Campbell County, Kentucky, Coroner Tingley and
a number of the other County and City officials respondet the telephone
summons at once and hurried to the scene. The body had not been touched
nor had any one been in touching distance of it when these officers
arrived and viewed it.
The body was ordered to be taken to undertaker W. H. Whites in Newport,
by Coroner Tingley, at once after he had examined it. Upon this
examination he said that there was no evidence whatever that the woman's
person had been outraged.
The work of identifying the victim and running down her murderers was at
once begun. The entire detective and police force of Cincinnati,
Covington and Newport, was put to work to unravel the mystery, identify
the remains and capture her murderers.
There was little or no clew to work on. Detectives Crim and McDermott,
of Cincinnati, were assigned to work actively on the case, and sent to
the scene at once by Col. Philip Deitsch, Superintendent of Police of
Cincinnati. Before these sleuth-hounds of the law, Crim and McDermott,
reached the place where the headless body had been found, hundreds of
persons from the three cities, and every soldier stationed at Fort
Thomas, who could possibly get away, had preceded them. The grass and
bushes were trampled down by the crowds of visitors who had come to
satisfy their curiosity, but who, through their eagerness to see and
learn everything possible, had destroyed so nearly every particle of
evidence the murderer had left behind him. The foot prints and other
evidences of the desperate struggle were all destroyed and but little
was left for them to work on.
Relic hunters were out in great numbers and they almost demolished the
bush under which the body was discovered, breaking off branches upon
which blood spots could be seen. They peered closely into the ground for
blood-spotted leaves, stones and even saturated clay. Anything that had
a blood stain upon it was seized upon eagerly, and hairs of the
unfortunate woman were at a premium, men and boys, and even young women,
examining every branch and twig of the bush in the midst of which the
struggle took place, in the hope of finding one. The inherent, morbid
love of the horrible the mass of humanity possesses was well illustrated
in the scenes witnessed. The heavy rain which fell nearly all afternoon
was not deterrent to these relic hunters' zeal.
AT THE UNDERTAKER.
The scene at Undertaker White's establishm
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