FOUR HUSBANDS EXHUMED.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 September 1921, Page 7

FOUR HUSBANDS EXHUMED.

WOMAN ARRESTED ON HER FIFTH

HONEYMOON. Mrs. Lydia Southard has been arrested at Honolulu at the request of the. Los Angeles police in connection with the deaths of four husbands, a brother-in-law, and a. stepchild. When she was arrested, Mrs. Southard, who is a beautiful woman with a fascinating manner, was spending her honeymoon with her fifth husband, Paul Southard, a petty officer on the American warship Monterey, stationed at Honolulu.

The specific charge against Mrs. Southard is that of murdering her fourth husband, Edward Meyer, for his insura,nee money. All five dead men. about whom the? police desire to question Mrs. Southard, held insurance policies. Paul Southard told the Honolulu police that his wife had been trying to persuade him to insure his life for £2500. Mrs. Southard first married Robert Dooley, an Idaho farmer; and then successively William M'Haffie, » Utah waiter; H. C. Lewjs, a Montana motorcar dealer; and an Idaho ranch foreman named Meyer. The bodies of all these men, and that of Dooley’s brother Edward, were exhumed and traces of .poison were found in their stomachs. The police are also inquiring into the death of a stepchild.