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Chicago, Illinois, June 30, 1936.

A theory of psychologists that children seven years old are unable to distinguish between truth and fiction.

Kept police investigators anxiously on edge yesterday as they tried to draw from James Thompson,

Jr., seven years old, a precise account of the murder of his mother, Mrs. Florence Thompson

Castle, who was beaten and choked to death early

yesterday in her room at the Devonshire Hotel. Captain William J. O'Brien of the East Chicago

Avenue Police said he could not tell to what extent young Jimmy was romancing. The sharp-witted

boy made statements of surprising sophistication

for his years. Yet despite his precocity, he appeared not to have felt any shock from the brutality

which he said he witnessed. When his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Francis Pulfus, 46 years old, with whom he had lived from the time he was eight months old until a year ago,

entered the police station and exclaimed,

What are you doing here, Jimmy?

He replied composedly, I'm here because my mama is dead.

Mrs. Polfus broke into tears, and Jimmy, who hadn't seen her for almost a

year, walked over to her. If you'll stop crying, Muddy, I will tell you all about it after we get

home, he said soothingly. Muddy is his nickname for her. When police expressed some doubt as to whether he had dressed himself

with such finished touches as neatly tied shoelaces and necktie before he went down to the hotel

lobby to report that something had happened to his mother, Jimmy smiled. I'll show you, he said,

bending over his shoes, unlacing them and then tying them back briskly.

I don't want my pictures all over the United States, he told photographers.

I wish I hadn't told anything about this, and then they wouldn't have caught up all you guys here, he told reporters.

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