WIDOW ADMITS KILLING

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 104, 19 May 1937, Page 6

WIDOW ADMITS KILLING

Sequel to Tragedy in Woods NEW YORK, May 18. The police stfte that Helen Tieriian, aged 25, a widowed embroidery worker, has confessed that she killed-her daughter- in the. woods and then attempted to kill her son. Believing both were.dead, she sprinkled.petrol, Tgmted it and fled. Her motive was a desire to re-marry and the belief that her apartment was too small for both, children and her p'roBpective husband. She stated: "I wanted to.lcill, not to hurt them.'.' She later' amended her confession by implicating her sweetheart. The police are inelihed to disbelieve the latter. . Her son Jimmle recovered * sufficiently to say: "Mummy hit me and sister.''' He is expected to be the principal witness at the trial for murder. A cable yesterday stated that the body of a girl aged seven with her throat cut and the body burned in an effort to destroy it was found by a young couple wandering in the woods near a'New.York suburban- community. Half-an-hour later a boy oi. three, apparently her brother, was found in a thicket with his throat gashed but alive. He was taken to hospital and .is expected to recover. The police said that his almost unintelligible murmurs indicated that his mother and possibly his father were also slain somewhere in the woods. A score of police aided by 50 Boy Scouts with jfiashlights searched in vain for other -bodies but found . a breadknife and . scissors both' stained with blood, also'a bottle quarter full of petrol. The underbrush had been set on fire in three places, but the green growth and the damp caused the fires to die quickly. ;