Courted While on Trial for Murder

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 922, 15 March 1930, Page 18

Courted While on Trial for Murder

Romance of Titian-Hair-ed Woman .. . Weds

Third Htisband After Acquittal . . . *OOED during a trial in ■which she was acquitted husband. a beautiful Titian-haired woman has just acquired her third spouse. Now Mrs. Van Clief. she was once Mrs. Frances Kirkwood, the wife of Dr. Glen Kirkwood, the great American veterinary surgeon, whose talks over the wireless on “How to treat your pets/’ were once a popular feature in the United States. It was in August of last year that Mrs. Kirkwood rushed out of the house which she occupied with her husband, screaming. She was covered with blood, and when a next-door neighbour went into the house in response to her hysterical pleadings, he found Dr. Kirkwood sitting in a chair in his pyjamas, covered with blood, which flowed front eight separate wounds about the body. The weapon with which these wounds were inflicted—a huge carving-knife—was not discovered till afterward, and then it was found in the drawer of the kitchen cabinet, carefully hidden, but stained with blood.

Subsequent inquiries revealed a most astounding state of affairs. It came to light that only a day or two before the death of the doctor, he and Mrs. Kirkwood, together with John McAvoy, her first husband, who divorced her so that she might marry Dr. Kirkwood, and a woman friend of Mr. McAvoy, stayed for some days together at a little one-roomed shack up in Lake Ronkonkoma, where they held a week-end party among themselves. Apparently the doctor returned home alone, and then Mrs. Kirkwood received a letter from some unknown woman telling her that she had better come back because during her absence her husband had been having wild parties, at which a number of women had been present.

Mrs. Kirkwood hastened back to her house. There, according to her own story, she taxed her husband with infidelity, and there were high words. The death of Kirkwood followed in the early hours of the next morning and was described by Mrs. Kirkwood herself as follows:—“I wouldn’t double-cross anyone, and when I fell in love with Doc, I told Mac, and he agreed to let. me marry him. He stepped out like a man. I idolised Doc, but at the same time I still liked Mac. Doc brought him up on that last trip to Lake Ronkonkoma. I never w r as suspicious of Doc until last Thursday night. Doc was in the habit of coming up to the lake and seeing me on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays. He didn’t come

i Thursday, and I thought something | was wrong. And when I got back j on Monday, I heard things that started jme putting two and two together A j woman —the District Attorney has her j name —came to me and said. ‘That was | a swell party you had on Wednesday night at your house, but I wish you wouldn’t keep it up so late.’ 1 was amazed, because, of course, I hadn’t attended the party. So 1 questioned her at length, and she said she could hear me laughing for blocks. J didn’t •tell her that all the time 1 was parked away up at Lake Ronkonkoma, with the mosquitoes. I went to Iteuman, the radio man (William Reuman, a friend of Kirkwood, who is supposed to have been at the party), and confronted him with the information I had gathered. He denied being there, and I brought him along home to prove it with Doc. They got their Wires crossed, and I knew Doc was lying. I was furious. Reuman left. “There’s no need for me to go into any further detail. I got the carvingknife, intending to kill myself in front of Doc. I resolved then that if I couldn’t have him alone I wouldn’t have him at all. I stood before him with the knife. He tried to wrest it from me, and in the struggle he was cut. I didn’t know it was serious, but when I saw the blood I ran from the house screaming. I didn’t know he was dead until a few r hours afterward. I wanted to have a blood transfusion —I wanted to give him my own blood, but they wouldn’t let me. When I said I wanted to go on the table and give him my blood they told me he was dead.”

f t)r. Kirkwood was a boarder at the house of the McAvoys when he first met. Mrs. Kirkwood, and they fell | violently in love with each other. She begged her husband to divorce her so J that she could marry the young aiid handsome doctor, and at length he did so. Prior to this Mrs. Kirkwood had appeared in court on a charge of j beating a pretty 16-year-old domestic. | who she alleged had been flirting with ■ the doctor, and had been fined. After ' the divorce, both husbands and the wife had maintained friendly relations, and it was to her first husband that she appealed for help when at length she stood charged with the slaying of her second husband. During the trial, however, she was introduced by her lawyer, Dana Wallace, to Mr. Van Clief, a wealthy roadhouse owner, and day after day the latter attended the court, visiting the accused woman between whiles, and showering her with attentions and gifts. He took special interest in the little 12-year-old son of Mrs. Kirkwood b> her first husband, and when thi jury j returned a verdict of acquittal on the widow’s plea that the stabbing had occurred accidentally he applauded so vigorously that he was ushered out of court. At first it was rumoured That Mrs. Kirkwood was going to return to her first husband, but in the end the persistent wooing of Mr. Van Clief. which began under such extraordinary circumstances, gained the day, and they were married. They have opened a tea room and gift shop in a street not. very far from the scene of the tragedy, which gave rise to this romance.