Ogden Standard-Examiner | 1920-11-21 | Page 31 | Town Stunned by Boy's Crime

TOWN STUNNED By BOJffCBIij Kansas Youth Paid Chum $200 to Kill His Family, Says Confession by MABEL vbbott x jr. . stafr Correspondent, x boy's Will i the wind's will, n.i the thoughts -r youth arc long long thoughts. A 1 MEN A, Has Nov. 19. Nobody I knew what Carl Johnson. 17-year-old j farmer boy, was thinking about OS he and his brother ranged the conn-tr conn-tr far and wide night after night. ; on the old farm horses that were their nearest available approach to j fierv bronchos Nobody J new what Elmer Heiser-; man. 16-year-old farm boy, as thinking about, as h trudged In to !he one picture show In the Httl : country settlement of Almena when j the evening chores were done. And now nobody knows or can guess by the wildcat effort of horrified Immaglnstlon, what Carl ami Elmore were flunking about When. If Carl's confession to Norton county author!-i ties Is true. Klmer offered him f?00 to kin the whole Helserman famll! mi F.lm-r could inherit ihr prop. r' I ami Carl undertook the Job and fifed llito the family group through a win-j dow as Ihey sat together after supper, sup-per, wounding the sister and the aged grand mot hr r HE'D RIDE N MOB Carl will ride at night no mora for awhile, for he Is Jocked In a little square box of stone with Iron I bars at OOOr and window, in rae courthouse vnrd at Norton: and El-i mer. out on $1000 bond. goc no more lo town unless his father Is by his side ' And next February Carl and Bjimi ' will be tried for murder. It la a prepostorouB tragedy: an Incredible actuality, a melo-dra ma In the exaggerated terms of a boy's lurid fancy. In a setting of staid Kansas cornfields The bare factseafe these: hi th.' evening ql Oct. 86, as Jacob HelflermaH! well-to-do farmer, living ,i ntlle and a half out of Alm-ni yat with hi-- u fi her mother. .Mrs Julia B, Sharp. -gtd x0. and the daughter. Kaye. 21. In their lamp-Mt sitting room, five shots were fired through the window from the darit-nesi darit-nesi outside. Paye was stuck twice SOd the (rranndmother once A dep-ulj dep-ulj sheriff, called by Helecrman, met onfing out of thg cornfield. Ho n't uxed ii:.irip done the shooting. nd sud Klmer hired him to do It. ile was to have ahot the other hoy frd, erhen he came home that night. Rimer had saiil he mast have money. .1 if his family were all dead he vould get tii esiats, TKI.I.S SAME STOItV Carl told me the same story. In the lockup at Norton, standing first on' one foot and then on the other, like i -mall hoy agughi in mischief. He! does not look his 17 years. Klmer will not talk to anyone about Che matter not even to his fathc Jacob Helserman told me. his ruddy; face lined with trouble. Friends of, the HMsermans ref ised to believe the' bov glllliy, I" SPU of startling cor- , roborattve evidence nt the hearing. Some of the circumstances were almost al-most comic The rifle, which Carl Bays Elm' i- furnished him, was a short," Utile better than a popgun The wounds It made proved to be J slight punctures. . " From the time when Carl Claims, the plot was hatched. Ill front of the glittering windows of the "Hov'l iafe" In Almena four tables, a counter coun-ter and a nasal phonograph until he ; was arresied In the cornfield, was not' more than three-quarters of an hour f Only three-qiioTicis of M hour. And now there are Iron between i Carl and the country roads where he ) used to ride the old farm horse night And Klmer goes silently about ( his chores and never appears In the village without hts father beside him A.nd both are still thinking the "long. long thoughts of youth." But nobody knows v. hat they are.