Note: Cases such as this one, in which a child is the perpetrator of but one actual murder, yet shows an inclination to commit further murders, are included in our inventory, not to inflate the numbers, but because cases involving young killers are exceptionally important in understanding the phenomenon of serial killing.
Henrietta Weibel, 15, was accused of attempting to burn to death two babies (first the Kelly baby, later the Franck baby) on two separate occasions.
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FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): Henrietta Weibel, aged 15, was arrested, on a charge of attempted murder and incendiarism, she having on Wednesday night, attempted to burn the infant child of Mrs. Franck, a boarder at the Leopold Palace Hotel, and afterwards made two endeavours to set fire to the house. The baby was lying asleep when the girl set fire to the bed clothes. Another servant extinguished the flames, but the little child was nearly suffocated. The girl confessed her guilt, and said she had a mania for burning children and houses. It is said that last spring she attempted to burn the baby of Mr. Kelly, of Tremont, and that she was formerly employed by Uhling, the brick-laden coffin conspirator.
[“A Young Murderess,” The Singleton Argus and Upper Hunter General Advocate (NSW, Australia), Sep. 30, 1874, p. 3]
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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 3): Henrietta Weibel, who set the bed on fire in a West Farms [in the Bronx, New York] hotel with the view of destroying Mrs. Frank’s infant, was examined on Saturday by Police Surgeon Loomis. She told him that she had no motive for her crime. She loved the child dearly. But seeing it sleeping, she thought it would be nice to see it burn, and instantly fired the bed. But then ran out of the room. As she closed her door, smoke entered the little sleeper’s lungs, and it gasped for death. Henrietta relented, and was about to snatch the child from its danger, but something, she said, seemed to drive her from the spot, and half bewildered she ran down stairs singing. She said she would not hurt the little darling for the world, but that she could not control her action. Dr. Loomis believes that Henrietta is insane. Justice Wheeler has ordered a medical examination.
[“Henrietta Weibel, The Child Burner.” (reprinted from, New York Sun, Aug. 3), The Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), Aug. 4, 1874, p. 1]
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Note: The original typographic presentation has been preserved.
FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): So many startling phases of crime crop out from time to time that it seems almost impossible to keep pace with them in any attempt at analysis. One of the most recent of the strange cases was that of Henrietta Weibel, the baby burner. The idea of a little girl, thirteen years of age, cherishing a passion for the burning up of babies is something awful to dwell upon. But insanity steals into the brain of little girls as well as into the brain of grown people, and there can scarcely be a doubt but that Henrietta Weibel is insane.
A HERALD reporter called yesterday the store of Louis Stern, No. 294 First avenue, to ascertain some facts about the girl. Henrietta had been for the month previous to the 2nd of July a domestic in Louis Stern’s family, and while she was there most signally distinguished herself. On two different occasions she made free with the money drawer, spending the fifty cents she appropriated in procuring a supply of candy, which she lavishly distributed among her female acquaintances. On another occasion she actually contrived to secure to herself, out of Mrs. Stern’s pocket, while that lady was attending to household affairs, two ten cent stamps. Later in the day, while with a friend in the little park opposite Dr. Tyng’s church, she pulled from her pocket a stick of candy with a twenty-five stamp attached, and throwing it on the ground, exclaimed, “Ain’t I lucky? Here’s not only lots of candy, but a quarter dollar.” These little raids upon the money drawer cased Mrs. Stern to send for
HENRIETTA’S MOTHER,
who, on arriving, sadly upbraided her erring daughter, telling her that she had promised to stop doing those bad things. Henrietta got mad with Mrs. Stern for sending for her mother and was resolved to have revenge. On the 2d of July, while Mrs. Stern was bathing her baby, she was startled by hearing the breaking of a pane of glass in the rear room. Henrietta looked as innocent as a child and wondered what the young ruffians outside were trying to do. Mrs. Stern again applied herself to the baby, but suddenly another pane went into the fritters with a loud crash, and immediately after three different panes were knocked into pieces. Mrs. Stern now went to the rear of the house and closed the shutters, and Mr. Stern journeyed up to an adjoining roof to see where were concealed the rascally boys that were breaking his window. The shutters being closed, Mrs. Stern occupied herself once more with the baby, but was very shocked with a series of bangs against the window panes, which terribly alarmed her. she then went into the street, and, being joined by a detective and two officers, the rooms were examined, after which the officers went out to the yard to reconnoitre. No sooner had they got outside than again the glass in the window went
FLYING IN ALL DIRECTIONS
