Los Angeles herald., 1908-05-07
FARM HOUSE is
A CHARNEL PIT
MUTlLATED C0RPSES DUG UP
BY POLICE
REMAINS OF VICTIMS HIDDEN IN
TRUNKS
Awful Crimes Revealed by Investi-
cation at La Porte, Indiana.
Laborer Is Held as
Suspect
tcontlnued from Pare onel


marked variously potatoes" and wall
paper" were carted to the house at diff
ferent times.
Ware asserted that his experience In
transporting the trunks TO Mrs. GUM
ness was not one which he would care
to repeat.
"She would not let us into the house
with one of the trunks" he said. I'VE
put it on the porch before the front
door. The other, at her orders, was
carried cut after dark. There was no
light in the house, and she did not
strike one when we entered with the
trunks.
"She led us through two dark rooms,
into third, and opened door l told
Welker I had had enough, and we
dropped the trunk in the third room
and left the house"
Sturgis said the trunks which he
took TO the farm were old, heavy and
strongly corded.
Bodies In Trunks
Mrs. Guinness told me to carry
them into the cellarway on the east
side of the house. l started to uncord
them for her, but she told me to leave
them alone and mind my own business,
so l got OUT
If these trunks contained dismem-
bered corpses disposal of the bodies at
the farm would have been compare
lively simple.
Joseph Maxson, man OF all work at
the place since February last; Ray
Lamphere. the prisoner in the case, and
Fred Brickman, a neighbor. have told
of digging trenches in the barnyard at
Mrs. Guinness direction.
She was a woman of great physical
strength, and those who knew her as
sert that to drag $50 pounds across a
dooryard would have been compare
lively easy for her. One drayman who
delivered furniture to the house when
Mrs. Guinness first moved there in 1900
recalled today that she aided him in
carrying several heavy pieces up a
stairway.
"She could lug weight as we'll as
most men 1 have ever worked with,
he declared.
Despite the known physical strength
of the dead woman, the authorities are
not at all convinced that Mrs. GUM
ness was unaided in her horrifying
work.
THE large body found yesterday is
that of man weighing well over zoe
pounds" said DR.. Meyer, in explaining
the result of his autopsy on the corpse
81 doubt If any one woman or any one
man could have handled it,"
Ray Lamphere is the one person to-
ward whom the hand of official sus-
picion is pointing in this connection
His acknowledgment of intimate re-
latlons with the woman, the admission
that he had been in the vicinity OF
the Guinness house on the morning OF
the fire, and above all the letters
which Prosecutor Smith is SO sedulous-
ly guarding, are principal links of the
evidence thus far revealed against him.
Then there is the testimony of sew
eral townspeople that they saw him
wearing Andrew Helgelein's fur-lined
overcoat after the South Dakota man
had dropped from view. No other
man is known to have been so deeply
in the good graces of the woman as
Lamphere.
Motive Not Established
A motive for the wholesale murders
has not been fully established. The
circumstances surrounding the disap-
pearances of Helgelein and Ole B.
Rudesburg of lola, Wis, are, how
ever, SO similar as to give a clew as
to the object of the person or per-
sons who committed the crimes. Hell
geleln had secured $4,000 through the
First National bank here shortly be-
fore he was lost track of. Rudesburg
negotiated the sale of a mortgage
through the Laporte Savings bank,
which yielded him $1,000. He drew this
money on April 6, 1907. No record of
his further appearances in the flesh
has been found.
Except those of Jennie Olson and
Helgelein only one of the corpses bears
traces of a likeness to an individual.
That was one of the first found and
has on the skull patches of black hair
and on the lip the scraggly remains of
a black mustache.
OF considerable Importance in the
developments of the entire case is the
result of the autopsy on the body of
Helgelein as announced by DIR. j. H.
William Meyer today.
THE chief popularity of the cada-
ver," he said, sis it's immense size. 1t
is so large that no ordinary man or
woman could handle it alone. The
mutiation is of the same character as
that on the other corpses, although the
freshness of this specimen reveals de-
tails which were not forthcoming so
far as the rest of the bodies are con-
cerned."
1.-THE dismemberment was the work
of an expert. The legs had been sew
cred above the knee joints with
straight, clean cuts. Both shoulders
had been disarticulated, although why
is question to my mind. If the per-
son who cut up the body dislocated
the shoulders for the sake of gaining
space in some receptacle, the work
might have had an object, as a good
two inches would have been saved.
The head had been cut off. the work on
this showing also the hand of person
familiar with anatomy.
1.-THE most startling aspect of the
body is its freshness. The intestines
were perfect and without pronounced
signs of collapse. The skin was in
good condition There were no signs
that an embalming fluid had been used,
the lungs being clean and healthy, and
the interior organs generally showing
not a particle of change.
"The body looked as IL the man
might have died yesterday"
Dr. Meyer also said that he was of
the firm conviction that all of the bod
les had been cut up by the same per-
son. In each case the legs had been
severed at practically the same point
above the knee. the heads had been cut
away in an almost similar fashion and
the wrappings which chung to the sew
eraI corpses of the same material,
heavy gunnysacking.
More digging on the premises which
have already given up nine corpses is
on the sheriffs program for tomorrow.
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