The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1916-05-26
limited Press Dispatch.1

New York, May 22.-With the
opening of the trial Of young DR.. Ar
thur Warren Waite here today on
the charge of poisoning his million
aire parentsi law, Mr.. and Mrs.
John e. Peck of Grand Rapids, Mich,
there begins to pour into the dry
records of the New York supreme
court one of the most sensational and
astounding stories of fortune hunt
ing, illicit love, murder, intrigue and
deception that has ever been dis
closed, as the alleged record of one
man.
Waites formal plea was mot
guilty." but he may change it to-
day.
The state will attempt to prove that
the slender, nattily attired, smiling
youth who sits quietly before long
table in this drab and silent court
room, deliberately wooed and mar
ried Clara Peck with the precon-
ceived intention of numbering her,
her father and mother and any other
persons it might be necessary to MUIR
der in order that he might get pos
session of the Peck millions
The state will introduce evidence
to prove that Waite, married to Clara
Peck and having Mrs. Elizabeth
Horton as his Studio companion" in
a big New York hotel, actually did
get Mr. and Mrs Peck to New York
on a visit and murder them by pOis-
oning them with arsenic; that he got
his wife to will her estate to him and
was planning her murder as the third
of the series in his alleged scheme
to get the Peck millions; and that
after numbering his mother-in-law and
engineering the cremation of her
body to prevent the discovery of the
cause of her death, he bribed New
York undertaken with $4,000, ($7,S00
of this amount was found where the
undertaken told the police he hid it,,
to swear that arsenic was used in the
fluid employed in the embalming Of
his father-in-law body.
Wife Turned Against Him.
With his wife turned against him
and prosecuting her suit for di-
vorce; and Margaret Horton, his
Studio companion" fresh from the
triumphs of vaudeville engagement
won as result of the publicity she
gained from her association with him,
Waite faces his fight against the
electric chair without the support
either of the woman he married or
the woman he squandered his mon
ey on.
While he lay on a cot in Bellevue
hospital, recovering from the effects
of poisons he had taken in an at
tempt to die after the poisoning of
his father-in-law was discovered,
Waite told several stories of how it
had all happened.
Chief among these was the fable of
"The Man From Egypt"
This mysterious and sinister spirit,
Waite is said to have assured District
Attorney Swami, was with him night
and day, goading him on to evil deeds.
Nameless and intangible and pos
sessed of the fiendish resourcefulness
of ten thousand devils, The Man
From Egypt never has been found :.
Nor is he expected to be.
Another story Judge Swami re-
ported as having been told him by
Waite was that his father-in-la was
tired of living and asked him to get
the arsenic for him so he could die.
1t was only few days after the
death of Peck at the Waite apart
ments on Riverside drive that the
first hint came to the authorities
here and in Grand Rapids that all was
not as it should be.
The Mysterious Telegram.
This hint took the form of mys-
terious telegram from tx. Adams" in
New York to the authorities in Grand
Rapids, advising an investigation be-
fore Mr.. Peck's body was inferred.
It has since developed that when
Waite saw this in the papers, he
went to Margaret Horton at the
school of languages where they first
met and, according to Mrs. Horton,
asked her to buy him certain
sleeping powders" which she says
she did
Mrs. Horton, who at once began
giving out columns and columns OF
interviews, insisted that the studio
she shared with Waite in the hotel was
used only as studio, that Waite
never was anything more than friend
ly with her and that they had to
register under an assumed name, as
man and wife, to get the suite.
Harry Horton, husband of The
Woman of Mystery, at first declared
that Margaret was so utterly inno-
cent of the ways of the world and
so incapable of any wrong that ne
felt her association with Waite was
to be entirely condoned.
Horton said his wife was IAN inno-
cent dove among flock of crows"
Since then, however, Horton has
been credited with the statement
that he knew his wife was getting
money from someone, but that he
didn't know who and he didn't like
TO put a detective on her trail.
Mrs. Dorothy van Palmenberg, a
a friend of the Horizons who staunch-
, ly supported Mrs. Horizons story al
first, later quarreled with her and
gave out long interview in which
411l hou, roor fbn Horizons wore