JOHN SCHROEDER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2995, 31 January 1881, Page 4

JOHN SCHROEDER.

" Silver Pen," in the N.Z. Herald, writes as follows in reference to a recent murder case in California :—

John Schroeder -walked into the office of "Dr. Lefevre (dentist), and shot him down .without shrift. The cause was certainly i galling. Arriving at home one night he jneard a man leaving by the back door, and finding his wife in a somewhat disordered state of mind, took her to task, finally eliciting from her the fact that the visitor who went out at the back door was Dr. Lefevre, who had been her paramour for three months. Ere fcho morning broke, Mr Schroeder had condoned his wife's horrible offence, and taken her again to his heart. After meditating over his wrongs, however, for six weeks, he determined to shoot the slayer of his wife's morals and his own domestic peace, and so taking the wife by one hand and his little boy in the other, he quietly walked into the doctor's office, and shot him down like a dog—without as much as giving him a chance to explain the guilt verified for by the murderer's wife. The trial occupied somewhere about a week. Mrs Fchroeder not having been placed on the stand at all, strange to relate ; neither was her character called into question, although facts which perhaps may be too true to put down here, thence libellous (since truth is libel, arc all against her. The plea set up by the defence was transitorial insanity ; the fact of there being such a state of mind in any person being, however, strongly combatted by the faculty. The jury, " twelve good men and true"— Heaven save the mark!—retired to their room, where they were locked up and fed for sixty-nine hours, in a, state of disagreement. Meanwhile, the excitement rose so high that business stood still, and the population of Oakland (where tho case was tried) surged and massed themselves together like the angry waves of a turbulent sea. A hung jury was oxpected, but when, after all those weary hours, these twelve sensible citizens emerged from their close confinement and gave a verdict of " Not Guilty " a great panic fell upon the people. The prisoner uttered an hysterical yell, and, rushing to the jury, reiterated, over and over again, " G-od bless you ! God bless you ! " at the same time shaking their outstretched hands. Then, also, the prisoner and his counsel grapsed hands, and went over and over again, " God bless you." Angry murmurs and discontented looks were to bo seen outside the court-house on every sido. When Schroeder and his shameless wife retired to their home a guard of police was placed round the house, and when, later on, a reporter stepped in, and in hope of gleaning emotional items, Mr Schroeder received him him with a pistol in his hand, which he never dropped until tho man of tho Press retired. And this is the justice of California ! If you are well-to-do and have friends, you may shoot down with impunity ; if you are poor, no kind of extenuating circumtances will keep you from gracefully swinging as high as Hamon. When I think of this woman, Schroeder, and others of her stamp, who, every day in the week, betray their husbands, and cause bloodshed and cold-blooded murders, I hate to look in the glass and see myself a woman. This creature had a handsome, good, well-to-do husband, and a happy home, yet she must fplay the harlot, without cause or provocation. And on the simple testimony of her word, the word of a woman, who had been, according to her own shewing, a deliberate adulteress for months. A man with a wife and five children is shot down without mercy—and

yet she lives ; Schroeder, he listens to the disgusting recital from the lips of his wif j, told by the bedside of their two innocent children, and after a plentiful rain of maudlin tears from both, he takes her on his knee and condones the filthy crime. This is the story, gentlemen, of Mr and Mrs Schrooder, and their victim, Dr Lcfevro. Jf yon feel as indignant and disgusted with the outrageous facts as I, the narrator, do, you will not eat a comfortable meal for some time to 'come. Not, indeed, that it is any of my business, but still .