Horrible Crime

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 75, 3 December 1885, Page 3

Horrible Crime

The most horrible murder ever teard of in San Francisco city was perpetrated recently. A widow had a nice little store, where she made a decent living with her sister, but, woman-like, she, at the age of forty, could not leave well alone, but must needs marry again. The new spouse was jealous of his sister-in-law, as also of bis step-child. H« kept quiet for a few months, and then suggested that his wife should turn her sister adrift, which she refused to do, but, instead, set up this husband of hers in a saloon. He failed; she encored her kind act, but still time after time he failed in his liquor business, always living, at night in the rear of his •wife's shop One day lately he again insisted that the sister should go, and, being refused, went into her room, took a carpenter's hammer, and deliberately beat out her brains. Her screams brought the wife, who with a force bora of despair, hurled the fiend out of the room, and screamed for help. When help came, the poor aister was found lyiug against the bed, with her head on her hands. The poor hands were bruised out of all shape in her attempts to protect her head. On her head were t\veut} rfour marks of the terrible hammer. The skull was split in two placos, while over the bed and furniture, and «yen ten feet away from the bed, Hood t.nd brains were spattered around. As . I am told by our reporters, the scene was of the most awful character, but the singular part is that the wretched woman is still alive, perfectly unconscious, but still breathing. It is a ease so curious that the faculty are puzzled over it. The brains still protrude from out the frightful fissure, and, if anything is put into the woman's hands, she grasps it, but is deaf to all utterances. She is slowly dying, but the fact of life lingering so long after the fearful .hammering on her head is, in fact enough to puzzle a whole confraternity of doctors. — Auckland Herald.