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The Man Who Killed His Wife And Started Life Sentence For The Crime All Within 3.5 Hours
The wheels of justice moved incredibly fast in the case of one murderer nearly a century ago
Unfortunately, the legal system can move painfully slow at times. This is especially true for more significant crimes, given the stakes at hand. However, this was not the case in 1932 when a Wisconsin man named Leonard Tritt murdered his wife at 8:30 in the morning and was in prison to start serving a life sentence for that crime at noon the same day.
The June 4, 1932 issue of the Chicago Tribune reported how the 31-year-old Tritt shot and killed his estranged 27-year-old wife, Mabel at her home in Omro, Wisconsin. He also shot and wounded his two young sons, Jack and Lowell, but fortunately they survived the attack due to first aid provided by the sheriff who arrived on the scene.
Following the brutal shooting, Tritt immediately drove to nearby Oshkosh, where he surrendered to police just 20 minutes later. Offering no opposition to the accusations, he waived a preliminary hearing by 10:15 that morning, and just a half hour after that was before Judge Fred Begliner to formally plead guilty to first degree murder. He was immediately given a life sentence at 10:55 a.m. and transported to the…
