BEHIND ANOTHER'S BODY.
HOW WOMAN HOPED TO CONCEAL
TRUTH FROM HER FOLKS.
Allowed the Body of a Suicide to
Be Indentified As Hers and
Sent Home for Burial.
"I did not want my people to know of my circumstances. I preferred that they should think me dead, and that is why I said nothing to prevent the dead body of another woman being sent to my home as mine."
So Mrs. Ina Ford, 529 Walnut street, is said to have confided to a friend, Mrs. Blanche White, her reasons for not notifying her father, Edwin Hurst, of Muncie, Ind., that she was alive and well in Kansas City, notwithstanding the fact that Kansas City papers had informed her that the body of a suicide had been identified as hers and forwarded to Muncie.
On the afternoon of June 27, a woman who had been living with Frank Palmer, at 928 Genesee, went to the Fowler packing house, where Palmer was employed, and, after a few words with him drank carbolic acid from the effects of which she died soon afterwards. Palmer left city that night, and the authorities were given information leading them to believe the dead woman to have been Miss Ina Ford of Muncie, Ind. Mrs. Ford's parents were notified, and under their directions, the body was shipped to Muncie.
Mrs. Ford's father discovered the mistake as soon as the body reached Muncie. He notified the Kansas City police of the error in identity and sent the body of the suicide back to Kansas City.
When Mrs. Ford learned that the mistake had been detected, she at once wired her home. But she does not deny that she knew that the other woman's body had been sent to Muncie as hers.
Attempts to locate Mrs. Ford at her rooming house last night were ineffectual. Patrolman Larrabee and a newspaper man obtained an inverview with Miss White, an intimate friend of the Ford woman, in which it was learned that Mrs. Ford had left Kansas City. She is said to have told Miss White that she did not notify her parents of the error until she knew the secret had been discovered, as she was in poor circumstances and preferred they should think her dead than to know the truth about her. She avers that a former lover is responsible for the mistake in identity of the dead woman.
A searching inquiry last night developed the fact that the dead woman was Miss Ines Others, who had eloped with Palmer from St. Joseph, where her husband, Walter Others, resides. There was a slight personal resemblance between the two women.
