Mystery Stories in Sedgwick County Genealogy Trails Kansas

SEDGWICK COUNTY, KANSAS

MYSTERY STORIES

A MYSTERY AT WICHITA. THE BODY OF A WHITE MAN FOUND IN A SUPPOSEDLY DESERTED HOUSE
Wichita, Feb. 27 - The badly decomposed body of an unknown white man was found today in a supposedly deserted house on Fifth Avenue. The head and shoulders were covered with a blanker and the body lay huddled in a corner half behind a stove. It had evidently been there for a week or more. The officers say it is a case of murder. (The Kansas City Star, February 27, 1894)

NO LIGHT ON WICHITA MISSING MAN MYSTERY
Wichita, Kan., March 27 - Mrs. L. H. Carter who came here from Montemuna yesterday to help search for her husband who had disappeared two weeks ago in a fire in Wesley Hospital . Her sorrow over her lost husband has profounded her, as no word of him can be found. Her search of twenty-four hours has availed nothing. (The Kansas city Star, March 27, 1914)
Mystery in Wichita Man's Death
Wichita, Kas., March 26 - Percy H. Wolf, 30 years old, a waiter, was found unconscious at 3 o'clock this morning near Douglas Avenue along the Rock Island Pacific Road with injuries on his head. He died at 5 o'clock in a hospital. Wolf was near a window in his room when found, but there was blood on the ground for several feet showing his body had been dragged. The county physician says the wound in his head could not have been made in a fall. (The Kansas City Star, March 26, 1912)

MYTSERY IN WICHITA ASSAULT INTENERATED BAKER ATTACKED IN BED BY THREE MEN
Wichita, Kas., Feb. 26 - Wichita police are baffled by an attack on Frank Kelley, 32, a baker. Kelley says he went to be drunk and three men entered his room and inflicted the injuries. Kelley came here a week ago from Attica, Kas. (Kansas City Star, February 27, 1917)

MYSTERY WAR IN WICHITA BULLETS FLEW IN COLLEGE HILL, BUT FROM WHENCE, NO ONE KNOWS
Wichita, Kas., July 27 - A near panic among residents of College Hill, Wichita's most elusive residence district, early yesterday occurred.
Persons who reported the affair to the police said between fifty and one hundred shots were fired. No injuries have been reported.
Rumors are that temporary bachelors, whose wives are away for the summer, staged a party and consumed so much "corn." Booze, poker and dice are more plentiful than good judgment the rumors went.
All was quiet when the police arrived and they admit they are mystified. (Kansas City Times, July 27, 1921)

WAS BROWN HYPNOTIZED? A NEW SUGGESTION REGARDING THE REMARKABLE MYSTERY AT WICHITA
To the Star - In the case of Mr. Brown of Wichita, whose disappearance and sudden return have not been explained, it may be advanced as a theory, that he may have been placed in a different mental state or in an abnormal mental condition by some one who had an ulterior object in view.
Dr. Braid of Manchester. England, in 1841 discovered that persons could be put to sleep at will after certain manipulations. He studied the subject attentively, and called the attention of scientific bodies to the various phases of these phenomena, but without result - they were rejected by these learned assemblies just as the theories and propositions of Mesmer on the same subject were rejected by the Academy of Science, Paris, in 1771, which was represented ten years after a body of commissioners, among whom was our own Benjamin Franklin. It was again rejected in 1781. It was regarded by physicians and scientists in those days as an absurdity, and those members of the academy who had the courage to look with any favor upon these new theories were threatened with expulsion and lost prestige in their profession, the science being associated with the tricks and juggling of mountainbanks.
From the year 1780 up to the present time there have been conducted at the Salpetriere Hospital, Paris, France, a series of continued experiments in reference to the science now called Animal Magnetism, or Hypnotism. It has been definitely shown that one person may become subjective to the will of another and be as an automation in his hands. He loses his mental individuality and is swayed and governed at the pleasure of the operator.
Without going further into the subject, it may be proposed that Mr. Brown be placed in a state of hypnosis and questioned concerning his absence. There would be a possibility of his relating his wanderings if any, correctly and succinctly, or otherwise stating the exact truth, while in this peculiar and mysterious mental condition. But this would depend much upon whether he was in a somnambable state during his absence. If his condition were due to opiates, it is not probably that anything would be elicited. However, the experiment would be entirely harmless and might develop some extraordinary statement.
It is well to state that one may be placed in a state of somnambulian and his mental functions restored in an instant.
There are absolutely no ill effects attending these experiments when conducted properly and in the presence of reputable witnesses. This proposition is made upon a strictly scientific ____, and has nothing to do with any moral obliquity or trend in the case, which presents itself for consideration. The science of hypnotism will in the future be an important factor in the healing and palliation of discusses of the nervous system. (Robert W. Hoff) (The Kansas City Star, August 3, 1889)

