Typed as spelled and written
Lena Stone Criswell
THE MARLIN DEMOCRAT
Eighteenth Year - Number 48
Marlin, Texas, Wednesday, November 6, 1907
-----
KANSAS MURDER MYSTERY.
-----
Prominent Business Man Charged
With Murder of Girl.
-----
Iolla, Kans., Nov 1.--From center to circumference Allen county continues
stirred over the mystery attending the alleged murder of Miss May Sapp, for
which Samuel F. Whitlow, a business man of prominence and high standing, has
been arrested and must stand trial. Opinion is divided on the question of
the guilt or innocence of the accused man, and further developments in the
strange case are eagerly awaited by the people. Whitlow continues to
declare his innocence and his family and many friends are standing by him.
Miss May Sapp, the victim, was the
twenty-year-old daughter of J. N. Sapp, a prominent farmer of Moran, a village
on the eastern edge of this county. On the night of September 27 the girl
was found dead in the yard of her father's home. Her throat was slashed,
presumably with a razor that was found close by. Her mother had reached
her side in response to the girl's screams but she died without speaking.
The mother was unable to say positively whether her daughter had screamed
"Mother" or "Murder."
For nearly two weeks the case remained a
mystery. Then the community was startled by the arrest of Samuel F.
Whitlow in connection the case. Whitlow, a grain and feed merchant, is
forty years old and has a wife and three children. Until involved in the
present case he had always borne a good reputation.
Upon arrest Whitlow made a remarkable
confession, the substance of which was that Miss Sapp had committed suicide
because of her unrequited love for him. He formerly was a school teacher
and Miss Sapp was one of his pupils. They had been friends for several
years. He declared that he and the girl had never been intimate. He
said that the girl had become infatuated with him and had repeatedly urged him
to leave his family and run away with her. He said that on the night of
the tragedy he met her at the rear of her father's house and told her that their
relations must cease, whereupon she drew a razor across her throat.
One of the remarkable features of the case
was a diary which Whitlow produced and in which he purported to have set forth
from day to day the annoyances to which Miss Sapp had subjected him because he
did not return her love. He declared that the girl was in the habit of
coming to his house at night and leaving locks of her hair on the door-knob and
disturbing things in the yard in order that he would know that she had been
there. In his diary he set forth his constant fear that his family or the
family of the girl might learn of her mad infatuation.
The coroner's jury, however, did not accept
Whitlow's tale as wholly true and the result of the investigation was that he
was held on the charge of murder. The parents of the dead girl testified
that they did not believe their daughter had committed suicide and so far as
they knew she did not possess the razor with which the deed was committed.
The suspicion against Whitlow was further strengthened by the testimony of his
wife that she knew he had gone to the Sapp on the night of the killing and hat
on the following morning she had found blood stains on her husband's jacket.
----------
Copyright permission granted to Theresa Carhart and her volunteers for
printing by The Democrat, Marlin, Falls Co., Texas