The daily Alaskan., 1913-10-16
STRANGE MURDER CASE
 ON TRIAL IN RUSSIA

Kieff, Oct. 16-After lying in jail for two years and half, Mendel Bells was placed on trial yesterday lin the criminal section of the Kieff district court for ritual murder" On account of the extraordinary in terest the case has attracted thru out Europe, the courtroom was packed by a cosmopolitan throng when Judge Boldyreff and his as
 sociates mounted the bench and be
 gan the .impanelIing of jury. The regular yenire for the court term from which the jury was chosen con
 sisted of four men with university
 education, fourteen with an inter
 mediate or elementary education'
 fifteen who have not attended any
 school, but who have received some domestic education, and three who Iare quite illiterate. More than 200 newspapermen, from various coun- tries. had previously applied for
 seats, but so great was the demand
 made by the friends of both local
 and St. Petersburg officials that
 many of the correspondents had to stand in the back of the room, and
 some, although holding tickets, fail ed altogether of admission. Con-
 spicuous among the reporters was a
 personal representative of M. Stcheg lovitoff, Minister of Justice, who had been instructed to wire q run
 ming detail account of the proceed
 ings to his chief in St. Petersburg. From the inception of the case the
 Ministry of Justice had carefully directed the activities of the local
 prosecutors, Brandorf and Chap linsky, and it w8 with the full ap- provaI of the central government that the charge of ritual murder was made in the original indictment Ever since the morning of April 1, 1911, when the mutilated body of Andrei Yuschinsky, a F year old Christian boy, was found in an aban doned brick-yard just outside Kieff, the prosecution has been endeayor- ing to establish the theory that he was slain in accordance with an al- Ieged Jewish rite prescribed by the Talmud, so that his blood might be used in making passover bread. For centuries the ignorant and supersti-
 tious Jew-baiters of Russia have clung to the belief that this rite
 is regularly practiced by the Jew
 ish race, and the government has
 apparently done all it could to fos-
 ter this idea. NJ. Krassavsky, chief
 of the Kieff detective department,
 was actually instructed to proceed
 on the theory that the crime was
 tho work of Jews, although the on-
 ly possible preteXt for the ritual '
 charge was that the boys body bore
 AZ stab wounds. According to cur
 rent superstitions the ritual mur-
 der' is accomplished by 45 wounds.
 He could obtain absolutely no evi-
 dence- along the required lines, but
 on the contrary believed he had trac
 ed the murder to a gIug of thieves
 to which neighbcrs of the boys family belonged and wEc were , known to be fearful that Yuschin- sky would betray them to the au- thorities. He secured evidence that ] one of the thieves was seen with a chisel shortly before the murder and that this same implement, coV- cred with blood, was found by two boys near the brick-kiln afterwards The boys, upon orders from the thief, threw it into a sewer.
 When Krassaysky made his first report to his superiors he was stern- ly reprimanded. Latc' he was prac- tically forced by them 10 arrest Men , del Bells, Jew, 40 years of age, foreman of the briCkyard, in whose ; room one of the thieves gang said
 he had found some of the boys
 clothing. On producing further evi-
 dence indicating the guilt of the
 thieves, and the innocence of Bell l is, Krassavsky was dismissed from office. When a fresh investigation
 was made under the direction of his
 successor MT. NIistchouk, he and
 his assistants quickly came to the
 conclusion that the ritual murder
 theory was fantastically untrue and
 so reported to the authorities. The
 result was not only the dismissal of Mistchouk and two of his men but
 their arrest on charges of 'fabrica- ting documents favorable to the Jews" They were acquitted, but
 the Crown appealed, with the result
 that the verdict was reversed and
 they were convicted and sentenced
 to a years hard labor each.
 ETa.