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o'* « ia w wt a lt;o tdown in sobbing hysterics.□I Wartheienied:itilbilledereCONKLINed SpaContinued From Page Onequestedvices o Sa turds home i Mr. JHinessoldiercers asked him if he had done any- wal an thing wrong. ■ MintNot lately, Conklin said, but in 1948 I poisoned my mother.underBuffalcaseIns - *rds_; He said the act took place while -burial they were living at 1251 Columbus ; ave., in Benton Harbor, ol j Weighed On Mind•ien After Conklin was returned to the hil-1 Berrien county jail by Sheriff Ku-Instjbath and Benton Harbor Police Defied tective Raymond Woodruff, he told j officers he wanted to get it off my chest.i For the past two months Conklin 11\ ■ resided at a boarding home run by-Mrs. Irve Masterson an a farm located on M-140, four miles south of Watervliet. She said that he was 3or-;tour weeks arrears in board pay-on ments, and that she was forced to ar“ tell him to leave Wednesday.Local law officers therefore sus-ton ipected that Conklin, broke and ap-on parently unable to get a job, told|Banclit his strange story to* Battle Creek jand J® police in order to get a place to i night fuitira,LugFNEWion.337,Jo-onstay.■ home iQuestioning him yesterday at the Bii}^ *ofofPolic four-st his wifbutler, safe cc Aftci mcr EchampdisclosiBenton Harbor police station, they Rr* i asked him pointblank several times if he made up the story to obtain shelter and food.Sticks To Story He denied the story was untrue, saying again and again he wanted to get it off my chest.A person who commits a crime— whether they're rich or poor—must | PJt’ces pay for it somehow, some way, he be*_s-*'ho declared. ! Ko-eith . I don’t think I’m any better than jbee“ ” eld. :anyone else. . [that rin He told officers he was an avid '1-real reader of detective stories and thatj lUS he got the idea for poisoning his1 He s50n'i mother from a story he read. HeIdc. jsaid he bought 25 or 35 cents worth of arsenic from a drug store .n St.Joseph and put a spoonful in his mother s soup at suppertime. Site vomited twice a short time later, he said, adding that her health failed rapidly from that point on.She was taken to Berrien county ,a-sti hospital at Berrien Center two had! weeks later, he said. Records show piij ?she died there Aug. 17, 1948. Her *cni 1death certificate said she died of cerebral hemorrhage.Informal comment from medical sources indicated there would still be traces of arsenic in Mrs. Con-iad's body it she was poisoned. It was pointed out that if Mrs. Conrad had swallowed enough arsenic in one dose to kill her, she almost certainly would have died within 12 to 48 hours afterward. According to the story told by Conklin, her death came about one month after the alleged poisoning.lentElksed a $!and S7Janv he an: and w men tl a pad milted to expOneNobrough then tlt; trussec cords, after 1eat-arain was ,scd. d in his »nryr iLoca$25,StatiLANConklin left his boarding home atjContrclettsI in1 byriff'sialljintothisend.thepital'atedandi end.1 toWatervliet Wednesday, driving an old model car. He said he had set cut to look for a Job. At Kalamazoo, he turned the car over to a finance company through which he had bought it. Sheriff Kubath said Conklin explained he knew he could from t not continue to make payments on steadrported that t contaigoven:fiscalAllthe car, and therefore gave it up.'From Kalamazoo, Conklin went on to Battle Creek, where he sougnt shelter at the city Jail and touched cent c off the bizarre chain of events with new bing in This 000 tohis strange reply to routine questioning.Conklin told officers again yes-local Fro i 000 wterdav that he had tried to con-jVCftl-fess the- poisoning to Prosecutor qqq $lCad- Killian last week. He said he stop-lbe ped at the prosecutor's office in St. ities Joseph and waited for several min-jutea, but that there were several •etng others ahead of him Finally, he J*U- grew Urtd of waiting, he said, and hrte nft, thinking to return at another the um.i jur-1 Before mcrrtng last Woe ember. Conklin was a life-long resident of Benton Harbor. He worked as a • p*icab driver and In city cemeteries due as well as at various od jobs,ivjngl--Witfor st 000.00 er by tion.MTWaitesomeontoLake
Newspaper Details
St Joseph Herald Press
St Joseph, Michigan, US
Fri, Jan 27, 1950
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
IN, USA 27 Jan 2019
Other Publications Near St Joseph, Michigan
St Joseph Herald Press
Saint Joseph Weekly Press