MYSTERY OVER A SHOOTING - Lee Webster Bound Over to District Court at Cheney
Wichita, Kan., Dec. 10 - Late Saturday night Lee Webster was bound over to the district court in his preliminary at Cheney, before Justice Souders, on the charge of shooting and seriously wounding Mrs. Amy Krause. This is another step in the mysterious shooting which occurred there last week and which stirred up the citizens of that community. Webster is a respected citizen of that city. Mrs. Krause, who is the daughter of an influential farmer in the south part of the county, was shot while standing at an open well with her hands on the rope in the act of drawing a bucket of water. Her husband was mysteriously assassinated at the same well a year ago. (The Kansas Semi-Weekly Capital, December 11, 1900)

A LONG LOST HUSBAND FINDS HIS WIFE REMARRIED TO A CRIMINAL IN WICHITA, KANSAS
A Series of Divorces and Marriages - An Unhappy Romance
The Police of Chicago Troubled Over a Mystery That Will Not Ravel
Wichita, Kan., Nov. 9 - In Sioux City there lived 15 years ago Arthur Wilson and his wife of one year. One evening Wilson failed to return and until yesterday, was never heard of again by his wife. Yesterday he reached here from Morris, Minn., of which place he is now a wealthy inhabitant, having been called by friends who recognized in Mrs. Fleming of this city, his long lost wife. Wilson, it seems, was the victim of some conspiracy which cost him all he had, and in a fit of temporary aberration he left his home. When, a few months later he recovered, he returned to Sioux City only to find his wife gone. Since then he has never ceased his search for her, but without avail.
Mrs. Wilson had waited for her husband's return until forced to find some means of a livelihood. An opportunity was offered to go to Omaha and she moved there. Hearing nothing of Wilson, she, two years later, obtained a divorce and married a business man named Fleming, who afterwards turned out badly, and who four years ago was arrested for forgery and sent to the penitentiary for seven years. His term has not yet expired. Mrs. Fleming then moved here and only a few days ago was discovered by a former acquaintance who hastened to send for Wilson. As soon as the necessary divorce can be given, Mrs. Fleming will again be married to her first husband. (Morning Olympian, November 10, 1891)

A MYSTERY PARTLY CLEARED - THE BODY OF A WICHITA MAN FOUND IN THE ARKANSAS RIVER
Wichita, Kas., April 25 - The mystery surrounding the disappearance here of Michael Devine, 68 years old, an ex-soldier of the Civil War was partly cleared today by the finding of his body in the Arkansas River. Devine disappeared December 23, 1905. Two boys who were fishing in the river near Douglas avenue, the principal business street of the city, found the body. The skull was fractured and the police believe Devine was murdered. (The Kansas City Star, April 25, 1906)

