FULL TEXT: Chicago, Oct. 3. – One of the most remarkable cases of youthful depravity on record came up before Justice Lyon Tuesday morning.
One of the defendants was the little girl Minnie
Kratzenberg, at 3100 Wentworth avenue, who put “rough on rats” into the food of
her family with the deliberate intention of causing the death of her relatives.
Her companion in trouble was Mrs. Margaret E. Snyder, charged with having instigated
her to commit the deed. Minnie is a well-developed maiden of of 13 years, with
dark features, black hair and black eyes. In these lurk the spirit of intense
hatred, which glowed out at the objects of her displeasure as she stood in the
dock before the justice. She cooly admitted every charge made against her,
professing not the slightest remorse for what she did. John Deitz, step-brother
to Minnie, testified to the family having eaten of the beefsteak which had been
poisoned by the girl Friday night. He himself had been taken ill, and the
mother now lies in a critical condition. Lizzie, the sister of Minnie, said
that she made some soup Sunday and took a little to her mother, who was lying
ill from the effects of the previous poisoning. When she came back to the
kitchen she examined the bowl of soup more closely, and to her horror
discovered that it was permeated with rat poison.
“What’s the matter with the soup!” she asked.
“I didn’t put anything in it,” said Minnie, guiltily.
Dr. Lynch attended the family and found Mrs. Kratzenberg
suffering great agony. He discovered symptoms of arsenical poisoning and
administered proper relief. Minnie was called upon to say what she desired.
“This woman,” she said, indicating Mrs. Snyder, “told me to
do it. I went to her house and said that my step-brother, John, had been
scolding me. She said:’Why the devil don’t you poison him?’ I asked her how to
do it. She told me to put carbolic acid in the milk, but said afterward that he
would be apt to smell it. She then told me to put some ‘rough on rats’ on the
beefsteak.”
“And you did it, did you?”
“Yes, sir.”
The young girl then went on to tell in the most heartless
manner how she had administered the poison, and how the first dose failed to
operate fatally.
“I went to Mrs. Snyder,” she said, “and told her that it
didn’t work. She told me to try another dose, and I went home and put a
quarter of a teaspoonful in the soup.”
“You wanted to poison in his plate alone then, and not in
the food which the whole family was to eat?”
The girl could give no reason. The only cause for Minnie’s
strange conduct that could be given was a scolding which had been administered
to her by her step-brother six weeks before on her neglect to prepare supper
for him when the rest of the family had gone away to a picnic. On this occasion
Minnie ran away to Mrs. Snyder’s house where she stayed awhile. On this
occasion a slight quarrel arose between the woman and Deitz, but nothing
serious resulted at the time.
Mrs. Snyder unequivocally denied every allegation of the
girl. She said that she never spoke on the subject of her, and that she never
spoke on the subject to her, and that the girl had not been in her house more
than twice without being accompanied by her sister. She had no reason, she
said, to instill such a devilish idea into the mind of a child. Justice Lyon
could do nothing under the circumstances but hold the two in bonds of $1,500 to
the criminal court.
No one seemed seemed to know just why the girl had made this
strange and murderous attempt upon the lives of her relatives. Several inclined
to the theory that it was pure depravity which instigated her, others that she
was a subject for a court of insanity. Justice Lyon thought that her brain was
peculiarly susceptible to impression, and that she was mentally defective.
[“A Youthful Borgia – She Calmly Admits She Tried To Kill
The Family – Minnie Kratzenberg, Aged 13, Confesses to Poisoning Her Mother,
Brother and Sisters for Some Trifling Grievance – She Accuses a Woman of Instigating
Her to the Crime – Both Held to the Criminal Court.” The Alton Telegraph (Oh.),
Oct. 3, 1888, p. 2]
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More cases: Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Commit Murder
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[518-1/23/21]
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