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Eight Little Girls Bear Slain Playmate’s Body to GraveContinued From First Page.the way of tho train. He was seen to cross the tracks, and then, when safely over, he deliberately put himself in the way of the train. His body was nearly cut in half, and his brains were spilled onto the roadway of Kedzie avenue. He is not known to have had any wife or relatives.” Entering the house in which the peddler had lived, the detectives found boxes, barrels. trunks and bundles containing an assortment of odds and ends and women’s and children’s finery which it will take weeks to examine. Many of the articles were not new and are believed by the detectives to have been stolen. There were hymn books. Catholic prayer books in Bohemian and English, ribbons, laces, pieces of silk, women’s hats, beads and relics and. In particular, two green ribbons from a child's hair which it was at first thought might have belonged to the Paroubek child. Mrs. Paroubek was called upon later to identify the ribbon, but she said: “It didnot belong to Elsie. Perhaps it belonged to some other poor little girl. 1 often saw that man Konesti. He was no good. 1 believe he was the man who lured piny child away.”Tn or.e corner of Konesti’s home, near where his bed was spread on the floor, the detectives found that the plank floor had been dug up. apparently quite recently, for a space about four feet long and thirty inches wide. The soil was loose for a depth of about two feet, and Detectives Gormley and Russell said: “It looked verymnch as though the child’s body had been temporarily buried there at the foot of the peddler’s bed until he found opportunity to carry the body out and throw it into the Drainage Canal.”Following the grass grown path south and east for several hundred feet, the detectives came to a steep slope lending to the eastern bank of the canal. The path is unused, and it is rarely that anyone is seen on the banks of the canal at that potnt. Nevertheless, the detectives found the sun-baked impression of a man’s boots on the bank in a little cove or indentation of the shore. The footmarks were close together, as though someone had stood there casting a heavy burden into the water. Other footmarks, not so deep, but easily traced, led from the direction of Konesti’s shed.Think Mystery Is Solved.“This looks like the very spot where little Elsie Parotibek’s body was cast into the canal.” said Detective Russell. All the indications are that we have solved the mystery. This is the one spot on the banks of the Drainage Canal that is nearest to the Paroubek home, although it is a mile and a half away. Some would say that the child could easily have strayed that distance, but when it is borne in mind that the child was not drowned, but murdered. and that Konesti was last seen luring children around her home the day she disappeared the chain of circumstauti.il evidence is marvellously strong.”David Sfcaughnessy and his wife were closely questioned by the detectives as to whetlicr Konesti ever kept a child in his shed over night. The husband said:That house in which he made liis home is so far from ours or from any other habitation that it would have been possible for him to have had a child or children with him for days’at a time without us knowing about, and our own children are too young to tell us about it even if they knew lie had a little girl in there with him. My wife drove away two little girls who came to see him, and I told him time and time again that we would not let him occupy the shed any longer.' I had ray suspicious of him all the time ever since I moved here six wekes ago. My wife gave him the last notice to quit yesterday week, ami the next morning he committed 6uicide.”Funeral Attracts Thousands.The funeral of little Elsie, which took place yesterday morning, brought thegreatest outpouring of people ever seen on such an occasion in the southwest section of the city. The Paroubek home contained all who could possibly squeeze in and the whole street was a solid block of humanity, but there were other thousands of men, women and children who tried to get somewhere near to the nouse and failed, sogreat was the crush.The small coffin in the parlor containing the body of the victim of the most cruel murder of recent years was banked with flowers sent by Mayor Harrison, Judge Sa-bath and scores of other sympathizers.While Jaromir Psenka, a Bohemian orator, who made the funeral oration, spoke of the child’t tragic fate and called for justice on the slayer of the little girl, women and children who heard him broke into tears and the father and mother seemed ready to collapse.There was no formal religious ceremony, and after the brief service the body was carried to the hearse by eight little girls, all dressed iu white. Interment was in the Bohemian National Cemetery.
Newspaper Details
Chicago Examiner
Chicago, Illinois, US
Fri, May 12, 1911
Page 11
Full Page
Clipped by
Nick N.
IL, USA 22 Feb 2021
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