August 25, 1914 --- Stella Hodge's Death Recalls Queer History

As published in the Buffalo Evening News: 


STELLA HODGE'S DEATH RECALLS QUEER HISTORY

Mania for Entering Into Sensation Murder Cases Either as Chief Witness or Alleged Principal Brought Her to Notice of Nearly Every Sleuth in Country.

With the shipment of the body of Stella Hodge, the woman of mystery, who died yesterday in the Buffalo State Hospital, to Milan, Pa., for burial there is closed a chapter in criminal history that has carried with it deep interest to detectives and police officers throughout the country.

Stella Hodge, by her own confessions, projected herself into two sensational murder investigations and figured conspicuously in half a dozen other criminal cases of lesser importance. The NEWS yesterday exclusively published the news of her death and her identification.

Stella Hodge confessed the killing of Emile Amann at Warren, Pa. in 1911. Later she repudiated the confession, but it was not until she had succeeded in completely disarranging the plans of the authorities who were about about to prosecute John M. Andrews, president of the Warren Water company, on a charge of committing the murder. #unknown word# has she since been out of the sight of detectives.

Enters Carmen Case.

A few weeks ago she appeared in Niagara Falls. She gave her name as Helen Cohen, and sought an interview with Chief of Police Lyons. To him she confided that she had killed Mrs. Louis Bailey in the office of Dr. Edwin Carman at Freeport, L. I., and that Mrs. Carman, who was then being held, was innocent.

Chief Lyons promptly started an investigation. Mrs. Cohen was closely examined. She told a disconnected story of the killing at Freeport. Allenists who had had her under observation finally pronounced her demented and the woman was committed to the Buffalo state Hospital.

Up to the time no one had recognized her as the famous Stella Hodge. Quietly she took her place in the big hospital and gave the attendants no trouble until Sunday afternoon. Then she told one of the orderlies that she had taken poison. Efforts to save her life failed and she died late in the afternoon. Her body was taken to the morgue.

Identifies Stella Hodge. 

In the meantime a search of the woman's baggage was made and the detectives had discovered papers which brought back memories of the Amann Case. A suspicion had entered the minds of some of them that the woman might be Stella Hodge.

After her death yesterday Detective George W. Newton, head of the Byrnes agency, went to the morgue to view the body. There he identified the dead woman as Stella Hodge, and notified her father, Perry Hodge of Milan, Pa.The latter hurried on to Buffalo and completed the identification.

The Hodge woman has used half a dozen aliases in her operations in a score of cities. Recently for blackmailing purposes, the police say, she secured employment in a  Dunkirk hotel and was attempting to obtain money for a prominent merchant of that city.

At the time of the suppose kidnapping of Warren McCarrick of Philadelphia several months ago, the Hodge woman, posing as a private detective, convinced several Buffalo newspapers that she was on the trail of the kidnappers of the boy and would soon have them under arrest. The woman's mind, the police believe, was becoming unbalanced at that time. It was only a few weeks later that she babbled the story of her supposed connection with the Carmen case to Chief of Police Lyons.

Knew All Sleuths

Stella Hodge was 38 years old. She is said to have had a speaking acquaintance with every detective of prominence in the East, and to have sometimes been of assistance to them in their investigations. Following the acquittal of John M. Andrews on the charge of killing Emile Andrews, detectives of the Pennsylvania state constabulary began a thorough probing of the murder, and they tool Stella Hodge under surveillance. Today they assert the woman could have honestly told the name of the murderer of Amann. Constantly they trailed her about the country and once in Erie when she objected to their attentions she was promptly thrown into jail on a blackmailing charge.

She escaped trail following her confession at Atlantic City, N.J., that she killed Emile Amann, because Pinkerton detectives who immediately began to dig down into her story showed it to be untrue. Then she admitted to the authorities that she had lied.

Medical Examiner George B Etocker performed an autopsy on her body yesterday and later reported that death was due to an affection of the lung and not to poisoning.