Douglas daily dispatch., 1928-01-01


Cleopatra type where it was mot
wisely but too well'' another case, in
j fact, where premature motherhood in
i duced the crime and the performer
was man of the stage who did not
want his career blighted by family
He also paid the penalty that such
! crimes merit.
Chester Jordan and his wife resided
! in Somerville, Mass. They were usually
i regarded as a peaceful and quiet pair
and their intimate friends did not
know of their troubles They occupied
] a flat over another family and they
we're privileged to use portions of the
basement in common. Jordan went
away from the home late one Satur-
day afternoon, in one of the old type
handsome cabs and took with him a
trunk The driver was one, Cronin,
an old-tine cabby who had seen many
things that a cabby was supposed to
wink at and did. But when Cronin
j was ordered to drive to Rowe'S wharf
from whence the steamers sailed each
afternoon around Cape Cod for New
York, there developed something that
Cronin could not forget and which
caused one of the most sensational
, murder cases ever known in Boston.
Cab Driver As Detective
When the cab got to the wharf, the
steamship Harvard, now plying be-
/ tween San Francisco and San Diego,
had gotten away from the dock about
100 feet and Jordan could not go out.
So he ordered the trunk put back on
the cab and he drove to Hancock street
just west of the state capitol While
the trunk was standing on the side
walk at the wharf, there dripped
through it a darkish color fluid that
made Cronin suspicious When he de-
! livered his fare he discovered there
was other evidences of similar kind on
his\ cab and he felt certain it was
blood So he drove thence to the
Scollay Square station of the Boston
/ police department and called out
| friend he knew on the force and
showed him what he had found. The
officer at once got others and they
went Immediately to the room occu-
pied by Jordan, but he had gone away.
So they stationed an officer there and
when he returned they took him into
custody and took the trunk.
| MutiIated Torso in Trunk
| In the trunk they found portions of
Mrs Jordan's body, but not as much
as Perry Parker found of his daugh-
! ter when she was brought to him. The
i head and the limbs were missing.
They never did find them for Jordan
confessed that he had severed them
after he killed her and had burned
them and all her garments and the
IrVNoc M TXyI1n a T10I1rHnrnd hnr
in the furnace of the building where
they lived. Investigation dis close d
strands of hair that were identified
as those from the, head of the dead
woman, and there were plenty of evi-
dences of burnt bone in the ash. ItI
| took several years to overcome Jor-
dams appeals for escaping the electric
chair, but he finally paid the penalty
in the state prison in Cambridge, Mass.
/ There was the case of Theodore
! Durant of San Francisco, a brother of
! the late Isadora Duncan, dancer, who
was killed last September in Paris in
an automobile accident. Durant killed
two girls and secreted their bodies I'M
! a tower of church and later resortedl
| to all sorts of fiendish acts in con-
nection with his victims.
Woman Conducts Murder Farm
/ In the murder farm at Laporte, the
woman who performed the crimes lured
men seeking matrinony by advertising
and then took them to the farm to
kill them after securing their cash, or
in the case of at least one of them,
killed him in Chicago and then took
the body there. 1t was in evidence
! that when the corpse did not fit the
niche in the cellar floor, it was not
/ the elegant but the effective method
used by the woman to chop the body
according to the need.
! There was a sausage maker by the
name of Mueller in Chicago who was
found guilty of murder who, after kill
ing his victims, carved them up, placed
! them in the bathtub, and then used
quicklime to destroy the bodies.
Another outstanding case is that of
man in Illinois who killed his wife,
dismembered her body, buried portions
of it in different places and placed the
head in block of cement work that
he was installing on the premises.
When he was caught months after
ward, the cement was broken open and
the head of the horror victim found,
! just as the killer had promised.
J Mass Psychology Involved
So the Hickman case, appalling and
Irevolting as it is in all the horrible
! details, is far from an isolated type of
fiendish nature in a human form.
The reaction of the people to the first
!, report of it seems to have been some,
/ what more acute than to many and
wider in it's scope. One man in Doug
las talking of that phase of the case
remarked that it appeared to have a.
sort of mass psychology explanation,
back of it and that the peculiar factor
in the mass psychology was that it
lacked stability of purpose. Had it
been otherwise, he pointed out, there
4 would have been far more difficulty
in landing Hickman in the jail when
he was returned to Los Angeles.
ION that point, it would have been
!! interesting" remarked the observer,
"to have had this case happen say in
one of the southern states where,
I lynchings have been common. What
would have been the result in that.
setting, Wonder?" And then, as if to-
answer his own question, he contin-
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