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Show HISTORY'S MYSTERiES &f ffWT " sssijlllllllllllsssilli""""""11"" IFF?! Unsolved Riddles Tint Still Piial. irrf; Authoritiet Her. nd Abroad pr-j The Murder of Dr. Parkman ONK of the most appalling murders ever committed in the United States was that of Dr. George Park-man, Park-man, oue of the wealthiest and best-known best-known citizens of Boston, by Dr. John W. Webster, a professor of chemistry at Harvard university and a lecturer in the .Medical college In Boston. This was a remarkable case not only because be-cause of the reputation of the murderer mur-derer but also because of the mystery as to why a man of such marked intellect in-tellect and of such high standing I" Ills community and his profession should have been guilty of the crime for which he was executed. There Is no question that Doctor Webster deserved his fate, for the only excuse he hnd to offer was that of an ungovernable temper, but the records rec-ords of crime contain few cases even remotely approaching this reversion to the brute by a man who was educated, edu-cated, cultured and refined In the extreme. ex-treme. Doctor Parkman, the murdered man, was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Massa-chusetts Medical college and It was through his Influence that Doctor Webster Web-ster was chosen as a lecturer on chemistry at that Institution. At the time, Doctor Parkman was a man of sixty years of age, with the most punctual of habits. Accordingly, when he did not return home one day at his usual hour, his family became alarmed, but no attempt at a detailed search was made until the following morning, while it was almost a week before any definite clew was located. It then became known that the missing man had had an appointment with Doctor Webster on the day he disappeared but, as Doctor Webster himself informed in-formed the police of this fact, no further fur-ther Importance was attached to it until it was discovered that Doctor Parkman had loaned Webster money upon two occasions and that the men had had several quarrels over the debts. Doctor Webster was finally taken Into custody, charged with at least a guilty knowledge of the crime and finally broke down and confessed, saying: "He called me a scoundrel and a liar and continued to heap the bitterest bit-terest taunts and epithets upon me. Then he showed me a letter congratulating congrat-ulating him In securing my appointment appoint-ment as professor of chemistry and he fairly shrieked: 'I was the means of getting you your position and now I will get you out of it' "Then the doctor began heaping more threats and Invectives upon me. At first I tried to pacify him, but It was of no avail, I forgot everything and, feeling nothing but the sting of his words, became excited to the highest high-est degree of passion. When he thrust his fist Into my face, I seized a heavy stick of wood and struck him with all the force that passion could lend me." In his confusion, Doctor Webster told how the horror of his crime suddenly sud-denly Hashed upon him and, in a wild attempt to conceal the evidence of the murder, he removed the clothing from the body of the dead man and burned it. He then dismembered the body and disposed of It In a number of ways, believing that he had hidden all traces of the murder. But, In gplta of his skill as a chemist, he was unable un-able to hide all portions of the body and a sufficient amount of the remains re-mains were found to furnish the clew that led to his arrest and subsequent confession. So plain were the facts In the case and so clear was Doctor Webster's statement of the manner in which ha had acted that no attempt was made even to secure a reprieve. In full view of the college where he had taught, on a scaffold erected only a short distance from the house In which the murder had been committed, Doctor John White Webster paid tha full penalty demanded by the law. But an examination of the police annals of two continents fall to reveal an instance where a man of similar culture and education permitted himself him-self to be overcome by his passions to the point of becoming a murderer particularly since there was no excuse of his being under the influence of drugs or liquor. In fact, as one of the famous criminologists has stated: "The more we study the details of the Parkman murder, the more difficult It becomes to solve the mystery of the human emotions or to present any clear analysis of the reasons for men's Instinctive actions." ( by the Wheeler Syndicate.) |