MILLIONAIRE'S WIFE ARRESTED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 25 April 1907, Page 4

MILLIONAIRE'S WIFE ARRESTED.

ACCUSED OF POISONING HER CANCER-STRICKUN MOTHER. Mrs Leopold Wallau,-one of the most prominent women in the wealthy Jewish society of New York, has been arrested on a charge of poisoning her mother, Mrs Binge, the millionaire widow of a well-known stockbroker. The ease is the most extraordinary and the strangest in which Mr Jerome the District Attorney, has ever been called upon to prosecute. Mrs Waliau is the wife of an enormously wealthy manufacturer, and enjoys a wide and enviable reputation for her works of charity. When news of her arrest became known the utmost indignation was expressed by her many influential friends, who hastened to drive to her residence for the purpose of expressing their sympathy with her family in the terrible trouble. The accusation is based on information supplied by two nurses, who state that Mrs Wallau warned all her domestics against touching any viands or wine that came from her mother's sick room. Her mother was for years an invalid, was recently operated on for cancer and could not have lived more than at few months at the utmost. Often the old lady used to supplicate the family doctor immediately to put her out of her pain. 'You would kill a dog if it was suffering as hopelessly as I" she moaned, "Why not end my agony?" The suggestion is that Mrs Wallau, unable longer to bear the sight of her mother's unspeakable sufferings, yielded to her desire for euthanasia, and administered poison. Tablets of poison were found in the patient's wine and food, but Mrs Wallau denies that she placed them there, and supposes 'that her mother committed suicide.

Mrs Wallau was placed in the Tombs Prison awaiting with a pathetic demeanour the coroner's inquest.