FATAL FASCINATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2113, 10 April 1920, Page 1

FATAL FASCINATION.

LEADS TO DOMESTIC DRAMA. Resembling more a melodrama than actual life, a domestice tragedy ,has been enacted in Cumberland, Maryland, U.S.A. The alleged villain in the piece was Edgar Rya.l Pownall, the handsome nephew of a rich coal and lumber merchant, whose family he was visiting for four weeks. In the flat below him dwelt a happily-married couple with a year-old baby, whom the Pownalls frequently visited. The beauty of the young matron, Mrs Kate Uhl, fascinated .young Pownall. At night Mervin Uhl, her husband, was urgently summoned away by telephone on a bogus mission. The message was sent, it was alleged, by Pownall, who, according to Mrs Uhl, entered a few minutes after the departure of her husband, locked the door, and prevented her escape. While she was struggling, Mr Uhl returned, and accused his ■ wife of infidelity. He ordered her to leave the bouse, and she vainly protested her innocence. Distraught, the husband himself went away. His wife then summoned Pownall, who meantime had fled upstairs to bis uncle’s Hat, and besought him to clear her reputation. Pownall nut only refused, hut even persisted in his advances. The desperate young woman seized a kitchen knife and plunged it in her persecutor’s breast. He died half an hour biter. When the police arrived they found Mrs Uhl standing 'beside her sleeping infant’s cot wringing her hands. The unwritten law is to be her defence, and public sympathy is on the side of the woman, who with her baby occupies a cell in Maryland Gaol. An affecting scene occurred when she was visited in prison by her husband, who begged her forgiveness for suspecting her of being unfaithful and driving her to the fatal act. The repentant husband declares that he lost control of himself when he rerturned home and found young Pownall with his wife in a room of which the door had been kicked. Without waiting for explanations be ordered her to pack up and leave the homo and the child.