The Stark County Democrat

An Outrageous Case of Child Murder at Sandusky.

A. B. Ackerman, the Orrville Agent of the Reymann Brewing Company, of Wheeling, Implicated in the Case.

Some time ago an attempt was made by unknown parties to enter the residence of Mr. A. B. Ackerman, at Orrville, at night, supposedly with the intention to commit robbery. Mr. Ackerman is a general agent for the Reymann Brewing Company, of Wheeling, with a bottling works at Orrville, and usually has a considerable sum of money about him. He visits Canton frequently, and is well known here. Shortly after the attempt to break into Mr. Ackerman's house a bullet was fired from a pistol through the window of his bed-room. The latter occurrence was quite a mystery. Possibly both the occurrences mentioned had some connection with a case of seduction, etc., which is detailed in the following dispatch:

SANDUSKY, O., Dec. 7.—As indicated in my dispatches yesterday, Marshal Bowen of this city was closely on the trail of the child murderers. He found them about two miles from Clarksfield, Huron county, a station on the Wheeling & Lake Erie. They were found at the house of a respectable man named Porter. The girl in the case is his daughter, May Porter, aged 18, and the man Jerry Fahey. The story in brief is as follows:

A man named Ackerman, who travels for a brewing establishment, became acquainted with a girl, who is pretty and of attractive manners. Ackerman is married and has children. He accomplished the girl's ruin, then induced her to compromise it for a certain sum. She left home and went to Lakeside where her child was born. Fahey had boarded at her father's house and knew the girl's secret. He followed her to Lakeside and they lived there as man and wife for three months under the name of Fitzgerald. They remained there nearly a month after the birth of the child, during which time it was brought to the surgeon here to be operated on. Last Monday a week, Mrs. Cooper, the midwife, accompanied by the couple, went to Toledo. Here Mrs. Cooper turned the babe over to them alive and well, and left them. May and Fahey took the train back to this town the same evening, put up at the Weigel house and remained until Tuesday evening. They then went to the B. & O. depot taking the babe with them. The girl told the officer that at the depot Fahey said he would take the child to an infirmary doctor. He was absent for some time and returned without it and they went on to Huron county. Last night Fahey admitted to one of the officers that he had taken the child down the track which led to the place where it was found, fastened a rope around the child, attached a stone to it and, alive as it was, tossed it into the bay.

The marshal arrived with his prisoners this morning and they were jailed. They were interviewed by your correspondent. Fahey denies his crime, having consulted an attorney. He admitted that the child was with them at the hotel, but says he last saw it with the girl at the hotel, and that it was not with them when they went to the B. & O. depot. He did not explain why he was not surprised. The hotel people say the couple took the child to the depot with them. The remains have been thoroughly identified by the midwife and others, and the girl, May Porter, does not deny it is her child. There is much indignation at the cold-blooded atrocity of the crime.