KANSAS AUTHORITIES DENY COUPLE WANTED FOR SLAYING CHAUFFEUR WERE KIDNAPED
Oklahoma City, June 23 - Kansas officers did not kidnap five prisoners, who they obtained at Slick, Okla., and carried across the Kansas border yesterday with the slaying of Turner C. Tucker at Wichita, taxicab driver, according to a dispatch received here last night from Newkirk, Okla.
The Kansas authorities stopped in Newkirk and took the prisoners to the office of the county sheriff where they signed waivers of extradition in the presence of the sheriff and others, the dispatch said. The Kansas officers then proceeded with the prisoners for Butler County, Kan.
Throats of mob violence at Slick, where the prisoners were held in jail, caused them to be hurried out of town, the Kansas officers said.
Woman Revals Tragedy
Wichita, Kan., June 23, - Sheriff Doug Simmons said last night he had talked with Mrs. Jewel Beard over long distance from Shidler, Okla. And that she had made statements that if true, clear the mystery of the murder of Turner C. Tucker, Wichita taxicab driver, near Augusta, Kan., Thursday night of last week.
Tucker's body was found floating in the Walnut River south of Augusta, Friday noon. He had been missing since the previous day, when he left Wichita with two men who had employed him to drive them to Augusta.
Early yesterday Sheriff Simmons received a call from the chief of Police at Shidler saying that Mrs. Beard was in custody in that city and that she had told the complete story of the murder, implicating two men.
Sheriff Simmons then got in communication with Mrs. Beard. The Sheriff said the woman told him she had been a roomer in a local rooming house for several weeks, leaving Wichita, June 14, and going to Augusta. The following day, she said, she joined the two men. They drove south out of Augusta, where the men, she declared, attacked Tucker. One of them struck the taxicab man over the head four times with an iron bar. The body she then told the Sheriff was taken to the river and dumped in. Then the trio drove to Shidler, where Mrs. Beard remained and the two men, together with Pauline Prescott, arrested later at Slick and now in the Butler County jail, drove to Slick.
Mrs. Beard declared the Prescott girl knew nothing of the murder. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 23, 1922)

A KANSAS MYSTERY SOLVED
About five years ago Harry Cottman, a west Wichita grocer, missed a kit of salt mackerel from the front of his store and he never was able to trace it. Some small boys "swiped" that kit of mackerel and it is supposed they ate it, and one of the boys now grown to be a young man, has recently paid for it.
The young man sent a $1 bill to Mr. Cottman with a note of explanation. (Charlotte Daily Observer, October 7, 1911)

WOMAN SEEKS CLUE TO HER OWN IDENTITY, MRS. HUFFMAN STOLEN WHEN A CHILD WANTS TO KNOW REAL NAME
"Who am I?" asks Mrs. Lizzie Huffman.
She is searching the United States for some clew to her own identity.
She knows that she was kidnapped when she was a small girl. Back of that she knows nothing.
She may be the solution of some half-century-old mystery, long ago given up by the police, like that of Charlie Ross.
Mrs. Huffman lives at Wichita, Kans. She thinks she is about 50 years old.
Her first recollection is of a pleasant home in a city. She remembers that one day she went to church with her father and mother .
Man Kidnaps Her
The church was decorated with flowers and she wore a white dress and white shoes.
When they came home she went out on the front porch to get her doll. A man stepped up and threw a black coat over her head.
"I kicked and cried as he carried me away." She says. "After a short trip we came to some water. Another man met us and they fought for me. I was dropped to the ground, scrambled out of my coverings and watched them fit. I shall never forget it.
"The second man gained possession of me and took me for a long trip on the train to a place where there was snow on the ground. It was the first snow I had ever seen, which makes me believe I was stolen from some southern city."
Lived in Ohio for Time
The child lived for some time with an Ohio family named Barnes - she does not where. They told her they would never tell her who she was.
"There was other children there who did not belong to the Barneses." She says. "and I believe they must have made a practice of kidnapping children."
The girl married and has grown children of her own. For the last 30 years she has been trying to learn something of her people. (The Duluth News Tribune, March 28, 1920)
A Death Letter Mystery Missouri Farmer's "Fate" Told, But Murder is Feared No Record of Date
Wichita, Kas. Oct 4 - Fearing that his brother, Noah A. Moffit, a Sulphur Spings, Mo., ex service man and farmer has been slain, Elmer Moffit of Sulphur Springs came to authorities here today and showed them a mysterious "death note" he had received from a man signing his name H. McLaughlin." The note mentioned the brother's army identification tags and told how he had been so badly cut in pieces in a railroad accident in the North Wichita railroad yards Friday that his immediate burial was necessary and that his money he had was used thus.
The police are investigating under the belief that either the young ex service man may have been murdered and the letter method used to cover the crime, or else that he wished to disappear and wrote the note himself. The handwriting, however, is not his. The letter declared his bag and considerable property had been stolen by a "large crowd which gathered" at the scene of the accident. Police and morgue records here do not disclose record of such a death or burial here recently. (The Kansas City Star, October 4, 1921)

