New York Murder Mystery

recently there ocurred a murder in New York which in some of its features bears a resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe's famous story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

Mrs. Kate Voepel occupied a flat with her seventeen-year-old son in Christopher street. She kept a newsstand, at which her son assisted. At 6 o'lock Feb. 14 the son left the house to open the stand, his mother promising to relieve him two hours later. At Í0 o'clock his mother not yet appearing, young Voepel went home. Immediately after entering the house he rushed out again pale with terror and with his hands covered with blood. A neighbor took him to the police station, and the officers of the law went to the house.

They found that Mrs. Voepel had been stabbed seventeen times, some of the wounds reaching her heart and other vital organs. The wounds were of a terrible character and must have been inflicted with great force.

The brutal nature of the wounds was the first point in the striking similarity of this case to "The Murders In the Rue Morgue" of Poe. The wounds on Mrs. Voepel seemed to have been indicted by a creature filled with a brute rage to mangle rather than a sane human being with a mere desire to kill.

Two objects were found which might serve as a clew to the murderer. In her stiffened left hand the dead woman clutched a man's ready made black satin four-in-hand necktie, apparently snatched from the murderer. It had been bought at a nearby store. On the floor was a peculiar button, which seemed to have been torn from his clothing. Subsequently some hairs of a man's head were discovered sticking to the necktie. They have been examined microscopically. It may be recalled that the dead Mme. L'Espanaye in Poe's story clutched some hair in her hand, which proved to be that of an ape.

Here it is desirable to recall the leading features of that famous masterpiece of mystery and horror and detective fiction. Old Mme. L'Espanaye and her daughter, living on the fourth story of their house in the Rue Morgue in Paris, were murdered mysteriously. The old woman was cut up with a razor and flung on the pavement of the courtyard. The girl was killed and thrust up the chimney. The windows of the room were closed, and no stranger could have entered the house from the street.

The wonderful reasoner, M.Dupin, forerunner of Sherlock Holmes, noted first that the neighbors heard strange words and oaths during the struggle. A. Frenchman was sure that the words were not French, but might be Italian; an Italian, that they might be French, but were not Italian. and so on with other nationalilties. M. Dupin then noted that a creature of extraordinary agility might have climbed to Mme. L'Espanaye's room by means of the lightning conductor and a swinging shutter, that the dead woman clutched some hair in her hand that was not human, that the wounds in her throat were made by hands of more than human size, that the windows closed by themselves with a spring and that although they were apparently held by nails, the nail in the window by the bed had long been broken in the middle. He concluded that the strange noises not recognized as any civilized language might have been made by an anthropoid ape and found that all the other facts supported this conclusion.

Finally M. Dupin obtained this confession, the climax of "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," from a sailor who had lost an immense orang outang in Paris:

"Returning home from some sailors frolic on the night or, rather, the morning the murder, he found the beast  occupying his own bedroom, into which it had broken from a closet adjoining, where it had been, as was thought, securely confined. Razor in hand and fully lathered, it was sitting before a looking glass attempting the operation of shaving, in which it had no doubt previously watched its master through the keyhole of the closet. Terrified at the sight of so dangerous a weapon in the possession of an animal so ferocious and so well able to use it, the man for some moments was at a loss what to do. He had been accustomed to quiet the creature, even in its fiercest moods, by the use of a whip, and to this be now resorted. Upon sight of it the orang outang sprang at once through the door of the chamber, down the stairs and thence through a window unfortunately open into the street.

"The Frenchman followed in despair. The ape, razor still in hand, occasionally stopped to look back and, gesticulate at its pursuer until the latter had nearly come up with it. It then made off. In this manner the chase continued for a long time. The streets were profoundly quiet, as it was nearly 3 o'clock in the morning. In passing down an alley in the rear of the Rue Morgue the fugitive's attention was arrested by a light gleaming from the open window of Mme. L'Espanaye's chamber, in the fourth story of the house. Rushing to the building, it perceived the lightening rod, clambered up with inconceivable agility, grasped the shutter, which was thrown fully back against the wall, and by its means swung itself directly upon the headboard of the bed. The whole feat did not occupy a minute. The shutter was kicked open again by the orang outang as it entered the room.

 "The sailor in the meantime was both rejoiced and perplexed. He had strong hopes of now recapturing the brute, as it could scarcely escape from the trap into which it had ventured  except by the rod, where it might be intercepted as it came down. On the other hand there was much cause for anxiety as to what it might do in the house. This latter reflection urged the man still to follow the fugitive A lightning rod is ascended without difficulty, especially by a sailor, but when he arrived as high as the window, which lay far to his left, his career was stopped; the most he could accomplish was to reach over so as to obtain a glimpse of the interior of the room

"At the glimpse he nearly fell from his hold through excess of horror. Now it was that those hideous shrieks arose upon the night which had startled from slumber the inmates of the Rue Morgue. Mme. L'Ëspanaye, and her daughter, habited in their nightclothes, had apparently been occupied in arranging some papers in an iron chest which had been for that. purpose wheeled into the middle of the room. It was open and its contents lay beside it on the floor. The victims must have been sitting with their backs toward the window, and, from the time elapsing between the ingress of the beast and the screams, it seems probable that it was not immediately perceived. The flapping to of the shutter would naturally have been attributed to the wind.

"As the sailor looked in the gigantic animal had seized Mme. L'Espanaye by the hair, which was loose, as she had been combing it, and was flourishing the razor about her face in imitation of the motions of a barber. The daughter lay prostrate and motionless, She had swooned.

The screams and struggles of the old lady, during which the hair was torn from,her head, had the effect of changing the probably pacific purposes of the orang outang into those of wrath. With one determined sweep of its muscular arm it nearly severed her head from her body. The sight of blood inflamed its anger into frenzy. Gnashing its teeth and flashing fire from its eyes, it flew upon the body of the girl and imbedded its fearful talons in her throat, retaining its grasp until she expired. Its wanderings and wild glances fell at this moment at the head of the bed, over which the face of its master, rigid with horror, was just discernible. the fury of the beast, who no doubt bore still in mind the dread whip, was instantly converted into fear. Conscious of having deserved punishment, it seemed desirous of concealing its bloody deeds and skipped about the chamber in an agony of nervous agitation, throwing down and breaking the furniture as it roved and dragging the bed from the bestead. In conclusion it seized first the corpse of the daughter and thrust it up the chimney, as it was found: then that of the old lady, which it immediately hurled through the window headlong."