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Disappearance of Leighton Mount of Otsego 1921 |
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Disappearance of Leighton Mount of Otsego 1921 |
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Doris Fox Reveals Mount Talked of Killing Self. Evanston, Ill., Sept. 24 - Silence of Leighton Mount, freshman at Northwestern university, who disappeared in the freshman-sophomore class rush on Wednesday night; has led a girl confidante of his, Miss Doris Fox, to declare she believes he is dead, that he sought death, and chose the college struggle either as a welcome means or as a cloak to hide his self-destruction. Miss Fox is 24, several years older than the boy. She admitted he loved her and that he had threatened suicide. A note he had written her just before he was last seen said: "This is just before the scrap. I am going into it with my roomate. You made me love you. Then I loved you on my own account." Disappearance of Mount, Miss Fox said, was due to some other trouble he had encountered, and not, she believed, because of his love. "He told me everything." she said. "Things he wouldn't tell his parents. He said he wanted to die. He was brooding over something I can not mention now." He had talked to her, she said of different modes of death, and had rejected drowning because his body would come to the surface again and people would find it and see that he had been a coward. She quoted him as saying one time: "There is no death. When I wake up I will find it is all a dream." When told the searching parties had thoroughly scoured the Glen View forest preserve for some evidence of his whereabouts, and had failed to disclose any clue whatever. Miss Fox burst into tears and persisted in the view that "no news from him is bad news." The Rock Island Argus - Saturday, September 24, 1921 |
------------ Was the Grandson of Amos Leighton, Who lives Near Allegan Mount's body was discovered covered by sand and rocks under a pier near Evanston Monday night. Police recovered the skeleton after its presence had been reported by Henry Warren, 12-year-old lad who was playing near the place. Police said several feet of rope knotted about the skeleton were familiar to that used in the 1921 class rush, after which, it is alleged, Arthur P. Persinger was found bound and hanging head downward to a Lake Michigan piling. discovery of Mount's body followed a search of almost two years. Mrs. J.L. Mount, the young man's mother, identified a belt buckle marked "L.M." as that of her son's. That young Mount was murdered and his body chemically treated to prevent early discovery was the theory advanced Tuesday by Dr. George Tyson, family physician of the Mount family. The doctor's statement was made after he had carefully examined the bones and after the last vestige of The examination of doubt as to the identity of the remains was removed by positive identification of the teeth by Dr. F.H. Ivey, the former student's dentist. "Some chemical may have been applied to the body to prevent odors from arising and attracting attention," says Dr. Tyson. "Young Mount disappeared in September. If the body were placed there, then the many bathers and beach promenaders who probably visited the vicinity of the pier and even walked upon it would have noticed the odors had not some chemical been applied to prevent this." It was pointed out that the sophomores, who are believed to have kidnapped Mount on the morning of his disappearence, were sufficiently advanced in chemistry to have employed this means in obliterating evidences of the student's death. |
Boys Lend New Angle in Mount Death Mystery ------------ Students Testify They Cut Hole in Pier Where Body Was Found Chicago, May 9 (By U.P.) - New mysteries were precipitated into the alleged slaying of Leighton Mount, Northwestern university freshman, today. Three high school boys, Raphael Kelly, Thomas J. Horan and Robert Knaggs, told Evanston police that they cut the hole in the Lake Michigan pier under which the youth's body was found. They say this was nine months after Mount's disappearance and that they used the inside of the structure for a dressing room when swimming in the lake. Authorities believed they either played within a few feet of Mount's skeleton in the dark interior for weeks or that it was placed there after being hidden for months else-where. The grand jury probe continued, with Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Mount, Leighton's parents, and Miss Doris Fuchs, his sweetheart, testifying Mrs. Mount, a tragic figure, refuted a suicide theory and declared she urged her son to join the class rush in which he is alleged to have been slain because she didn't want him to be a "sissy." J. Allen Mills, 1921 freshman president, returned here from Akron, Ohio, told State's Attorney Robert E. Crowe's investigators that after he had led a search for Mount several days, President Walter Dill Scott of the university told him to "lay off." |
