Insane Man Threatened to Kill Restaurant Keeper

Lincoln, Nebraska, 1920

Threatened to Kill Restaurant Keeper

Man Under Arrest Knew How to Use Gun

Told a Physician That He Intended Shooting Up the Place During the Evening Meal Hour

When two deputy sheriffs and a deputy United States marshal dropped into a South Tenth restaurant during the supper hour Tuesday evening and gazed curiously around and then consulted in whispers with the proprietor, cashier and other attaches, interest upon the part of everyone in the place became quickly apparent. The patron who had been but a moment before busily engaged in the mastication of a chop turned quickly upon his high stool and gazed with suspicion upon his neighbors on either side. Soon everyone in the long room as well as those in the kitchen to the rear had been apprised of the fact that an insane man had threatened to appear and shoot up the place and that the officers were looking for him.

The crazy man failed to reach the restaurant, but had he arrived it is thought he would have found it necessary to content himself with shattering dishes and coffee urns with his bullets, as it became speedily apparent there would have been no human targets in sight. As a wise general has at all times a line of retreat available, so has the long headed proprietor of a bean bureau who has been warned that armed invasion is imminent. So everyone from the boss to the dishwasher was prepared to duck and decamp at the first indication of hostilities. One well known lawyer gulped down what was in his mouth, slid from his altitudinous perch and throwing a bill at the alert cashier, vanished through the front door. He is said to have reached his office in record time.

But the madman came not. Deputy Sheriffs Anderson and Moore and Deputy United States Marshal Carroll went from the restaurant to the room which he had been occupying at 1448 0 street and there found him. He is named in the insanity complaint which had been lodged against him in the office of the clerk of the district court as M. L. Munger and during the afternoon he had called at the office of a physician and announced his intention of shooting up the restaurant.

He assured the doctor that the people at the place had been taking his meals, were determined to kill him, and had been putting poison in his coffee. It was his intention to go there at supper time, and upon the slightest indication that there was anything wrong he would kill everyone in the place. As soon as the man had left his office the physician reported the matter to the proper officers and steps were taken to place Munger under restraint. The deputies first visited the restaurant and after ascertaining that the slaughter had not as yet taken place, they went to the room of the demented man.

A knock at the door was responded to by Munger, who was at once taken charge of. The man had in his possession a large automatic revolver with a box of shells, and in his room was also a rifle with ammunition. He was very friendly with the officers, but insisted upon forcing cigarets upon Deputy "Bob" Anderson. He frankly assured that officer that the "pills" would lull him, that being the end avowedly aimed at. He was convinced that Anderson had a large family and carried life insurance and he thought that "he would be worth more dead than alive." Munger was locked up in the county jail and it was thought he would be given a hearing before the insanity commission some time during the day.

Nothing was learned by the officers of the family or antecedents of the unfortunate man, who claims to be a mechanic and an inventor. He had in his room a suit case, lined with sheet iron and fastened with five locks, and it was stated his patent is kept in this receptacle.

—The Evening State Journal and Lincoln Daily News, Lincoln, Nebraska, February 25, 1920, page 3.

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.

Lunatic Stops The Train, Says He's J. P. Morgan

1909

LUNATIC STOPPED THE TRAIN

Imagined He Was J. P. Morgan and Consequently, What He Said Had to Go

The strange freaks of a madman caused some trouble near Central Islip, L.I., one night recently.

A man stood in the middle of the tracks among the scrub oaks and waved the well-known "stop" signal as an express train from the city approached. The engineer stopped the train and the train crew, all of whom expected to be informed that a wreck had been averted, as miscreants have been placing obstructions upon the rails at intervals, ran forward to meet the stranger, who walked with dignity toward the coaches.

"What's the matter?" demanded the first trainman, breathlessly, as he neared the stranger. No reply was vouchsafed. Nor would the man open his mouth until he met the conductor at the steps of the forward coach. The conductor asked the same question. "I wanted the train to stop as I wished to get on," began the man. "There's no station here among the scrub oaks," said the conductor, who hadn't time to get angry. "True," replied the stranger, "but there should be one. I am J. P. Morgan and when I want a train to stop it's got stop, see?"

He climbed aboard, unchecked by the trainmen, who began to see the drift of affairs. "My pass," said the new passenger, tendering an oak leaf to the conductor, who inspected and punched it gravely.

When the train reached Central Islip he was turned over to the police authorities.

—The Sheboygan Daily Press, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, December 16, 1909, page 7.