POISON DRAMA

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 260, 13 March 1911, Page 8

POISON DRAMA

MILLIONAIRE'S WTFE AND HER LOVER. New York, January 17. In the strange drama at Wheeling, West Virginia, where during the past week Mrs. Laura Farnsworth Schenck, who was formerly a maidservant, has been on trial charged with poisoning her husband, a millionaire pork packer, the Public Prosecutor has*,introduced an unexpected figure. A clerk employed in a music shop, for love of whom—according to the theory of the prosecution—the prisoner tried to rid herself of Mr. Schenck, stepped into the witness-box and told how the wife of the millionaire "pestered him with attentions," visiting him daily at his shop until he was obliged to request her to be more careful.

With downcast eyes and avoiding the prisoner's gaze the young man admitted that lie had been in the habit of receiving valuable presents from Mrs. Schenck, who used to wait for him in her motor car every evening outside the town. She came, he said, provided generously with food and wine, and would drive to a secluded spot, where the chauffeur would leave them until they sounded the "hooter" for his return. He declared that the prisoner used to talk with him frequently about her husband, who, she assured him, "would not live much longer."

Mrs. Schenck after this evidence flamed with rage. She stood upright in the dock and screamed "Judas Iscariot!" The clerk was succeeded in the witnessbox by Miss Eleanor Zoeckler, a young "detective-nurse," who when the sick millionaire was brought to the hospital was engaged by the Public Prosecutor to insinuate herself into the confidence of the prisoner. Her efforts, according to her own account, were startlingly successful. Mrs. Schenck, after a few days' acquaintanceship, offered her (she said) £2OO at once, with a promise of £BOO more when she came into possession of the estate, if she would poison her husband. "John treats me like a dog," the "detectivenurse" quoted Mrs. Schenck as saying. "I wish to heaven that he would die! I should then be the happiest woman in the world, and if you knew the life he led me you would not. blame me."

When driving in a inrftor-car one day the witness asked Mrs. Schenck if she had not alread}' administered arsenical poison to her husband. Mrs. Schenck replied by pursing her lips and saying "Pouf!" She warned the witness that her husband must not be suddenly carried off, as his relatives would then suspect that he was poisoned, adding, "Albert would have a post-mortem, and notiling would give him greater joy than to convict me." Miss Zoeckler suggested to Mrs. Schenck that she had better obtain a poisoned pill herself and wive it to the witness with a written promise to pay her £SOO after the deed was performed, but this the prisoner failed to do, explaining that she was unable to get a pill.