Attracting the attention of the neighbors in the adjoining houses, and thus gathering a crowd in the street. No one was now in the back room but Henrietta, and it was not long before a tad of sweetmeats that was on the mantelpiece went spinning on the floor and the glass or a picture hanging on the wall was cracked though not entirely broken. The police gave it up as a bad job, and questioned Henrietta as to her knowledge of the extraordinary occurrence; but the girl stoutly denied all knowledge how the thing was done, saying that sue suspected it mast have been them bad boys or a ghost. She was dismissed from Mr. Stern’s house that evening, however, and she admitted to a friend of hers in Seventeenth street that she had had a jolly lark at Stern’s; she said she had a lot of bits of brick concealed up her sleeves, with which she scared the wits oat of the whole of them. Mrs. Stern says that on one occasion Henrietta told her that a quilt been stolen from a clothes line in the yard but that next day a neighbor found it in the cellar of the house. The quilt was not yet quite dry and Mrs. Stern pat it out on the line again. About half an hour after Henrietta again told Mrs. Stern that the quilt had a second time mysteriously disappeared and that it was the strangest thing she had ever known. Mr. Stern descended to the cellar, and after a short exploration by the aid of a few matches that discovered the quilt in a corner and took it away with him. Henrietta looked as unconcerned as she had herself. put it there. The Sterns nave, beside the baby,
A LITTLE BOY ABOUT THREE YEARS OLD,
who was always in the habit or steeping with the girl in charge or the children. The little fellow after the first night be slept with Henrietta most positively objected to sleeping in the bed with her again and began to complain constantly of a pain in his foot. The parents treated this lightly, made him sleep with the girl for some time afterwards, but his father had frequently to carry him in the middle of the night, the crying with the pain in his foot. It seems that Henrietta had frightened the little fellow by threatening that the should surely cut his foot off. The day Henrietta was discharged Mrs. Stern’s baby got quite sick and the doctor had to be consulted to relieve it, and the following day the little boy got sick and had also to receive medical assistance. Mr. and Mrs. Stern rejoice to think that they got rid of this insane little girl, even at the expense of fifteen panes of glass, the loss of a jar of sweetmeats and the breaking of the glass in a picture frame.
But Henrietta took an this very quietly, and went home to her mother’s without shedding a single tear. In the rooms adjoining her mother’s, at No. 418 East Seventeenth street, dwell Mr. and Mrs. Dometion and their five little children. Mrs. Dometion is the housekeeper for the tenement house, and has been very much offended that the HERALD should have stated, a few days since, that the tenement house is not quite what it ought to be. The place is cleanly enough; but there it as doubt but that the air which one has to breathe in ascending the stairs to the top floor is not that of a pretty garden, where the perfume of the flowers gladdens the sense of smell. Anyhow, Mrs. Dometion had her quota to add to the story of
MISS HENRIETTA’S QUEER DOINGS.
Henrietta stayed round about the house all day on the Fourth or July, looking out of the window at the boys throwing the firecrackers, and amusing herself by pinching the children, perhaps, to make them cry. Mrs. Stern swears Henrietta used to pinch the boy. In the afternoon Henrietta took Mrs. Dometion’s little girl, about two years old, and her own little sister, into her mother’s room, and having got them in she deliberately lit a few matches and set fire to the dress of Mrs. Doinetion’s little girl. Henrietta’s little sister began screaming, and Henrietta herself went to the head of the stairs and began calling for Rob, her own little brother, who at the time was playing in the yard. Mrs. Dometion hearing the children’s screams at once rushed into the Weibel’s rooms and began screaming, too, when she saw her.
CHILD ENVELOPED IN FLAMES.
With a mother’s bravery the folded the child in her own dress and rolled her on the floor until the flames were extinguished and saved me child. She showed the reporter the charred dress yesterday, and among other thanksgivings which she uttered she was glad she had sweet oil in the house to ease the pains of the burnt child. But Henrietta looked on, Mrs. Dometion says, with annulled visage, and when asked about tae matter quietly said that “it was Rob who did it.” Henrietta’s little sister, however, who was an eyewitness of me lighting of the matches and that setting fire to the dress, told the whole truth. The whole truth did not disconcert Miss Henrietta in the very slightest degree. Yesterday Mrs. Wiebel went to Tremont Jail to see Henrietta, start clinging to the unfortunate maniac. There as another daughter younger than Henrietta, about whom all concur in saying that she has already shown
SIGNS OF INSANITY.
This series of acts of Henrietta, with the circumstances attending them, point conclusively to the deduction that she is insane. No human being at her age could possibly be so callous to the enormity of the crimes she was perpetrating or trying to perpetrate and be in her right senses. But never, on any occasion, as all those who know testify, showed the slightest feeling after the discovery of her strange doings. Mrs. Sterns says that as a servant she was willing and ready very and cleanly. The story of her doings when left her home, after the occurrences above narrated, has been already published.
[“The Baby Burner. – The Heartless Domestic, Henrietta Weibel. – A Strange Story of Precocious Iniquity. – An Attempt to Burn Her Next Door Neighbor’s Child.” New York Herald (N.Y.), Aug. 5, 1874, p. 4]
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