The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1915-07-22

Casimir Areiszewski, one time resi-
dent of Kenosha and Russian, stag
gered into the police station at Buffalo,
New York, late Sunday night and adj
mitted to the police there that he was
the "axman' wanted at Blue Island,
Ill, for the murder of Jacob Mislich,
Mary Mislich, his wife, Mrs. Margaret
Mansfield, their daughter, and Marie
Mansfield, the granddaughter, who
were killed in their home on the night
of July 5th of last year. Since the
killing Chicago detectives had made
periodic trips to Kenosha seeking the
accused man. He is known to have
formerly resided on Milwaukee avenue
at Russian boarding house and it is
claimed that he was to have married
a Kenosha woman on the day after the
crime was committed. This woman
disappeared from Kenosha few days
after the murder of the members of
the Mislich family and she has never
been seen since. Areiszewski had left
Kenosha only a short time before he
went to Blue Island, ILL.,, where he had
been employed on the Mislich farm.
The murder was one of the most hor~
rible ever committed in this section
of the country.
The four people were Stained as they
lay asleep in their home, dingy, smoke
begrimed cottage at 106 Broadway.
Blue Island. The murderer hacked
their bodies with heavy AK.
The madness Of the crime became
evident when it was found that one
blow did not Stake the murderer s
thirst for blood. Each of the bodies,
except that of the baby, showed where
the AK had fallen two and three times.
An open window, a broken door
leading to the bedroom, the blood
stained ak and the hacked bodies of
The victims were the only clews.
The bodies were bound by son of
the aged couple, Jacob Mislich, whose
knock on the back door the morning
following the crime brought no ans
wer. Inside a trail of blood across
the floor led him to the bodies Of his
mOJn6T, SlSLSr duQ niece.
Mortified, the son rushed from the
room and hurried upstairs to call his
father. He found the body of the
old man lying in his bed-mutilated
almost beyond recognition.
The son ran screaming from the
house. Babbling in a frenzy, which
weeks later still threatened to unseat
his mind, he told his discovery to
Mrs. Rosa Fullerton, who lived next
door to the Mislich home.
This was the crime which Areiszew-
~ki confessed in Buffalo.
Areiszewski, who had been a. board
err at the Mislich home, could not be
found after the tragedy. Chicago was
searched from end to end, but no trace
of the missing man was found.
He already had begun his fight
from city to city-memory of his crime
haunting his every movement, awake
and asleep, day in and day out, week
after week and month after month
81 became wanderer,'' he told the
police In the eastern city. ct work
ed under an assumed name in scores
of cities In the middle west. But those
dead bodies rose up before me. A
dog barked when did it. have
heard it bark every night for a year.
I shrieked in terror when I awoke at
night; often I sobbed aloud. I don It
know how reached Buffalo. I work
ed in brick yards and on railroads near
Battle Creek, at Elkhart, Indianapolis
and at Cleveland. That is all L re-
member. Something in my mind
snapped that night the bloodwet ak
slipped from my hands"
The confessed murderer is a Russian
brickmaker, and was known to the DO
lice as weak minded, but "harmless. -
Four months after the murders at
Blue Island it was believed that
Areiszewski could be proved guilty,
and might also be found to be the
mad ak murderer responsible for
thirty similar crimes. This belief lat
or was abandoned
Areiszewski's apprehension clears
up what the Chicago police regard as
the most brutal in the crime annals
of Chicago.