Jackson-Randolph County IL Archives News.....CLIFTON SOBS OUT STORY OF MURDERING HIS WIFE June 25, 1946
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/il/ilfiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Mary Riseling riseling@insightbb.com July 15, 2006, 3:13 am

The Daily Independent Newspaper, Murphysboro, IL June 25, 1946



Chester, Ill., June 25

Sheriff Elmo MORRISON said today that Daniel S. CLIFTON, 32, Centralia, Ill.,
railroad foreman, had confessed beating his wife with a hammer, cutting her
throat and then placing her body in the path of a freight train.

MORRISON said that CLIFTON "sobbed out the confession" last Friday during a talk
in the sheriff's office.

"Elmo, I'll tell you everything," he said. "I'm in an awful mess."

MORRISON said he had withheld the announcement while "checking several facts."

The slaying took place last June 1, and the decapitated body was found on the
railroad tracks near Sparta, Ill., the next day.

CLIFTON was arrested June 2. He denied the slaying, but a coroner's jury
recommended on June 17 that CLIFTON be held for murder after Rosalie TEETS, 19,
Salem, Ill., had testified that she and CLIFTON were to have been married the
day after his wife's death. She said he had told her he was divorced.

MORRISON quoted CLIFTON as saying that he and his wife had argued on the day of
the slaying and that he had knocked her down and then hit her on the head with a
hammer. She fell on the floor and he left her lying there and went to work,
MORRISON said.

CLIFTON said his wife was lying there when he got home and that he left her
there while he went to call on Miss TEETS. Assuming his wife was dead when he
returned, he said, he put on his work clothes and drover her body 55 miles to
Sparta.

There, he said, he put her body on the tracks, slit her throat and departed.
MORRISON said an autopsy report indicated that she was alive but unconscious
until her throat was cut.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/il/jackson/newspapers/cliftons109nnw.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/ilfiles/

File size: 2.3 Kb