Murders in Missouri

At Lexington, 40 miles down the Missouri River from Kansas City, the staff of the Lexington Advertiser-News sluggishly prepared last week's mid-week edition. Toward midnight, old Dr. Hyde walked into the office. He was always welcome there, a learned, well-informed "man with a past," who lived alone above his. downtown office, who every morning before breakfast chinned himself 25 times, took a fast walk of several miles. The Advertiser-News staff heard him say that he wanted to see the Missouri primary returns. He walked around the office barrier toward the newspaper files and soundlessly fell dead from apoplexy.

Twenty-five years ago the name of Dr. Bennett Clark Hyde was in the headlines of every U. S. newspaper as a cold-blooded murderer. A young practitioner, he had married the niece of rich old Thomas H. Swope of Kansas City, who lived in a large country place near Independence. In October 1909 Dr. Hyde was called to Independence to care for another of his wife's uncles, old James Moss Hunton who was down with apoplexy. Dr. Hyde took two quarts of blood out of Uncle Moss and the patient promptly died. Two days later Uncle Tom complained of a stomach ache. Dr. Hyde gave him a capsule and he, too, promptly died. On Thanksgiving Day, Dr. Hyde was in Independence for a family reunion. Within two weeks the entire Swope family was in bed with typhoid fever. Dr. Hyde returned to his in-laws, gave Mrs. Hyde's brother another capsule, watched him die in convulsions.

For these three deaths Dr. Hyde was put on trial in Kansas City. An autopsy showed that the capsule given Uncle Tom contained strychnine. The State charged that Dr. Hyde had murdered to reduce the size of the Swope family, increase his wife's share in the $3,500,000 Swope estate. (She got $118,000.) Dr. Hyde's defense was that all three had died in the course of ethical medical practice.

The jury found Dr. Hyde guilty of murder and the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment. An appeal brought a new trial which broke up when a juror went mad. The third Hyde trial ended with a jury disagreement in 1913. For four years more the Swopes egged the prosecutors on, then weary of the expensive procedure they agreed to let the indictment against Dr. Hyde be dropped. Dr. Hyde took a job loading sand trucks in Kansas City, later moved to rural Lexington where he had a small practice.

Mrs. Hyde loyally sided with her husband. In 1915 she bore him a son, in 1917 a daughter. In 1920 she divorced him for "cruelty and violence." Last week when Dr. Hyde dropped dead. Mrs. Hyde and her grown children were en route to Seattle for a vacation.

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