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A HORRIBLE DEATH*A Body-Suatclier, Polsoued by a Corpse, Roto Io Death.South Bend Special to Chicago Times.| Several months ago the grave ofSarab Platte, a young lady who diedof consumption, was found disturbed and an examination showed that the head of the corpse was missing. What led to the discovery was the finding of a human jawbone by Fred Auer, a farmer who lived near the county graveyard, some eight miles from the city, where the body was buried. The fact that only the bead was taken threw suspicion on an amateur phreoologist named Gordon Truesdale. Truesdale occupied a small farm in the vicinity, with bis wife and a family of four girls, the oldest not more than eight years old. He was a handsome, broad-shoulder-ed fellow, with a fair education, but lazy and shiftless. His great hobby was phrenology, and he occasionally lectured on that subject in country school houses. His ambition to possess a collection of skulls was well known in the neighborhood, and thedesecration of the Platte girl’s grave was laid -at his door, although be was never openly charged with it.About three weeks ago Truesdale went to a physician and asked if a person could become poisoned in handling a dead body. He received an affirmative reply, and appeared to he much troubled. He complained to bis wife that his nose pained him terribly, and he believed be was taking the erysipelas. He began doc-toring himself with bread and milk poultices, but without success. His face began to swell rapidly, and in less than three days it and his head became twice their natural size, and lost all semblance of human shape. A physician was called in, against the wishes of Truesdale. He found the man suffering terribly. His lips were drawn by the tension of the skin, and ! writhed themselves away from the teeth in unceasing pain. The cuticle across the bridge of the nose and over the forehead was so distended with the mattery substance underneath that it seemed as if it must burst every moment. The eyes were swol len almost to bursting from their sockets, and were turned with pain until hardly any thing but the whites could be seen. It was evident that a terrible poison was slowly, but surely, permeating the man's wholesystem*The physician, after a careful examination of the unwilling patient, cut open his skin from about the center of the nose almost to the roots of the hair, and then made another cut across the forehead almost from temple to temple. From these incisions there oozed a mass of loathsome, detestable putrescence, so terrible in its stench that the attendants, save one, ran from the house. Other incisions were made io different parts of the scalp, from which the hair had been 1 shaved, and from these this terribly | offensive matter oozed constantly, until the swelling was reduced and the bead and faoe assumed nearly their normal size. Attempts were then made to free the incisions of matter by injecting water into them. It was noticed that wbeo water was forced into the cut io the forehead it poured out of the holes in the scalp. .As one ! of the attendants said, “It seemed as if all the flesh between the skin and ! bone bad turned to corruption and | ran out.”When Truesdale was told that he could oot possibly recover, he sailed• his wife into the room and confessed ! to her that he robbed the Platts girl's ; grave, aod referred to a certain night• when he left the bouse and refused ’ to tell her where he went at the I time, when be committed the erime. | He said he dog down to the head of » the coffin, broke it open, and taking ! his knife cut around the neok of the J oorpee through the flesh to the bone, i He then placed one of bis feet on the I breast of the oorpee, and taking thebead in his bands pulled and Jerked and twisted it until it eame off by , mere force. He afterwards disjointed the lower jaw and threw it where s Fred* Auer found it. He cloned bit 5 confeeeion by telling where tbeekull e would be found under the straw io a certain manger in the stable. It wm
Newspaper Details
Greencastle Dollar Press
Greencastle, Indiana, US
Wed, Mar 31, 1880
Page 3
Full Page
Clipped by
Elkhart P.
IN, USA 18 Aug 2020
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