MYSTERY IN GIRL'S DEATH - Poison Forced Down Throat of Topeka Young Woman, She Said.
Topeka, Kas., Feb. 19 - Miss Katherine Foley, 20 years old, summoned today as a witness in the George Cruse murder case at Wichita, died here last night as the result of poison forced down her throat by a man and woman, she told her mother before her death.
Miss Foley, who had been staying at the home of a neighbor for the night, rushed home in her night clothing at 11 o'clock, calling her mother. A physician was called, but the girl died an hour later from convulsions. (The Kansas City Star, Feb. 19, 1921)

Topeka, Kan., - Police investigation Saturday of the mysterious death Friday night of Miss Katherine Foley, 20, who staggered home from a neighbor's house and died telling her mother a man and a woman had forced poison down her throat, developed Friday she had been watched by a man and woman on the street. Miss Catherine Longaker saw the couple while she was talking with Miss Foley Friday night, she said.

Miss Foley was summonded Friday as a witness against George Kruse in his trial at Wichita on a charge of having killed his third wife by choking her to death. Miss Foley, believing him unmarried, formerly had been friendly with Kruse, her father said, and received a letter Friday night addressed in Kruse's handwriting, the father said. He said Kruse had tried to persuade the girl to leave Topeka rather than testify against him.

We are working on two theories - murder or suicide - Chief of Police Leech said. "There is evidence which might be considered to point both ways."

An autopsy was performed and the contents of the stomach were sent to the University of Kansas for analysis. The conditions under which the girl died, however, Coroner Clark said, leaves no doubt about poison being the cause. He said there were no marks on the girl's throat to indicate there had been a struggle.

Officers telephoned to the Wichita police department Saturday to have George Kruse held. (The Idaho Statesman, February 20, 1921)

MAN AND WOMAN TRAILED HER
Miss Catherine Longoker, a girl chum who was with Miss Foley earlier in the evening, said that a man and woman standing on the corner near them in the evening had watched them for some time and then disappeared.
John Foley, father of the dead girl said that Cruse had kept company with his daughter for some time, telling her that he was a single man. Since the girl had learned that he was married she had been trying to break off their relations, he said.
The father said that he received a letter for the girl last night in a hand writing he recognized as that of Cruse. The girl read the letter and burned it, he said, without telling of its contents.
Cruse visited the girl February 9, the father said, and in the presence of her parents offered to pay the expenses of the girl and her mother to leave Topeka, saying that it "meant ninety-nine years in the pen for me" if she testified at the trial.
Dr. H. L. Clark, coroner, has ordered an inquest today to determine whether the girl had been murdered or had committed suicide. There seems to be a wide difference of opinion among officials.
Cruse, a Wichita oil man, has been courting Miss Foley for some months. Two weeks ago his wife was found strangled to death and Cruse is under bond charged with her murder. Yesterday Sedgwick County officials came to Topeka and talked with Miss Foley about the Cruse case and summoned her to appear as a witness in the preliminary hearing. (The Kansas City Star, February 19, 1921)