Emilyn Kesler – Died 1909

KESLER

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 9/1/2019 at 14:59:48

Source: Twice-A-Week Plain Dealer July 13, 1909, 2, C3, 4, 5

OTTUMWA WOMAN ENDS HER LIFE IN ALBIA COURT HOUSE
Miss Emilyn Kesler Shoots Herself Through the Heart, Preferring Death to a Loveless Life,
The crack of a revolver, a scream and Miss Emilyn Kesler of Ottumwa fell dying in the rest room at the Albia court house, shot through the heart by her own hand.
No one knows why this beautiful woman of thirty should have taken her own life, unless it was because of a lover’s quarrel with Clarence W. Diltz, assistant engineer of the city of Ottumwa, who was with her and to whom she had told her friends she expected to be married in a year.
Miss Kester was born in Albia, of a prominent family. The last year she had been employed as bookkeeper for W. H. Cooper & Son of Ottumwa and had made a home for her widowed mother.
Her journey to Albia with Diltz was for the purpose of collecting a debt. In her handbag were two revolvers, her own, a present from Diltz last winter, and his revolver, which she was carrying for him. It was his revolver she used to end her unhappy existence.
Diltz had planned to leave soon for the west to secure a new position and it is thought that she feared she would never see him again, and therefore preferred death to a loveless life.