Ethel Mae Kreider, nineteen year old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph H. Kreider, of 519 North Seventh street, this city, died on her birthday anniversary, at the Good Samaritan hospital, at 6:50 o'clock, on Sunday evening, from causes which have impelled Coroner Manbeck to arrange for an inquest, to be held Wednesday afternoon at the court house at 3 o'clock.
Action to this effect was taken after hospital authorites turned over to the coroner an ante-mortem statement made by the young girl on Sunday morning, when she was told that she could not live. The statement was made in the presence of Dr. A. L. Hauer, who attended the patient since she was admitted to the hospital on Monday June 8; Adam F. Miller, Esq., attorney for the father of the deceased, and two interns of the hospital. A Carlisle doctor, a former coroner of Cumberland county, is accused in the statement of having performed an operation on the girl on Saturday, June 6, at the behest of Ralph H. Bixler, of Annville. As the statement alleges that the illegal operation was performed at Carlisle. Attorney Miller and Coroner Manbeck motored to Carlisle late Sunday night and held a conference with District Attorney Fred Reese, of Cumberland county, there. At this conference Dr. R. H. Longsworf, Cumberland county coroner's physician, was engaged to perform an autopsy, and he did so this morning, with the assistance of Dr. A. L. Hauer, Lebanon.
At the conclusion of their work and an announcement of their findings, Coroner Manbeck ordered the immediate arrest of Dr. T. W. Preston, of Middlesex, Cumberland county, a practitioner aged over 70 years, who maintains offices in Carlisle. Trooper A. F. Dahlstrom, of the Harrisburg barracks of State Police, who was summoned here, and who attended the autopsy, left at 12:30, immediately after post-mortem examination, to take the aged doctor into custody. Meanwhile other State Police were looking for Ralph Bixler, of Annville, as an accessory, and for Harold Boyer, another Annville youth, who is not yet charged with complicity, but who may be held as an important witness, as the girl's statement alleges that he drove the couple to Carlisle with a knowledge that a crime was to be committed.
District Attorney Reese, of Cumberland county, stated that only a few months ago Dr. Preston was tried at a criminal court in Carlisle for performing a similar operation on a 15-year-old girl of York county, who was taken to Carlisle for that purpose. The Lebanon case, for the same reason, will have to be presented in Cumberland county.
Miss Kreider was employed for some time past in a clerical capacity at the Robin's Silk company mill at Annville, and stayed with her maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Zacharias Bowman. Bixler, one of the accused men, is an employee of the same place.
Besides the parents and grandparents already named, the deceased girl leaves six brothers and sisters: Marian, Margaret, John, Ralph Jr., Betty Jane and Lois, all at home.
Lebanon Semi Weekly News - Monday, June 15, 1931