White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1929-02-01
SLAYER WHO FEARED
KISS is GIVEN LIFE
Youth Is Sent to Prison for
Killing Girl.

New YOrk.-The seventeen ear-Old
| murderer, who was afraid of kiss,
has been sentenced to prison for life.
He is Vincent t. Rice, Staten Island
boy, and he slew his fifteen-year-old
sweetheart, Alice Joost, when she
asked him for kiss.
Having heard two alienists express
their opinion that the boys act was
committed under the influence of an
impulsive terror of intimacy with girls
probably the effect of a too intensive
religious training on backward mind
and an undeveloped sexual Instinct
Justice Selah B. Strong allowed the
boy to change his plea from not guilty
to guilty of murder in the second de-
gree.
The opinion Of these two mental ex-
perts corroborated the statement Rice
had made in his signed confession,
that the murder was unprecedented,
an act born of his exaggerated horror
of kiss which he said Alice Joost
offered to give him.
Breaks Down and Weeps.
Rice, d PALE good-looking boy neatly
dressed In a brown suit and maroon
tie, who had sat stolidly chewing gum
and leaning on his hand during the
taking Of testimony, showed his first
sign of emotion when, after the court
room had been cleared, he suddenly
began to weep on his brothers arm.
After Medical Examiner. George
Mord had described the condition in
which he found the body of Miss Joost
the night of November 2, Mrs. Lucille
Joost, mother of the dead girl, a
white-haired woman all in black, calm
ly told how, when she returned to her
home that evening, she found her
daughters body across the bed in her
room, with cash on her forehead
and piece of electric light wire
tightly twisted around her throat.
Then Rice's confession, signed the
day after the murder, was read. In it
Rice told of his afternoon with Alice
in the Joost home, how they sang and
played the piano, how, at dusk, Alice
tried to kiss him, and asked him to
"be good SPORT; how her actions
and words filled him with uncontrol-
able anger, how he struck her down
and then, overcome with fear, stran-
gled her with wire.
Afraid of Kiss.
Then came the scientific description
Of Rice as young man deeply re-
pressed sexually, afraid of girls, afraid
that to kiss them might cause him Sc
rious physical harm, who reacted with
terrible violence when girl offered
him a caress.
DIR. George FL. Kirby, an alienist of
I'LL Park avenue, engaged by the
boys family, was called to the stand.
He had examined Rice. in Jail, he
said, and found him constitutionally
inferior.
do you think" asked the district
attorney, that this murder was pre-
meditated?"
mo, in my opinion, it was not"
Doctor Kirby testified. Il look upon
bis whole act as impulsive and unpre-
meditated."
Q.-How did the defendant explain
his act to you? Ale said he had
struck the deceased in order to pro-
tect his honor and preserve his health.
Q.-How would you describe the
defendants life? Alt was one of
intense repression. attribute this
to his religious training and the home
influence.
Doctor Kirby went on to explain
that Rice had had epileptic fits from
the age of one to four, and that these
had undoubtedly resulted in his being
mentally and sexualy retarded. Some
where, he said, the boy had acquired
real fear of intimacy with girls.
which would explain his adherence.
when, If his confession was truthful.
the girl attempted to kiss him.