Mr. Powers of Quiet Dell

Lonely U. S. women who patronize matrimonial agencies breathed a sigh of relief last week. Four months ago people had been horrified to learn that a Mrs. Dorothy Pressler Lemke, matronly divorced nurse of Northboro, Mass., had been found murdered and buried in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia after a postal courtship. Accused of the killing was small, pudgy, pig-eyed Harry F. Powers of Quiet Dell. In his house was found a trunk full of correspondence from women all over the U. S. Buried near his garage was found another of his correspondents, Mrs. Asta Buick Eicher of Park Ridge, Ill., together with the bodies of her three children. Mr. Powers' system : mail-order them, marry them, mulct them, murder them (TIME, Sept. 14).

Hundreds of people were turned away from the Powers trial at Clarksburg, although the authorities took care of as many spectators as they could by holding it in Moore's Opera House. Outside were sold phonograph records, sheet music composed about the Quiet Dell tragedy, a pamphlet called The Love Secrets of West Virginia's Bluebeard. Led into the Opera House every day on a chain like a little bear, Mr. Powers sat on the stage and chewed gum apathetically. After hearing his defense, which attributed the murders to two mythical acquaintances of Powers', a jury of farmers and townspeople retired to the star's dressing room, deliberated for not quite two hours. From his desk which was framed by papier-mache trees, the judge heard the verdict read: murder in the first degree. He sentenced West Virginia's "Bluebeard" to hang Friday, March 18, 1932. Unmoved, little Murderer Powers was led away on his chain, the court room's footlights extinguished.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.