A REVOLTING TRAGEDY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2977, 10 January 1881, Page 4

A REVOLTING TRAGEDY.

A tragedy of the most revolting and really peculiar kind happenod some days ago (writes tho San Francisco correspondent of the Auckland Herald), filling the whole community with horror profound. At midnight a respectable-looking man walked into the old city prison and confessed in the coolest manner possible that he had murdered bis sister-in-law. " I loved her more than any woman on the face of the earth, and she was going to leave me for another man, " he said; "so I took her on my lap, laid her head upon [any shoulder, and, kissing her fondly, told her I was going to kill her, and bade her not to cry out. She struggled some, and I placed one hand over her mouth, and grasping her throat strangled her to death, holding her tightly clasped in my arms. When she was dead I took her clothes out of her trunk, and packed her nicely in, replacing her clothes. I then read some letters, took a walk, and hero I am." Astonishment fell upon his hearers, and dismay reigned on every face; but at last the polioe oflleers recovered themselves, and, securing their man, set off to find the body, which was nicely packed in the trunk. She was a small and handsome woman of twentyone, and fitted easily into the large trunk The story is one of unusual horror as told by the wife of the man (George Wheeler), who was wakened from her sleep to be conducted to the trunk coffin in which lay her sister's corpse. Her grief was terrific, interrupted by fainting fits. She told, in disjointed, screaming tones, that she bad been married to her husband cloven years, and that, taking her sister, who was beautiful, to live with her, she at last found out that her husband had seduced her. A child was borne to the guilty pair, and, urged by tbe husband, she had Weakly condoned the crime, and ever after permitted her sister to live as the wife of George Wheeler ; while she herself took a separate room and took the place of her sister, passing for such. It seems too horrible to contemplate, but such is the truth. Lately a friend of Wheeler took a fancy to the dead girl, and she confessed to Wheeler that she was intimate with this new love, Peckham. Thus, her brother-in-law, moved by mad jealousy, took her life—an act which he had premeditated five days previously. It appears that the poor wife is almost heart-broken, and has been living for two years in the extremest state of _ yinhappiness owing to her false position. Wheeler pleads insanity.