St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-07-18
A FIENDISH PLOT.
Dakota Man Suspected of Trying
to Poison His Wife.


Special to the GLOBE.
Hope, N. D., July 1.-THE prelimi-
ary hearing of H. H. Wassem was held
in Sherbrooke Wednesday, before JUS
tice Winslow. The cipher letter was
brought forward and identified by Con-
ductor Shaver, who swore to finding it
in his caboose. After the writing and
figures had been proven to be Was
sem's to the satisfaction of the justice,
the letter was admitted as evidence
and read in court by Mr.. Murray
according to his key. The leading
produced quite a sensation, and
many were heard toreXpress the
opinion that it sounded like prOduc-
ton of Wassem's, while others said that
Wassem was too smart man to have
written such letter. The strongest
witness for the defense was Mrs. Was
sem, who said she did not think she had
taken any poison and was subject to
cramps. The doctor who attended her
testified that in his opinion Mrs. Was
sem was suffering from poison, and he
gave medicine as all antldOte, which
gave relief. After the evidence was all
in and the case summed up by the op-
posing counsel, the justice deemed
the evidence sufficient to warrant
the defendant being held in $1,000
bonds to appear at the next term of the
district court. The latter was written
June l, and it is SAID, was intended for
Miss Olive May Stollman, who lives in
the family of j. r. Mccoy. of Hamline.
The letter was addressed simply to Miss
Olive May, but Miss Stollman has re-
ceived several letters addressed in that
fashion. The epistie makes a column
and a half, ordinary minion type. 1t
says, among other things:
lam all excitement and all worked UP over
my ''battle for freedom" Ever since my last
letter to you she has been slck-yery sick-in
only one respect that is her stomach. Up
to Saturday morning she took pepsine every
meal and you know l had that fixed with
A-so that it distressed her all the time, and
she always thinks tits the food she eats She
vomits it up and then she has dreadful pains
in the stomach. Sunday morning l had to
get the doctor. He says the stomach trouble
is caused by the womb pressing up against it
(RatsD so the doctor gave her prescrip-
ton, a small powder, to take for her stom-
ach. Now. thought l, if she lets up
on arsenic she will soon get well; then, II
she takes pepsine again and gets pain again
she may get on to 1t that 1t IS the pepslne
and not the food that causes all the trouble.
So after got the prescription filed l slipped
into the store and put some arsenic into each
powder, and into one powder put little
strychnine. and into one l put s;rychHine
enough to do the work, | think, but l am
left again this morning. got hold OF one
powder that had a little strychnine in it, and
about half an hour after she had taken it
(she was to take one three times day right
after eating) she had spasms and
Pauline got scared and / had to go
for the doctor but we rubbed her with lin
iment and she soon got over it, but che
h ad two more after that and the doctor gave
her hypodermic injection right over the
stomach and since then she rests easy, but
she thinks it was the powder which made
her have the spasm; so now the doctor left
some other powders to be given, so l may
not reach the fatal one. | wanted to leave
the powders as the doctor ordered them, and
fix just one of them, but was so afraid the
doctor might tell by the symptoms that she
had taken poison and the secret be found out,
and / am so scared all the time about 1t, but
she has not even surmlsed nor m1StruSted
anything. Now | am up stump again;
don't know just how to plan now. II she
gets better under the doctors treatment and
then takes any of my medicine again and
gets worse, how can she help but get on to 1t.
l don't see how on earth she can live after
eating SO much a-and mor-and Kept 1t up
now for week. Will not give up until L
succeed or fail.
just been to the postof1ice and got your
darling letter which you wrote Thursday and
Friday morning, but there is something
queer about it again, for it was not mailed at
Hamline until Saturday, the Goth, so it could
not get here until to-day. But | did not
worry about it. because l knew you were
well, and that ii was not your fault, and so it
has proven. But you did not tell me, dar-
ling, what so begged of you to tell me, and
YOU teased me to tell what l limited at in my
last letter. That's joke, don't 1t, but
will tell you what the two things are. You
remember last winter you told me that your
home was not so pleasant as it might
be, and when this time you were
feeling SO bad you said you were
going out to work, as you had TO
earn something. Then the three next words
were scratched out and you called them "all
Kisses but l thought they said Ito help
mother" then you also said in regard to the
rent that you was not sure whether l would
always get even that Now, l came to the
conclusion that perhaps your father was in
the habit of getting intoxicated once in
great while and abused you and others of the
family and if this was not the case, then l
made up my mind that once in while Min
ME would abuse you for being at home and
not working out or getting married, so you
would be out Of her way.
Now am satisfied by this time that am
wrong in both of my suspicious, and do not
think hard of me for thinking of those
things, for could not think why on earth
you wanted to leave home for al at once and
go out to work. but please don't tell pa or
Minnie for they would naturally think hard
of me for ii. / trust you with everything
and SO thought would tell you this also,
don't blame me, Olive, for, iN my earnest de-
sire to seek some sort of an explanation of
your sadness 1 have, perhaps, thought of