The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-08-12
Often Reprieved, Farmland Makes Brief Comment on News That Means His Freedom - Later Breaks Down and Weeps While Death House Inmates Dance For Joy With Dummies.

OOllVlCG 1S IN 01l1Ou C1o x4SoAe1l Slayer By King, Itinerant
 Peddler- Says O'Connel]
 Fired Shots As They
 Robbed Farmer-Wom
 Who Saved Steilow Iden-
 tifies King as Fugitive. Ossining, N. Y.. Aug. 12-News tha the confession of another man would prove the innocence of Charles r Stielow, four times rescued from the electric chair by legal stays, the last time when he had said his final pray CTS and was within twenty-six min- utes of being led to death, was taken to the condemned man in Sing Sing at 10 o'clock yesterday morning by Warden Osborne and Spencer Miller the Warden's deputy and secretary. It was Spencer Miller who, after months of observation of the man, believed StieIow's statement that he was innocent when the man was for the first time-last April-within a
 
 Ter that got him his first stay by tele- phoning his belief to influential men and women in New York City that Stielow was not the criminal in the case.
 Miller, a tall, we'll looking, ruddy faced, ruddy haired young man, went to Stielow's cell, and he took care to smile that he might let the death Inmate know that he was the bearer of good news.
 Strives Not to Show His Emotion
 This is the actual conversation that occurred. Miller admits he was high ly stirred and that he talked in a manner to hold back his own emo- tions-in a way that he didn't expect Stielow to see the humor of. He said: "Stielow, you might be interested to know that Irving King has confess ed"
 stielow peered out of his cell door and said heavily:
 "He did?'
 "Yes,. he did," said Miller, and add ed that apparently he was more nov ed than the man to which this news meant life. ti
 Stielow-to understand a man talk ing a message with such stolidity, the man must be described. He was brought to this country from Ger many when he was two years old. He is now thirty-seven. His parents set tied near Buffalo-in the farmlands forty miles south of the scene of his alleged crime. He went few seasons to school-not after he was eight oIl hot I c1o on farms.
 Now he is big man physically. He has big hands. big feet. His many him a big paunch. Hands formerly cell to this toiler of the open must be torture every hour. He had no way of diversion. Reading was out of his knowledge. One thing that is granted as saving his sanity was the work he put in learning how to sign his name-laboriously copying it as a small boy with artistic aspirations tries to copy drawing.
 When the death house prisoners were admitted into the yard daily for their exercises he always went along. But he seldom tried to pay the games they played-quoits and the like. He hasn't the sense to play them-to do anything even move about clumsily.
 "That's Fine" He Repeats
 So when MT. Miller took the big news to this big man whose mind is that of a child he just wagged his head and said:
 "Thats-that's fine"
 But he did not, realize the fullness of the information. He stared at Warden Osborne and at Spencer Mill Ter and wagged his head and repeat ed:
 That's fine"
 And then, to the astonishment of the two men who with mods and smiles were offering him the assur- ance that he was not to die, he wept The first time he actually bawled- as a big baby might. He smothered that, however, and choked while his eyes went on dropping tears.
 He put out his big right hand the bars to Miller
 ''T took it quickly enough" MT. Miller told reporter last night "Yet there wasn't any fervor in his hand. Did you ever have big Newfound- land dog gratefully paw you for feed ing him a scrap? We'll, that's how the big fellow put out his hand"
 Every other prisoner in the death house was on his toes, face straight ing against the bars when this news was being given Stielow.- They did not cheer. Three of them-utterly hopeless themselves-drew back and flung themselves on their cot. The others with little hope from the courts left to them put their arms the bars and waved them to- ward Stielow's cell.
 Dance With Dummy Partners.
 But a little while afterward came the celebration. A photograph was turned on in the death house. It played a two-step. Most of the men can dance. And they have manufac- tured partners-dummies. They make them out of pillows and towels and other scraps of linen, stuffing these things into sweaters and an odd pair of trousers, and when the photograph Is turned on for dance music the men who are about to die dance and laugh loudly, perhaps a little frantically.
 So they danced yesterday, but in a new mood, directing all the cavortings to the attention of Stielow. He was never one of those that dance. He was too dull, too inert in his cage to fashion a dummy. And his feet were