Insane Suspect in Arson Investigation Sets Fires to Form "New World in Air"

Pennsylvania, 1920

Weird Story Related at County Jail by Maniac From Austria

Denies School Burnings

Frank Karna, Arrested by State Police at Webster, Says He is Agent in Two Counties of Band Formed at Przemyal; Fired Lumber Yards

In the arrest yesterday afternoon at Webster, Westmoreland county, of Frank Karna, an Austrian, who was placed in jail in Uniontown the authorities have a maniac who has confessed to burning three lumber yards and a stable at Webster. That is the extent of the connection they have made between the prisoner and the fires in Fayette and Westmoreland counties that have caused a loss of $500,000.

Karna, whose conversation is of the rambling nature of the mentally unbalanced, denies that he had anything to do with the school house burnings, that he ever burned a school house anywhere.

Questioned this morning Karna told the officers he was working under an organization with headquarters in Przemyal, Austria, and that he had been assigned to start fires in Fayette and Westmoreland counties for a peculiar purpose. The theory of his organization, as he related it, is this:

That the smoke from the fires started by the organization goes into the air and forms a new world — one without ills, by reason of the fact that all germs are killed in the fiery process. This is the only remedy for the troubles now besetting the human race. The world is too old, it has stood too long in one place. It needs a change as a chicken house needs to be changed from spot to spot to allow the sunshine to kill the germs of disease that accumulate. The world will be happy as soon as all germs are destroyed. This will be when his organization has set sufficient fires.

Karna is six feet tall. He has a wild, staring look, with a weirdly serious expression of the face. He told the officers he came to America eight years ago and has lived at Rankin, Webster, Pittsburgh and Donora. He has two brothers at Donora.

Referring to the organization set up to cure the ills of the world by arson, Karna said the "captain" was John Yelen of Przemysl; the "farmer," Yuzef Bukowsky; the "justice of the peace," John Putys; the "burgess," Yedicy Tydzik, all of Sivysouigalicyoi, Austria.

While the officers were inclined last night to believe they had the firebug who had terrorized the two counties for weeks, they were today without anything on which to base any such presumption. The prisoner told an entirely different story today from that drawn from him after his arrest when he declared an "irresistible something" caused him to start fires and that before he could tell more he must "get some rest so he could think."

The story that the man had confessed to the burning of the Marion school building at Fayette City is denied.

Officers are convinced that no one man started all the fires. They were too widespread.

The arrest was made by state troopers.

—The Daily Courier, Connellsville, Pennsylvania, December 11, 1920, page 1.