IT was Silas Bannerman who finally ran down that scientific wizard and
arch-enemy of mankind, Emil Gluck. Gluck’s confession, before he went to
the electric chair, threw much light upon the series of mysterious
events, many apparently unrelated, that so perturbed the world between
the years 1933 and 1941. It was not until that remarkable document was
made public that the world dreamed of there being any connection between
the assassination of the King and Queen of Portugal and the murders of
the New York City police officers. While the deeds of Emil Gluck were
all that was abominable, we cannot but feel, to a certain extent, pity
for the unfortunate, malformed, and maltreated genius. This side of his
story has never been told before, and from his confession and from the
great mass of evidence and the documents and records of the time we are
able to construct a fairly accurate portrait of him, and to discern the
factors and pressures that moulded him into the human monster he became
and that drove him onward and downward along the fearful path he trod.
Emil Gluck was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1895. His father, Josephus
Gluck, was a special policeman and night watchman, who, in the year 1900,
died suddenly of pneumonia. The mother, a pretty, fragile creature, who,
before her marriage, had been a milliner, grieved herself to death over
the loss of her husband. This sensitiveness of the mother was the
heritage that in the boy became morbid and horrible.
In 1901, the boy, Emil, then six years of age, went to live with his
aunt, Mrs. Ann Bartell. She was his mother’s sister, but in her breast
was no kindly feeling for the sensitive, shrinking boy. Ann Bartell was
a vain, shallow, and heartless woman. Also, she was cursed with poverty
and burdened with a husband who was a lazy, erratic ne’er-do-well. Young
Emil Gluck was not wanted, and Ann Bartell could be trusted to impress
this fact sufficiently upon him. As an illustration of the treatment he
received in that early, formative period, the following instance is
given.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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