Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-10-11
MURDER CLUES
TANGLED AS 3
ARE ARRESTED
Girl and Two Boys Now
Detained by Investiga-
tors in Hall Case.
Stories of Trio Differ in
Retelling; Young Wo-
man Held Wayward.

New Brunswick, Y. j., Oct. 10.-(By
The Associated Press. Prison bars
closed Tuesday night on a third i'm
portant figure in the Hall-Mills muir
der mystery, but the incarceration, in
stead of helping to clear the wierd
tangle of clues and counter clues,
served only to emphasize the Difficult
ties authorities are encountering in
their efforts to check up the evidence
on which 19-year-old Clifford Hayes
stands accused of the double Staying.
The third to go to Jail was Pearl
BANNER, the 15-yearol girl, whom
Raymond Schneider says. Hayes
thought he was Staying with her father,
when, according to Schneider's story,
Hayes fired four bullets into the bodies
of the Rev. Edward Wheeler Hall and
Mrs. Eleanor Reinhardt Mills on the
night fo September IA, on the deserted
Phillips farm. Schneider is held as
material witness.
Held AS lncorrigibIe
Pearl was not officially jailed in
connection with the Hall-Mills case.
The charge against her-whlch she
calmly admitted-was incOrrigibilty
Prosecutor Stricker, of Middlesex
county. who has been active in the
investigation of the Hall-Mils easel
appeared personally against her
County Judge DAILY, before whom the
hearing was held, departed from the
rule of secrecy in Juvenile cases and
threw his court open, because, he de-
clared. the people "have a right to
know why she is being put in Jail"
At the end of the hearing, after she
had testified to intimacy with Schnei-
der and her father, she was officially
committed for a week pending a de-
cision on the incorrigibility charge. Tn
officially it was said that she was
being given a chance to think over
the conflicting stories she has told.
An additional reason for her incarcera-
ton was said to be the fact that she
was too difficult to find when she was
wanted for questioning. Nicholas
Bahmer later was arrested as a result
of the charges preferred by his daugh
ter and was held in $4,000 bail, fol-
lowing his arraignment.
Pearl Knows More7
Pearl. who was with Schneider when
the bodies of Mr.. Hall and Mrs. Mills
were found two days after the MUIR
ders, on more than one occasion, has
given newspaper men working on the
case reason to believe she knew more
than she was telling. incidentally, she
has turned against Schneider, once
admittedly her sweetheart, and has
sought to convey the impression that
he knew more about the murders than
Hayes, whom he accused of the crime.
Schneider, it was disclosed, told four
different stories about his knowledge
of the slayings before he reached the
story of Hayes commission of the
crime on which the authorities acted.
After he had been trapped in pre-
varications in the first hour, said a
state trooper who was present
throughout the long examination,
Schneider would say:
'Well, let's go back and start all
over again. I'll tell the truth this
time" His final story still fails to
harmonize with facts about the murder,
brought out from other sources, nota- |
bly, his insistence that neither Hayes
nor he had cut Mrs. Mills throat after
the shooting, although an autopsy |
showed the head had been almost
severed.
Tales Vary Widely
There are almost as broad dis
crepancies in his story of his where
abouts on the night of the murders as |
that told by Pearl BANNER. Schneider !
said he was with Pearl for several |
hours that night, before he saw Pearl
going out with her father and started |
trailing the pair with Hayes.
Pearl first said he was with her
until about 8 o'clock. Then she said |
he was not with her at all. Detectives
gay they have practically established |
that he was not with her and they
are trying to check up on his move
ments between s and II o'clock, the
period in which the murders are known
to have been committed.
Schneider said it was ab0 1t o'clock
when Hayes shot the minister and the
choir singer, 'Dy mistake" All other
witnesses have agreed that the screams
and shots which wrote TIE finish to
She Hall Mills romance were heard
about 1880 o'clock.
Despite these and many other ap-
parent conflicts in his story, Prosecu-
lCof,rinued on Page TenA