Harris Mike01

Waupaca Post

February 24, 1927

(see also Veriky in Crime Folder)

Into Prison, Out of Prison, In Again Out Again, If Possible

Forty-three years ago Mike Harris committed a double murder of an old couple named Veriky, in the Balilee district Town of Lind, and was sentenced to life imprisonment at Waupun. After serving thirty-two years Harris was discharged and after being at liberty ten years, he applied last autumn for readmission intothe isntituion that had come to seem home to him. He pleaded that he now knew no other home. He was admitted to the prison at Waupun and after spending the winter there now wants his liberty again.

Well does the writer remember that thrifty German couple, who for years traveled those six miles from their forty acre farm home to Waupaca by lumber wagon, speedy up to the pace of an ox team. Mrs. Veriky knitted woolen socks and mittens hour after hour through the trip to town and home again.

After Harris had worked during the summer of 1884, for S.A. Barrington, now assessor of Waupaca, on the latter’s farm at Crystal Lake, he went to Veriky’s to chop wood and one night after supper he followed the old German farmer to the barn supposedly to assist with the chores. An exe from the wood pile was taken as the instrument of death. Leaving the body of Veriky at the barn, the murderer returned to the house and executed the woman whose industry and thrift had helped her husband to accumulate what seemed to Harris to be a fortune.