Girl, 20, Missing; Legless Man Held

Divorced Bride Disappears After Passing a Night With Her Former Aged Husband.

Two things Helen O'Leary said just before she disappeared in Chicago a few days ago are the expressions upon which her father and mother are basing their theory of her whereabouts. She said:

"I'd rather commit suicide than have any more said about me and Eugene."

"Mother, I can just feel him influencing me. I can just feel him drawing my brains out of my head with his own."

And so they arrested Eugene - "Col." Eugene Edward Seymour, 60, legless and huge-handed, at one time strange mate of the 20-year-old girl who continues to fascinate her, altho she has been divorced from him.

The legless "colonel" was released upon his own recognizance and upon his promise to appear in court at a later date. Meantime the hunt is on for the girl.

Had Girl in Power for Years.
"For several years we have been worried to death," said the missing girl's stepmother, "over the spell this man Seymour seems to exert over her.

"We allowed her to marry him two years ago when she insisted that she loved him. But she came home after five days, was reconciled again, lived with him twenty-eight days and then stayed home again. She was afraid of him, she would tell him, and related revolting tales. I begged her to get a divorce and forget him.

"After she was divorced I got desperate sometimes about Helen trying to run around with boys she didn't know, and once she was mad about a married man. I took her to a physician for a mental examination and he told me that she had the mind of a 12-year-old - that she was weak and could not exert her own will. Which is true."

Tells Strange Story and Disappears.
Helen disappeared on her way to church on Sunday. On the previous Thursday she had vanished and came dashing in, says her stepmother, with a strange tale of having smelled a heavy perfume while she was downtown and knew no more until she woke up in a hotel in Milwaukee, with her ex-husband beside her. She stole away while he slept, taking $87 from under his pillow.

"I believe no such story," said her father wearily in court. "There was no heavy perfume and she was not kidnapped. I guess she went of her own accord."

"She did," said Seymour. "We had decided to be re-married. She told me she thought she had wronged me by getting a divorce and we wanted to get married at Waukegan. We got there at 5 and the courthouse was closed, so she suggested we go on to Milwaukee. The next day, under pretext of buying some newspapers, she left the room, and I found she had gone to Chicago."

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 3.