Los Angeles herald., 1910-09-23
.ALIENISTS REPORT
CHARLTON INSANE
Physicians Declare Wife Slayer
Victim of Constitutional
InferiOrity
JUDGE REFUSES STATEMENT
Examiners Say Crime Committed
During a Brain Explosion;
Recommend Asylum
REFUSES STATEMENT
[Associated Pressl

NEW YORK, Sept. 22.-The report of
the alienists who examined Porter
Charlton, self-confessed murderer of
his wife at Lake Como, italy, last
June, has been made public at Jersey
City, where Charlton is confined.
Judge Blair of the Hudson county
court declined yesterday to receive the
report, on the ground that he had no
jurisdiction as a committing court to
consider such q plea.
The alienists who examined the pris-
oner are DIR. Allan McLane Hamilton,
DR.. Edward d. Fisher and DR.. w. j.
Arklitz.
They declare that Charlton is "of de-
praved mental organization" and is a
victim of what is known to students
of mental diseases as constitutional in
feriority. The alienists investigated the
personal antecedents of the prisoner
and found that his grandfather was a
paranoiac, that a first cousin was an
epileptic, and that a maternal uncle
"was a man of stubborn and brutal ma
ture and eccentric, immoral and Of
vagabond tendencies"
SLEPT BESIDE BODY
A younger brother accidentally shot
and killed a playmate, but showed no
subsequent remorse. On one occasion
Charlton raised chair to strike his
mother, and on another vented his blind
rage on horse.
"He was fanciful, wrote verse, and
was delicate and to a degree sentimen-
tal," the report finds.
Almost from the time Of meeting with
his wife, the report states, Charlton
underwent change. "He became aloof
Indifferent and at times insolent. On
the day Of the murder it appears that
Charlton kept his temper up to GER
tain point, when suddenly he seized a
mallet. After the killing he immedi-
ately lay down near the body and slept
until the next morning. He does not
seem to have been agitated or worried.
Placing the corpse in an empty trunk,
he slept most of the day in their bed
room, near the trunk, and afterward
left the place. He made no serious at
tempt to destroy the evidence of his
crime. His attempts at conceal1ng his
identity were silly.
when first seen at the Jail he was
very emotional. His facial muscles
were the seat of jerky tremors and his
actions were exceedingly nervous.
There were also coarser tremors of his
hands and tongue. When reference
was made to the dead woman, his face
contracted in spasms, his eyepalls pc
ing drawn upward so that only the
whites were observed. There is no
doubt that he has had hallucinatory
visions Of the dead woman at various
times.
MENACE TO SOCIETY
"He feels no remorse or fear of the
law, nor does he sem to be alive to the
danger of his position. All his discus
sions of 1t are abstract, and ne cannot
he aroused to the Nervousness of what
he has done.
'His physical condition reveals little
or nothing but hysterical stigma. HIS
color sense is CONSTRUCTED. His eyes are
deep and reflex, and are exaggerated.
ut is our opinion that he is of un-
sound mind and liable to attacks OF
impulsive violence, and that his moral
sense is nathologically depraved. The
murder of June and his subsequent
behavior incline us to think that he
suffered from an exhaustive psychosls'
due to excesses, and in way the ma
ture of the explosion was preceded by
AN aura. His long sleep by the side OF