MOTHER'S AWFUL CRIME.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8882, 6 August 1907, Page 4

MOTHER'S AWFUL CRIME.

With every evidence of great distress of mind a woman walked tip to a constable at Yarmouth, and I told him she had murdered her two children. He took her to the police station. Immediately afterwards it Was reported there that the body of a boy had been found at Little Omesby, near Yarmouth. The little victim was Bertie William Beckett, aged 4. He had been strangled with a woollen scarf. The mother, who gave her name as Edith Beckett, wife of a farm labourer employed at Lound. then said her little girl was dead also. Search was at once made, and the body of a two-year-old child was discovered on the road leading to Decoy farm, Ormesby. The infant had met her death by suffocation, a baby’s feeder being forced into her throat. The woman in custody, who is stated to have been in an asylum, suddenly vanished from her home, taking [;the two children. ?Her husband went to Yarmouth and sear died the beach and other likely places to find her, hut without success. When ho was made aware of what had taken place his grief was painful to witness. Ho stated that there had been no disagreement between his "wife and himself, and it is supposed she wont suddenly wrong in her mind, when she took the children away in their perambulator. Mrs Beckett must have pushed the latter vehicle a distance of ten miles before the little ones met their terrible fate, and she was returning to Lound when she met the’constable to whom she confessed the crime.