A Horrible Tragedy.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 43, 29 March 1884, Page 5

A Horrible Tragedy.

Elcjly (111.), January 25.— The reports of a tenible tragedy come from four or five miles west of Elgin. William Combs, a farmer about 40 years old, cut his wife's throat. In her dying agonies she wrenched the weapon from him and fatally stabbed him. Combs is said by his physician to have been insane for some time. Later reports give a different account of the tragedy. It appears that Mrs Combs staggered to the house of a neighbour, 40 rods away, covered with blood, flowing from the deep gashes, and with a long knife in her hand. She said her husband had tried to murder I her, and thinking he had done so, cut his own throat. Combs was found dead on the floor of the house, which showed evidence of a fearful struggle. The -woman was alive at last accounts. Some of the leading features of her story and the fact that she and her husband had had frequent quarrels recently, lead to the suspicion that she may have murdered her husband, and received the wounds in the struggle or made an attamnt at suicide.