The Calumet news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 1907-1938, 1909-12-09
FIFTY YEARS
BEHIND BARS
Application for Pardon May be
Acted Upon Favorably by
Prison Board.
SENTENCED FOR wife MURuER
Is Believed To Be Longest Imprisoned
Life Convict in World, But Has
Retained All His Faculties
Looks Young Yet.

Hartford. CT, Dec. 9.-When the
state board of pardons meets the first
of next week 1t will consider and act
upon an application for the pardon or
John p. Warren, who is officially des-
ghated as convict No / on the ros-
ter of the big Connecticut State prison
at Wethersfield. If favorable action
is taken by the board, and it is gen.
orally believed that such will be the
case. the coming Christmas will be a
happy one indeed for Warren, for 1t
will be his first Christmas outside of
prison walls in half century.
on the day that the board of pardons
meets to consider his case Warren
will have completed an even fifty years
as an inmate of the State prison. He
is believed to be the longest i'm
prlsoned life convict in the United
States, and possibly in the world When
the doors of the big prison first closed
behind him the civil war had not
commenced. railroad transportation
was in its infancy and such common
conveniences of the present day as the
telephone, the electric car, the auto
mobile and the typewriter were un-
heard of. not to mention the skyscrap-
er buildings. wireless telegraphy. fly
ing machines, submarine boats and a
hundred and one other things with
which the present generation is fam
iliar.
which Warren was sentenced to life
Imprisonment One day in July, 1853.
he invited his 1S-year- wife to
take walk with him, and, coming
to a brook near their farm In willing
ton, a small town In Tolland county,
in northeastern Connecticut he sugges-
ted that they take Off their shoes and
stockings and bathe their feet in the
cool waters of the brook.
She acquiesced, but once near the
brook, Warren seized her and he'd her
head under the foot or more of water
until life was extinct. Just what was
the motive that actuated the man to
commit the deliberate, cold-blooded and
apparently unprovoked crime on his
wife, none knows, and Warren him
self has never talked of the crime,
since he confessed and pleaded guilty
at the time of his arrest.
warren's plea of guilty and his at
torneys earnest plea for second de-
gree sentence saved his life and he
was sentenced to prison for life on the
day on which notable meeting was
| held in Hartford of famous Connecti-
cut patriots. under a call ito save the
Union" The war feeling was just
then beginning to become factor In
national politics. but Warren was tax
en- to Wethesfield before the war COM
menced. and, what has happened In the
fifty wears that have elapsed since that
time. he knows of only indirectly ana
from what he has been permitted TO
read.
IL speaks well for the methods en-
ployed at the State prison that the
nfty-year inmate shows little evidence
of failing powers, either mental or
physical. Though II, he looks more
| like a man of As or perhaps so years.
He is alert mentally and takes an ac-
tive interest i'm all that goes on about
him. In recent years he has been
allowed considerable freedom In the
institution, though never permitted 20
leave the prison grounds.
If the aged lifer Is released through
| the action Of the board OF pardons
next week he will be well taken care
of during his remaining years by his
two younger brothers and other men,
bers of his family all people OF excel
lent standing 1t is understood that
the application for a pardon has peen
indorsed by many persons of promin-
ence who have interested themselves
in his case.