State v. Lewkowitz

178 S.W. 58, 265 Mo. 613, 1915 Mo. LEXIS 38
Supreme Court of Missouri·Decided July 6, 1915·Published·Cited by 7 cases

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] evidence 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] room 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.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

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

178 S.W. 58 (State v. Lewkowitz) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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)