The Wichita daily eagle., 1900-03-18
GOebeI's Assassin
Chance for a Genius
to Discover Him.

This is the problem, according to the
New York Herald, which awaits the
coming of a Sherlock Holmes to clear up
the assassination of William Goebel, OF
| Kentucky-Given window, a man and a
tree and, finding a bullet IN the tree,
trace the shot back to the window and
tell who killed Goebel.
For it is found now that bullet, pass
ing through the body of Goebel, was
imbedded in the tree on the sidewalk in
front of the Executive Mansion, and from
the line of direction and detection it is
now thought that window may be placed
definitely. In spite of the fact that few
people talk much about these things in
Kentucky, it may be possible for man
Of the Holmes type to find who was in a
certain room on a certain day.
The Legislature of Kentucky has appro-
priated $1,000 to run down the murderer
in the case. This political assassination,
differing from that of Lincoln, and OF
Carnot, the president of France, and of
many other men shot down because they
has in it a mysterious element, which is
rare in the history of the murder of the
great by the obscure.
Undoubtedly, a dozen or more men in
Frankfort know who killed William
Goebel, but Kentucky has more unwritten
laws than any state in the Union. it
seems, and men are killed there regularly
for saying too much, or it may be for
saying too little.
So a Sherlock Holmes is needed now to
take a tree and the window, and the
place on the sidewalk where Goebel fell,
and put his hand on the shoulder of some
man and say, Thou art the man''-only
that in Kentucky they do not say it in
speech so formal
In Kentucky revolvers grow on trees
and one does not have to go anywhere
near to "lie direct" as Shakespeare out
lined 1t, in order to bring on a shooting
up of the entire community. Then. too
it is particularly true there that a man
on pinnacle Of either fame or notorfety
you may take your choice-is a shining
mark, which, as we all know, death loves
Once in George Ills time a bullet i'm
bedded itself in the roof of his box in the
Drury Lane Theatre, and the King, being
hurried out and having more wit than his
generation credited him with, said, 1.-THE
life of a king belongs to any man who
will play his own" So some one went
cunning for Goebel, and now they have
got down to a window and a tree and a
dead man, and from these they want to
argue back to the identity of the assassin
-
for the tread of a Sherlock Holmes or
Lecoq.
Now if the people had told all they
knew it might be positively established
whether William Goebel was shot in the
breast or in the back. The general
opinion was that he was shot through
the breast, and that the bullet. missing
the spine, passed through him. But
there is great latitude in the discussion
of gunshot wounds after the entry and
exit of bullets.
For instance, the range has much in
f1uence in many cases upon the hole
made by bullet entering and leaving.
and here we have the wound alone, and
do not know the range, although the tree
seems to mark it pretty surely. 1t is
the back. There was no autopsy, as there
should have been, and the doctors are
now more or less at war or at sea, not
about the direction of the bullet so much
as to the question whether he had his
back or breast to the man who fired.
1t is no exact science this of reading
gunshot wounds, for a bullet may drill
you clean at one range and tear a big hole
at another. For instance, a Mauser, a
fine bullet, of extremely high speed and
very low trajectory is still rocking when
it hits a man at one hundred yards or so
and will make a jagged wound at the
point of entry and a worse one at the
point of exit, whereas after a fight of five
hundred yards it will, to use Mr.. Kip
ling's phrase, ''drill the beggar clean,'
and even go through a bone making a
hole corresponding simply to its diameter.
And then, perhaps. after eight hundred
or a thousand yards. it may rock again
and almost tear a man to pieces, perhaps
striking on the fat, making a big wouIsl
at the point of entry and tearing it's way
out al the back
Now it appears that the great point to
be settled in order to narrow down the
search Of the slayer of GOebel is the cues
ton whether he was shot from behind or
front 1t is established that at the time
he was shot he was standing almost fac
ing the Executive Building. If he were
shot from behind men who are now under
suspicion of having fired upon him from
the windows Of the Executive Building
are cleared. If. on the other hand, 1t is
proved that the bullet entered ct the back
then those who We're suspected OF having
fired upon him from the secretary Of
states office and from other places in
the Executive Building are cleared, and it
becomes a question almost of one or two
men.
As matter Of fact, nobody knows posi-
lively which bullet killed Goebel. There
was something like a volley Of revolver
shots when he was hit. and many men
have thought that there was a ''bluff'' at
proEliscuOus shooting TO cover the man
who had been assigned or who had taken
upon himself the task of killing. and who
had been thus allowed to make his aim
steady and deadly. and whose chances
Of escape thereafter would be increased
by the confusion consequent upon shoot
ing from different points
The probability is that the bullet fired
by this one man was the one found in
the tree. and IL so. it must surely be that
he was in a certain window in the Exc
cutive Mansion indicated by line drawn
from the street through Goebel at the
time he was hit.
What became OF the other bullets fired,
or. for that matter. whether or not they
were fired at Goe5el IS not now known.
II was first thought that the bullet came
from the third floor OF the Executive
Mansion, which would have given it