TERRIBLE CRIME BY A MOTHER.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1026, 4 November 1882, Page 3

TERRIBLE CRIME BY A MOTHER.

A Chicago despatch says: —'Mary Syeboldt. wife of Casper Seyboldt, a baksr, a short time ago murdered, by poison, her four children, aged respectively twelve, seven, two years and a half, and an infant four months. She then took the remnant of a large dose of strychnine, and died iu great agon}'. She met her husband at his store, and took him into the room where all the children were neatly dressed, and laid out with flowers in their hands. While the husband fled to the neighbors for assistance she took poison. It is supposed that domestic trouble caused the wife to lose her reason. It appears that Mr and Mrs Syeboldt did not live in entire harmony. Since the birth of her last child Mrs Syeboldt had not been in good health, and it is believed despondency caused her to commit the deed. From a number of notes written by her eldest daughter, aged twelve, it appears that Mrs Syeboldt talked over the matter with her, and got her to consent to the terrible tragedy. Several arc addressed to her schoolmates on childish matters, and one to her father. One says: ' Forgive me ; we have to leave you. Mamma thought it was best we should do so.' Another one asks him to bury them decently, and tells him where she loaves the money to buyflow<rs. One note, addressed to a schoolmate, says : ' Mother was always sick, you know, and thought of dying often, and how we would be treated ; and so we thought it best that all should die at once, and bought something to kill us—baby first, Aunie second, Tony third, and I afterwards. Then mother did not suffer much ; and now we are all out of trouble.'