Strange Rites

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 702, 29 June 1929, Page 18

Strange Rites

WIFE KILLS HUSBAND WITH CHLOROFORM . . . EASTERN RELIGIOUS RITES PRACTISED ! “WITH RESERVATIONS"

DANCED BEFORE HIS DEATH

■N the dingy corridors of the woman’s section of the gaol of the City of Hartford, in the United States, were being heard the high, monotonous notes of a woman’s voice lifted in prayer to Gautama Siddhartha, most ancient of the Buddhist gods, pleading that he will not desert her “in the hour of woe and darkness.” The woman was Mrs. Olive Storey Adams, a 31-year-old New England housewife, who was charged with the murder of her husband, Henry Emerson Adams, meteorologist. o f the North-Atlaium division of the I'.S. Weather Bureau. Death came to Adams through {Hhr|§|||. chloroform while jfflMpy he lay asleep, and wSM the chances are ————— that he would hare The accused woma n. gone to his grave without inquiry, had not the youthful widow, in a spirit of frenzied remorse, cried out the details of how she saturated a handkerchief with the anaesthetic and killed her husband. In the confession, which the police say she signed, she accused her husband of practising Buddhism and asserted that he first treated her with indifference, then with contempt, and later with forms of cruelty that included scarring her body with acid. “Nectar of the Gods" She told of years of near starvation, of frequent brutal beatings, of her husband's strange hypnotic power over her, and his enslavement of her according to the rites of his strange mystic cult of the inscrutable Orient. She related how other women had been, brought into her home, and how she was forced to stand by and see her home converted into a seraglio. At the bottom of all her troubles were the “other women” —six by actual count, some of them being prominent socially. In spite of her jealousy, however, she danced gaily with her husband on the night of his death, during a jolly evening enlivened by a few drinks. They danced together, and at 10.45 Adams, then in his pyjamas, went to the pantry, where in the refrigerator he kept a supply of chloroform to overcome insomnia, and which he called “The Nectar of the Gods.”

Holding a handkerchief moistened with a few drops of the anaesthetic to his nose, he went to bed and fell asleep. While he slept, Mrs. Adams took the handkerchief, moistened it heavily several times with the chloroform, and held it to his nose. She lay there until she suddenly thought she detected the rising and falling of his chest and she gave him more chloroform. Another long wait. Then she became chilled, and she snuggled against him to get warm! But there was no warmth left in his body. At the police station Mrs. Adams plunged into her weird narrative.

For 12 years (she said) I have been my husband's, slave, not his wife. He became so self-centred and egotistical through his studies of Buddhism that he did not look upon me as his wife.

“Following tlie ‘Middle Way,’ by which alone good Buddhists can progress through successive lives to the pure ecstasy of Nirvana, the highest heaven, Adams should have avoided all physical desires, all selfish longings, all vain theorisings, and all ignorant prejudices. But wliere the tlesli was concerned, he appeared to forget the teachings of Buddha. “He used to bring women into our home, upon whom I would have to wait and serve, as if I were a menial. He had me enslaved. He had mastered me so that I was unable to resist his commands. T was like a puppet under the spell of his hypnotic eyes.

“Last September I left him and took my child, Ananda, my little boy, who, you Know, is named after a Buddhist god, yes, took the boy and went to my home in Stoneham. a residential suburb of Boston. Something snapped in me. I said I was through with him. For a short time I emerged from slavery. His mysticism, his ritual, his incense burning had lost its potency for me.” She said Adams promised to mend his ways, and she returned for the sake of the boy. That was fate. Her husband sought her return, she concluded, and that had brought on the tragedy—“the wages of sin is death.” When the police visited Adams’s home they found near the head of the bed a large shrine with a huge statue of Buddha. Incense was still burning before the brass image. On the walls of the room were shelves filled with books on strange Oriental philosophy. On each side of the figure of Buddha candles were burning. Since her detention Mrs. Adams has been visited several times by the mother of her dead husband, and the grandmother is now taking care of the child, who is permitted to visit his mother.

“Oh, why did she do it?” cried the elder Mrs. Adams. “But I don’t hate her. I’m sorry for her and pity her. If I could help her I would.”