Arizona republican., 1915-10-08
MRS. bL|GHTOE
 IN THE T0LS
Wife of Former Arizona Newspaper Man Figures i'll Sensational Affair in New York Involving Some Sharp Practice

saturday or Mrs. lH3 Miller blTG new turn has been given to tn, eventful career of the Blightons. By the Blightons is meant not only Mrs .Blighton, but Frank Harris Blighton her husband, well known in Arizona as newspaper man and at one time | editor and proprietor of a sociaIistiC | paper; The Veiee Of the People, l published for d time in this city ant ! afterwards in Tucson. After a mos 1 stormy career in Arizona, during which Blighton was several times arrested for libel, he left for the east
 and is now supposed to be acting as | correspondent somewhere in the Flu l ropean war field.
 Mrs. Blighton is quite well known 1 here, having for some time been the l guest of a well known Phoenix family i Of her arrest the New York Herald 1 of Sunday last had this to say: Twenty thousand dollars was the estimate in the Detective Bureau al Police Headquarters yesterday of the
 takings within the last six weeks of Mrs. Ida Miller Blighton, forty two years old, wife of a successful au thor, who was arrested here yester-
 day afternoon. Her finger prints, the
 police officials said, correspond with
 those of Ida Miller arrested in San Francisco a few years ago on a charge
 of grand larceny and described in the
 police report from that city as a
 ''bunco steerer."
 Miss Betty Bellairs, a well known
 leading woman of the films, has re-
 ported the loss of $600O in her com
 plaint to the police concerning Mrs.
 Blighton. Another woman has made a complaint. declaring that she was swindled out of $S000, and still an other named 5000 as her loss. The complaints still were arriving last evening at Police Headquarters.
 Introduction to the women who have accused her since was obtained by Mrs. Blighton in the latter weeks Of the summer, which she spent at a fashionable suburban hotel resort in Westchester county. She is Cf dis tinguished appearance, slender, with dark hair and complexion and always very smartIy gowned. The impression she created up hotel clerks ana others she met in calling upon the women who declare she robbed them was most favorable and they pro- fessed great astonishment at her ar rest
 Bernard McConville, Headquarters detective. picked up Mrs. Blighton at Fifth avenue and Fiftieth street, recog- n nizing in the woman passing him on the street a resemblance to the photograph he carried in his pocket. Miss Bellalre with a kodak made the photograph when she was in Westchester country a few weeks ago. She informed the police when she made complaint that Mrs. Blighton had robbed her, that during their stay in the exclusive coun- try hotel she had taken this snapshot without the knowledge of Mrs. Bligh- ton. It was enlarged at police head quarters when the woman was sought at her boarding place, No. 69 Madison avenue It was found she had hurried y left there a week ago. Thus the pho- tograph was the only clew left to the police.
 First of the complaints to be filed lgainst Mrs. Blighton was that of Mrs. M l.. Simons, wife of a captain in the British army, who is an expert stenog- "a pher and accountant. Mrs. Simons, In American girl, and very pretty, lives n No 22 West Thirtieth street, where she has a small suite above business houses. She had saved up $500 which she was about to use for the expense ,f joining her husband behind the fir ng line in Flanders.
 While the activities of Mrs. Blighton with the cash of some of her new friends. as they have alleged, extended pver a period of several weeks, the i business education of Mrs. Simons anne more rapidly to her aid. Fol, sev eral years she was a highly paid audi | or in the offices of Flint & Co. in the Wall street district and she has been 1 in a similar capacity in the | Broadway section for several months.
 q first met Mrs. BlightOn about ten l lays ago in the home of a mutual 1 riend in West Forty-fifth street." Mrs. | Simmons told Lieutenant McConville, | ana she made friends with me at once. 1 She exhibited interest in my husband | IS e soldier of the allies and was so | dad that I was going to try to be with | Jim. Soon afterward she told me that |
 might get all the money l needed to l 70 to joir my husband and to live near | Jim immediately if I only had some | money to invest in the stocks, on which | he had good tips
 They are called the "war babies"
 
 III persons should be lucky with them. | She told me she was sorry she had not l net me several weeks earlier, for she | lad been informed when Bethlehem | Steel was below par that it was going | O have a great advance, and showed | ne in the newspapers that it then was | elling above $500 a share
 Mrs. Blighton also confided to me l hat she was a bit of an astrologer in | n amateurish way, and insisted upon | eading my horoscope. As she told it. in the stars was in my favor l l speculated in order to join my hus- and. I had about $500 saved and she finally induced me to invest S10O in Ter latest tip. That was Baldwin To- omotive stock, and really it did jump n value very fast soon after had giv- n Mrs. Blighton s1OO to buy shares in for me.
 She came back then beaming and old me it was a shame to waste such n opportunity, that the stars had been ight, and that she had a profit of $70O | ready on the S1O0 investment for me