Raleigh, Dec. 30—Raleigh police, after broadcasting his description all over the country, were late today without any clue as to where or in what direction young Lawrence Gatling went Saturday night after he had pumped the bodies of his wife and Owen Stevens, her friend, full of steel from an automatic pistol.
A description of Gatling, who bears a conspicuous mark in the center of his forehead, went to every police station in this section of the United States and it was thought impossible for him to get very far away. Some of his cronies in town, however, believe that he has made for Mexico and that he will never be apprehended.
Except for the horrible manner of the double killing, there is little concern in Raleigh about it. Gatling for the past few years has been giving the police a great deal of trouble. At the time of his shooting Saturday night, he was a fugitive and wanted here on other shooting charges—considerably less disastrous.
The surprising thing about the double tragedy, which has involved two well known families of the county, is that Mrs. Gatling, her sister, and the Fespermans, with whom the dead woman and Miss Janie Gatling were living, should have located in one of the fashionable residential sections of the town. They only moved in Friday evening and neighbors had begun ejectment proceedings downtown five minutes before the tragedy. Fesperman, who is a taxi driver, and his wife bore unsavory reputations, having recently been ordered to leave a downtown hotel.
If Gatling is apprehended and brought back here for trial, there is considerable doubt of his conviction in a murder charge, not withstanding the clear-cut evidence against him, His friends say that while he had not lived with his wife for months, he was very jealous of her and had frequently warned her about other men. Stevens, the dead man, is said by the police to have been particularly objectionable to Gatling as an associate of his wife. Both, the police say, have engaged in the liquor business as partners.
Gatling is the eldest son of former Postmaster Bart M. Gatling, now a leading member of the Raleigh bar. The family is socially prominent here but the boy has been the black sheep since boyhood. Mrs. Gatling, dead, was a Miss Griffin from the Zebulon section, and was a very pretty woman. One child, a youngster less than four, survives her.
From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Dec. 31, 1923
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