State v. Lewkowitz

178 S.W. 58, 265 Mo. 613, 1915 Mo. LEXIS 38
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedJuly 6, 1915
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 178 S.W. 58 (State v. Lewkowitz) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Lewkowitz, 178 S.W. 58, 265 Mo. 613, 1915 Mo. LEXIS 38 (Mo. 1915).

Opinion

ROY, C.

Defendant, having been sentenced to ninety-nine years in the penitentiary on a conviction of rape, has appealed.

The offense was committed (if at all) on March 9, 1914, between five-fifteen and six o’clock p. m. at 1224 Grand Avenue, Kansas City. The evidence tends to inculpate at least five men.

The information in the case was filed on March 24, 1914, and the trial was begun on April 27, 1914. Another information was filed against Yic Gueringer, Thomas Kinevan, Leo Brennan and Oscar Harrison. From a conviction under that information Harrison appealed to this court. The opinion affirming that conviction is reported in 263 Mo. 642.

The prosecutrix, Gertrude Shidler, was born and reared in the country near Terre Plaute, Indiana, spending nearly all her life on the farm. She married Clyde Shidler in 1903, and became the mother of three children.' She was divorced in 1910, remarried to her former husband in 1911, and again divorced. She charged her father-in-law with raping her, and received from him five or six hundred dollars in settlement of that trouble. In a deposition he denied the charge, but admitted that he paid the money. There were witnesses from Indiana on both sides of the question as to his reputation and as to the reputation of the prosecutrix. Mrs. Shidler admitted on the stand that while living in Indiana she charged another man with an attempt to rape her. He was sentenced to jail. She admitted that she came to Kansas City about two years before the trial and there lived with Ray Ausherman. She said it was under a promise of marriage. Ausherman testified that on several occasions he had sexual intercourse with her in Indiana. The [621]*621evidence tended strongly to show that she lived for a while with one Farina as his wife in Kansas City. While in Terre Haute she sometimes served as a practical, but untrained, nurse. She followed the same vocation after coming to Kansas City. For several months prior to the alleged offense she lived in the home of a lawyer, Mr. Wimmer, and nursed patients of Dr. Tucker, and perhaps of other physicians. She testified that she had met Dr. Schwartz who was an osteopath. During the previous summer of 1913, in her nurse’s garb, she often attended the picture show conducted by Yic Gueringer, and on one occasion she was carried from that show in a faint. There was testimony that she suffered from “heart leakage.”

The house in which it is claimed the offense occurred in an old two-story building fronting east. A plain, uncarpeted wooden stairway leads from the sidewalk to a landing which extends five or six feet west to a door, which opens into a hall which runs west,, without any openings on the south, to a window in the west end. That window opens on the low roof of the first story which extends sixteen feet further west to-an alley. The front room of the second story is entered from the landing and has no door opening directly into the hall. That room was occupied by the sign painter Forrest, who was therein at the time of the occurrence in controversy, which took place in the “big room” next west. Between those two rooms were double doors, which were kept closed except that there was a crack between them probably an inch wide at the top,, vanishing as it neared the floor. Against these doors-on the east side was a board rack used in sign painting.. Its height was four or five feet. There is a door opening directly from the hall into the big room. The next door west opens from the hall into a small, unearpeted and almost unfurnished “entry” room from which a door opens east into the big room. The space north of this small room is not separated from the big [622]*622room and may be called an alcove. There is come confusion in the evidence by reason of the fact that it is sometimes spoken of as a part of the big room, and sometimes as a separate room. At the southwest comer of the alcove is a door into a bed-room on the west. There were no signs or other peculiar indicia of a doctor’s office on the premises. The extreme west room is the kitchen, opening by doors and windows on the low roof. It was furnished with a gas range, an ice box, bottles of 'beer, a telephone, chairs and a table. Opening into the kitchen and on the east thereof is the dining room reasonably well furnished. Under the rug in that room was a hole seven by sixteen inches in the floor and fitted with a loose board. Between the dining room and the big room were bedrooms and a bathroom. A ladder in the" bathroom led to the roof through a- skylight. There was a skylight over the big room and some of the other rooms. The doors between the hall and the rooms had Yale locks, and some of ■them had mortised locks, how many is not shown.

About five o’clock Mrs. Shidler, dressed not as a nurse but in an ordinary street costume, went to the office of Dr. Tucker in the Missouri building, to be treated for a severe cold bordering on pneumonia. She left that building about fifteen minutes later, and in front of it met the defendant. Their accounts of what followed are contradictory of each other. The substance of his evidence is that they agreed to have sexual intercourse, and that they went together to 1224 Grand Avenue, he borrowing four dollars from a friend on the way, that they went upstairs, through the little room into the big room; that he laid down two dollars and that she took off her hat and coat and lay down on the davenport; that he started to have intercourse with her, but found her clothes so dirty that he was so disgusted he left the building at once; that there was no one else present at the time. She testified that when they met he tipped bis hat and said, [623]*623“Good evening. Are you a nurse?” That she answered, “Yes,” whereupon he said, “Dr. Schwartz wants you on a case right away.” That she said, “Dr. Schwartz, where?” that he said, “Right down here. Come and I will walk with you;” that they went to 1224 Grand Avenue, up the steps, into the hall and into the little room-; that thereupon she said, “This room doesn’t look like a doctor’s office to me;” that he said, “On into the next room,” into which she could see and which looked like it might be a doctor’s office ; that they entered the big room and that Lewkowitz locked the door and made a lewd proposal to her, .at the same time taking hold of her; that she pulled ■loose and ran to the door, which she found locked; that he went into the room on the west and came back •with three or four other men, among whom were Gueringer and Harrison; that while she was crying, screaming and trying to get free, they pulled her onto the table and held her, while Lewkowitz, Harrison and Gueringer had intercourse with her in the usual way; and that Gueringer tried to have intercourse with her in ■the rectum, and then stuck a pistol to her mouth, compelling her to open it, and inserted his sexual organ therein, threatening to kill her if she bit him,. She testified thats she then lost consciousness. As to what occurred when she became conscious she said: £ ‘ Some one had thrown water on me and they were cursing about it. I hardly know what was said, only something about the water; then there was — I don’t know whether the one that had thrown the water went out into the hall. Gueringer and some one went out into the hall, and went down the hall, and after I got up I •seen that the door was open; then I ran out of the door ¡and looked down the hall east to the entrance and there was two or three men down there. I could see through the glass door there was a man or some object on the other side. It was either some one trying to get in or they were trying to get out. So, I looked down the [624]

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Related

State v. Ward
457 S.W.2d 701 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1970)
Mitchell v. City of Springfield
410 S.W.2d 585 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1966)
State v. Jones
386 S.W.2d 111 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1964)
State v. Adams
380 S.W.2d 362 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1964)
Jenkins v. Commonwealth
111 S.E. 101 (Supreme Court of Virginia, 1922)
State v. Guerringer
178 S.W. 65 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1915)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
178 S.W. 58, 265 Mo. 613, 1915 Mo. LEXIS 38, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-lewkowitz-mo-1915.