Czolgosz to Die at 7 Tomorrow

Assassin of President Will Go to Electric Chair in Auburn with Scant Ceremony.
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CURRENT TESTED DAILY.
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Prisoner Crazed with Fear When He Hears Workmen Preparing for His Doom
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SENTENCE NOT YET READ.

     Auburn, N. Y., Oct. 27.—[Special.]—The time that Leon F. Czolgosz, assassin of President McKinley, has to live is reckoned by hours now, but there has been no relaxation of the stringent rule under which the prisoner has been secluded since his confinement. Auburn prison was closed today to any man who sought the assassin, and so it will remain until the prisoner has paid the penalty, which the law exacts. In fact, the plan to deprive Czolgosz living of any notoriety has been extended to deprive Czolgosz dead of notoriety.
     The hour of 7 on Tuesday morning is the time set by Warden J. Warren Mead for the execution.

Czolgosz Shows Alarm.

     Murderer Czolgosz called his guard to the cell door today and remarked: “They’re getting the chair ready. I hear them.”
     Father Hyacinthe Fudzinski of Buffalo, who visited the assassin last Friday, was with him for nearly an hour this evening. He came from Buffalo on a late train. After leaving the prison he said that the assassin was in a better frame of mind and more disposed to accept consolation. He would not say, however, that the assassin had repented. Father Fudzinski said that the prisoner was in a morbid, highly nervous state, so paralyzed with fear that he is in a semi-stupor, which gives him an appearance of indifference.

Would Live Different Life.

     “He has admitted that if he had his life to live over he would be a different fellow,” said the priest. “I have strong hopes for him.”
     He volunteered it as his personal belief that the assassin was on the verge of collapse at the end and might be carried to the death chair.
     Father Fudzinski would not say that he would accompany the assassin to the death chair. He would not say that the assassin had asked him to do so. The father said he would offer his services and hoped they would be accepted.
     “He is a strange product—a puzzle,” said the priest.

Dead to World Since Midnight.

     It is understood that an unrepealed law has been found that will allow the warden to refuse any request for Czolgosz’s body from even his relatives, and will give the warden the privilege of disposing of it. In that event within two hours after the execution, unless Dr. McDonald makes an analysis of the brain, Czolgosz’s body, clothes, letters, and everything reminiscent of him in the prison will be disposed of; the body of the assassin will be buried in quicklime, and the clothes, letters, and packages will be consumed by fire. And this is not all.
     Warden Mead, with Superintendent Collins’ approval, has decided that for the next thirty hours preceding the execution of Czolgosz not one word of his condition or actions shall be given out from the prison. In other words, the man, beginning from midnight, is practically dead, so far as the public is concerned.
     When his death is accomplished Warden Mead will give out a brief statement of the prisoner’s last hours, including any confession he may make. The result of the autopsy will also be given out by the Warden.

Formal Report to Go Out.

     At the execution on Tuesday, Dr. Carlos F. McDonald of New York and Prison Physician Gerin will be the attending physicians, and the priests, if any are requested by Czolgosz, will be the two Polish ones that have heretofore visited him. State Controller Erastus Knight of Buffalo has been asked to be foreman of the official jury, and will be here. The rest of the jury of twelve men is made up of prominent individuals, including some other State officials.

Rumored Change in Time.

     Various reports changing that time have gone through Auburn today and tonight. One rumor places the time at 7 o’clock tomorrow, but that is discredited by the fact that Superintendent of State Prisons Cornelius V. Collins will not arrive here until 3 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, and none of the regularly summoned witnesses has yet reached Auburn.
     The chair in which Czolgosz will sit to receive the deadly electrical shock was examined and tested today by State Electrician E. F. Davis and is ready for the part that it is to play in the final scene of the great national tragedy. Davis carefully examined the wiring, switchboard, and electrodes and satisfied himself that they were in good condition. He also inspected the dynamos in the prison shop where the current is generated, and at his direction the current was for a brief period sent pulsating into the deathhouse as it will go on Tuesday morning, carrying final punishment to the murderer.

Prison Officials Drilled.

     Electrician Davis will look the apparatus over again tomorrow, and review with the prison officials the plan under which the sentence of death is to be carried out.
     Czolgosz will be the fifty-ninth man in the State and the fifteenth at Auburn prison at whose electrocution Davis has applied the current.
     The death warrant has not yet been read to the prisoner, but it is believed that it will be tomorrow afternoon. The general practice is to read this paper some time after the commencement of the period for execution designated by the court. That period in this commenced at midnight tonight.
     Dr. Carlos F. McDonald of New York City, who examined Czolgosz in Buffalo and pronounced the prisoner sane, has been anxious to take away with him from the autopsy the assassin’s brain for purposes of microscopical examination. Permission was refused.

Father Sends Last Message.

     Cleveland, O., Oct. 27.—The last message from the father of Leon Czolgosz was sent this afternoon, when the elder Czolgosz said:
     “Tell Leon that I hope that he may rest in peace, that he will become reconciled to God, and will meet his end bravely. Tell him that as much as I and all of our family regret his most unhappy plight, we can do nothing to interfere; that he alone is responsible for his unfortunate position, and that he must meet his punishment as a consequence.”