SHOCKING MURDER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 174, 22 January 1914, Page 8

SHOCKING MURDER.

O '*' o WOMAN" SENTK.VCED TO DKATIi. The American correspondent of the Melbourne Argus writes:—ln the State of Connecticut, which adjoins New York, a woman has been sentenced to be liiingcil for an" atrocious murder. Mrs. liessic Wakefield, 2-4 years, old, lived with her husband, 20 years her senior, on a farm a few miles from Sew Haven, the , seat of Yale University.. They had two 3 children. A farm laborer named Wil- ■ liam l'lew lived near at hand. His wife , hail divorced him. Mrs. Wakefield acJ cepted his advances, find soon there was an illicit intimacy. The two plotted ,' to g-et rid of the husband. One Vven--3 ing they chloroformed him while lie , was asleep, bound him with cords, am! bore him to the neighboring forest, where l'lew stabbed and shot him to , death. Several days later, hearing , someone, say that Wakefield had been . seen in a village not far away, the guilty pair went again to the forest ami | looked at the body to convince theni- [ selves that their foul work had been . effectively done. After the body had been found by '.lie neighbors, ' I'lcw made a complete confession. The two were tried, eonvicted and sentenced (o be hanged. No woman had ! n found guilty of murder in the lirsl degree, nor hail a woman been hanged in Connecticut since I7S(i. In Vermont, another of the .Vew ICnglanil States, a woman was hanged ten years ago for murdering her lufcband. These Mates retrain the gallows and the noo»c. In Xyw York and several other Slates murderers are put to death in the electric chair.

<)b\iously (his woman and her paralnour deserve to suller the extreme penalty if any criminal should be giiiiiisliI'd liy death. Tho.se who arc striving to save .Mrs. Wakeiichl's lilV <uv not Air, sit least, a large majority 01' them am not persons who oppose eapital punishment. They say she ought not (o lie hanged because she is a woman, and because she was convicted by men. I -Mrs. ilelbont, one of onr leading suffragists (formerly Hie wife of a Vandcrare fioiiitf alioul, or in the pleas addressed to President Wilson and his familv, which as|; that the sentence he commuled to one for life-imprisonment, hilt multi-millionaire) asserts I hat the judge and the members of the jury were men. and she was found guilty of violating a "man-made law." lint, this argument is not used in the petitions which These petitions do not sav. as sonic of the empty-headed complainants do, llwt (he woman ought to to lie pardoned. It is unfortunate Ih.il |he opinion of the murdered husb.md cannot hj,. obtained.