A STRANGE WOMAN.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 183, 10 August 1901, Page 1

A STRANGE WOMAN.

TALKS OF WEDDING A MURDERER.

Philadelphia, Pa., June 14. Clara Ferner has reconsidered her avowed determination to wed John Haggenbotham, branded though he is by a coroner’s jury as the murderer of his aged mother. She had determined yesterday to defy public opinion and unite her life with his, even though it might be in the shadow of a gallows. The police say her real motive was to make it impossible for hor to be called upon to testify against him. As Iris wife she would be exempt from that hardship. As his sweetheart she might not be. Whatever her motive, Miss Ferner yesterday was unable to find anybody willing to perform the ceremony of wedding her life to one that the State may claim. She said to-day : SAYS SHE WILL WAIT.

“ I will not marry John Haggenbotham until this frightful charge has been disproved, not because 1 would not willingly do so, hut because I have decided on second thought that our marriage had best be deferred on account ot the implication made that I wanted to marry John so I could not be a witness. _ “ My impulse yesterday was to marry him at once, so I could have the right to care for him, but I see shat this is not the best course to pursue, so I shall wait. “ John never did the dreadful thing ho is charged with. He would not hurt a fly.”

Haggcnbotham’s postponed wedding is the sequel of one of the most dramatic climaxes ever seen in a Coroner’s Court. He was present at tho inquest yesterday merely as a witness, but ho left it a prisoner, with the verdict of a Coroner’s jury registered against him as a matricide. Mary Wright, a negro servant, first appeared as tho alleged principal in the crime, but she is now held only as an accessory before and after the fact. It was the story she told in Court that altered the position of Haggenbotham before tho law.

Mrs Haggenbotham, who was seventysix years old and in comfortable circumstances, lived with her son John, a decorator, at No. 3216 Chestnut street. About half-past two o’clock on the afternoon of June 4, Mary Wright, her negro servant, ran into an adjoining apartment house and asked that a waiter be allowed

to accompany her home, exclaiming:—“ I am afraid to ho in tho house. Something has happened.”

William E. Courtney, a boarder, went over to the house and found Mrs Haggenbotham lying unconscious on the floor of a hallway on the third storey. She was bleeding from wounds on her head and face, and fragments of a bottle tyere scattered over the floor. Mrs Haggenbotham was removed to a hospital, and died on Saturday last, without having regained consciousness. Suspicion at once pointed to Mary Wright, and she was arrested. Until Monday she asserted that she was innocent and did not know who had assaulted her mistress. On Monday she told the detectives that John Haggenbotham had killed his mother, and she repeated the story at the inquest. '• About two o’clock on the afternoon of June 4,” the colored woman testified, “a man came downstairs. Ho had blood on his hands and had a light moustache. He told me the bundles he carried under his arms were given him by Mr John. They were to be put in my trunk to go to Somers’ Point. He told me he was a friend of Miss Ferner, and that Mr John had lot him into the house.

“ I told him nothing from that house could be put in my trunk, and he carried the packages to the cellar. When ho came up lie washed his hands at the hydrant. Then he said to me:— 1 My, but John has a hard heart. We were coming down stairs from the fourth floor when his mother spoke to John. He did not answer her, and, os she turned to go into her room John struck her over the head with a beer bottle. Then he picked up a cane, and I suppose he is finishing her now.’ Then the man left, saying there was no money in it for him.

“ I went upstairs and saw Mrs Haggenbotham’s body lying on the floor. I called and John opened the door of her room. I asked him what ho was doing, and he told me to be quiet. He said r ‘ Don’t say anything about this, for the man who was to do this for me weakened and I had to finish it.’

“ Then his mother got partly up and said : 1 Oh, John, why did you do anything like this ?’ He said: 1 Oh, my God, I can’t have her telling on me like this,’ and then he picked up a brick. He struck her three times, and she groaned and fell back. John picked up the brick again and struck her in the face with it. I picked, up the brick and hid it under the lounge.”

NOT PERMITTED TO SEE HIM. Mary AVright says John Haggenbotham killed his mother because she opposed his expected marriage to Clara Ferner, with whom, according to the polioe, he had been friendly for fifteen years. Miss Ferner endeavored to call on the prisoner to-day, but she was not permitted to see him.

Detectives to-night are hunting in Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and Somers Point, N.J., for the man who, Mary AVright says, was in the house at the time of the murder, and who is wanted as an accessory.

Haggenbotham’s defence is likely to be an alibi, based on the allegation that he was in his office at Fifteenth and Chestnut streets at about the time his mother was killed.

. Assuming that ho was in the house No. 3216 Chestnut street when Mary AVright declares ho was, the police say there was still ample time after she had given the alarm and the neighbors rushed in for him to have effected his escape and to have gone on a car to his office before Mr Courtney wont there to summon him to come home with the news of his mother’s wounding. It is pointed out that the natural impulse for a man under the circumstances would be to rush instantly to his mother’s side, but that instead of doing this the accused man took time to send a telegram

to Miss Ferner and another to a friend elsewhere.