Man Believed He Saw Mount Killed ------------ Student Tells Grand Jury U. President Ordered Probe Stopped ------------ Strom informed Police Chief Charles W. Leggett that he saw three young men apparently students, carry a youth he identified as Mount from pictures, to the lake, duck him, talk of pouring sand in his mouth, and then pass him from a pier a short distance from the one where Mouint's skeleton was found. This, Strom asserted, was on Sept. 21, 1921, the time of Mount's disappearance immediately after the Sophomore-Freshman class rush. Leggett said he accepted the story with much reservation. The police chief declared, however, that parts of it dove-tailed with other evidence and that "Strom's story may have a great deal of truth in it." Other developments in the tangled mystery included: 1. Announcement that the only copies of a report of an investigation into Mount's disappearance made in 1921 by the Burns Detective Agency, were stolen last week from the Burns' vault and the home of J.L. Mount, father of the boy. 2. Chief Justice Michael L. McKinley, impanels grand jury and instructs it to probe death. Subpoenas issued for more than 100 students and others to appear before various investigations. 3. State's Attorney Robert B. Crowe declared "mobs are the same whether composed of university students or underworld toughs," and takes personal charge of the probe. 4. Allan Mills told the grand jury that after he and two fellow students started to investigate the disappearance of Leighton Mount he, Mills, was told by President Walter Dill Scott of Northwestern university to stop the investigation, three days after it was started. This astonishing bit of evidence from the young man who was obtained in Akron, Ohio, and brought back to Chicago after a search of more than a week threw the inquiry into the hazing and death of Mount into more excitement than it has known in several days. |
41 STUDENTS TO BE SOUGHT IN MOUNT'S DEATH ------------ Illinois State's Attorney to Run Down Story of Wholesale Expulsions Following Class Rush Chicago, May 12 - Robert E. Crowe, state's attorney, has ordered in connection with the investigation of the death of Leighton Mount, a roundup of forty-one students, who left the Northwestern university after Mount disappeared. One purpose of the order was to check a statement made by Mrs. J.L. Mount, the boy's mother, that President Walter Dill Scott of the university told her sixteen students were expelled after the class rush in which authorities believe Mount was fatally injured. President Scott, before the grand jury, denied that any students were dismissed as a result of that affair. A transcript of statements made by J. Allan Mills, admitted leader of the freshman during the class rush, when he was questioned by authorities in Akron, Ohio, his present home, prompted State's Attorney Crowe to ask District Attorney Blanton of New York to question Miss Katherine Hotchkiss, Mill's friend. State's Attorney Crowe said the statement made by Mills at Akron varies with his testimony here and contains reference to letters written to him by Miss Hotchkiss from New York, in which she referred to "his terrible experiences that night" and to his evidently expressed wish to get even with "two or three boys who led me into it." |
New Angle in Mount Death ------------ Body Believed Recently Hidden Under Pier Chicago, May 26 (By U.P.) - Evidence uncovered today in the grave of Leighton Mount, Northwestern university freshman who disappeared after a class rush, indicated that his body was secreted under the Lake Michigan pier only a short time before it was discovered. A scrap of newspaper daated March 19, 1923, was discovered where Mount's body had been hidden. Also officials discovered a small amount of clay which was entirely different from the sand of the beach. The contractor who built the pier said no such soil as the clay had been encountered in the construction work. Authorities believed the finding of the newspaper and the clay indicated that Mount may have been buried at another spot, probably in a forest preserve, and his body only recently hidden under the pier. Considerable hazing occurred the night of Mount's disappearance in the forest preserve. |
Investigation of Mount Death to Be Reopened ------------ Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Mount, parents of the youth, charge that he was slain by hazers in the 1921 freshman-sophomore class rush at the university and his body secreted under a Lake Michigan pier, where the skeleton was found eighteen months later. |
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