The Mena weekly star., 1913-07-31
ARKANSAN SUES MISSOURI DOCTOR
Wants Sl5O,000-AccuseS s. Grover Burnett of Kansas City of Keeping His Prisoner
 for Five Years.

Kansas City, July 27.-Emmett T. Hepburn of Arkansas, who was con- fined for upwards of five years in the sanitarium of Dr. $. Grover Burnett in this city, sued Dr. Bur nett and the Burnett Private Sani- tarium Company yesterday in the Circuit court for $l5O,OOO damages.
 Hepburn was a rich man of Si- loam Springs, Ark, when he was placed in Dr. Burnetts sanitarium at Thirty-tist street and Euclid avenue, April 20, 1907. He was not sent there through the process of any court. No jury or committee of physicians had ever declared him of unsound mind. No inquiry of any kind had ever been made into his sanity He was brought to the sanitarium by C. c. Hungate, for mer deputy sheriff of Benton coun- ty, Arkansas. Hepburn believed he was going to a hotel until key was turned in the lock of his door.
 When Hepburn was placed in the sanitarium he had property in Ar kansas worth $i50,000 In the five years and more he was confined the greater part of this property was converted to use by his wife, he all leges, and he has brought suit in Arkansas to divorce his wife and recover this property.
 Hepburn alleges that in all the years he was kept a prisoner against his will he was trying to communicate with friends outside who would release him. and finally he promised a patient who was de- parting from the place $500 if he would let J. E. Bratt, a former resi- dent of Sloan Springs, know that he was confined there. Mir. Bratt started the investigation which end ed in the release of Hepburn last January on a writ of habeas cor pus.
 Arkansas Jury Called Him Sane.
 In all the time he was in the sanitarium Hepburn was not visited by his wife and he did not hear from her directly. She paid Dr. Burnett Sl5O a month for keeping him there. he alleges, and the total of this sum was Sl0,500, all of his own money, which his wife used under the pretense, he alleges, that she was his guardian, when, in fact, she had never been appointed his guardian.
 Since his release from Burnett's sanitarium Hepburn has been de- clared sane by a jury in Arkansas, He is 70 years old.
 X-Rays Destroyed an Eye and Ear?
 In his suit filed yesterday, Hep burn says that when he was forci- bly, taken and confined in the sani- tarium he was in good health and weighed 175 pounds, and had not been sick for 50 years. But he was denied liberty and the necessaries of life. the food was not fit to eat, and after he had been there two years he was forced to take drugs and medicines that injured his health, he alleges. He also alleges he was compelled 10 submit to K ray treatments which destroyed an eye and an ear. This was his con- dition, he alleges, when he was re- leased from the sanitarium by a writ of habeas corput sworn out by his friends.
 Hepburn alleges that while in the sanitarium he was compelled to stay in a small room with insane patients. Hepburn is living with nephew in Oklahoma.
 The attention of Kansas City was first called generally 10 the Bur nett sanitarium by the burning to death of two women patients there February 8. last.