposure has
more weight and the financial possibilities
are precisely in proportion to such fear.
Hundreds of men in business and in the
professions in New York have had ex-
perience with these vampires. Not long
ago Wall street had occasion to laugh over
the misfortune of u well-known and shrewd
financier, who used to boast that no man
or woman could ever blackmail him. OF
course no common, vulgar blackmailer
could; but clever, good-looking woman
with resources IN that line is neither
vulgar nor common. One day two ladies
called upon him at his office. One
was pretty and petite, and the other fine
looking matron about 40. By and by the
young lady excused herself and departed,
leaving the elder with the broker, talking
about the prices of stocks and prospective
investments. Presently the lady rose and
stepped toward the door, which she locked
almost before the broker could catch his
breath. Wheeling about she faced him and
said:
Now, Mr.. Blank, want your check for
$tNsOOV IL you piCdaoOs ObhCA WAc0 l. VAL
alarm the building"
The man started to his feet with an oath,
his face white, and every limb trembling
with rage. He was about to summon his
clerk, when the lady coolly sat down on the
lounge, and ripped her dress open with a
single motion of her hand, while she said:
Sign it. or in, another minute will
scream"
As she spoke, she inflated her lungs
and prepared to carry her threat into exc
cution.
For Gods sake!" cried the frightened
man. Don't shout. I'll sign it, or any
thlng-only don't make a scene"
The woman smiled and topped down in
an easy position on the leather-coyered
lounge. Singing her sachel on the floor,
she seized her hat and with twist of her
gloved fingers distorted its pretty proper
TONS into shapeless mass of felt and feath-
ers' Sue looked at the broker with cum
ming smile.
,, a moment later she stood by the door.
t1er hand held check bearing somewhat
shaky signature.
am not quite through " she said softly