GIRL “TORCH MURDERESS.”

Hokitika Guardian, 23 August 1929, Page 2

GIRL “TORCH MURDERESS.”

MAN STRANGLED AND TAKEN OFF

IN CAR

NEW YORK, July 9

“l T es, I burned* him,” is the alleged confession of Laura Weaver, 21 years of age, of Amazonian build, who is in gaol at Toulon, illi mis, charged' with being the first woman “torch” murderer in the history of American crime. Weaver,- who is the daughter of' a ■wealthy retired farmer,' was living w’i'.li a. man mimed Winner Kitsehnam, whom she now accuses 1 of having treated her with inhuman cruelty. She told the police that she killed Kitselman in a passion of cold fury in their room at Wyoming, Ulionis, and her grim slorv has a t -uch of Edgar Allan Poe in his most gruesome storytelling mood. Weeping bitterly, she described her deed thus:—

He came home very intoxicated last Sunday morning and tore a big mirror off the Avail with one of the chairs. I knew ilian I must get away from him, for he brought, the mirror down on my heart and shattered both to a thousand pieces. It is bad luck to break' a milrow. 1 ROUND IDS THROAT. Describing how she finally got Kitselman on the bed'and decided to murder him, the girl said she put several extra holes in his belt and tightened it round his throat until his face got blue. Then she threw’ nn old patchwork quilt her' dying lover. She went on: T - It seemed a long time that lie kept moving under the quilt.. But at last i.e was still. I sat beside him and felt his pulse, and when I could not feel it beating I decided he was dead. Then T trussed up the body and wrapped it in tho patchwork quilt. But it was too heavy for me to carry, so I rolled it on to the floor out of the room and it went dump, dump, dump dowm the stairs. . .' I fetched our coupe round to the front door, put the body inside, and drove to Toulon, where I bought oil and petrol. Passing out of the town I got scared, and, finding a • lonely road, I threw’ out-the body, poured naptha over it, and touched a match to it. It bln zed hard as I drove away. The patchw’-'rk quilt led to the girl’s arrest, for, still alight, the body was discovered w’ith the quilt onlv partly destroyed. When ihe landloid of .the' couple’s room learned that a patchwork quilt covered the body lie searched the room vacated by Weaver and noticed that the quilt was messing. Weaver was found by the police staving with her sister in Naperville lninois.