Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1912 — MRS. GRACE CRIES “I AM INNOCENT" [ARTICLE]

MRS. GRACE CRIES “I AM INNOCENT"

Declares She Did Not Shoot Her Husband. WAS WOUNDED IN STRUGGLE Swears Man Tried to Kill Her on Several Occasions —Both Took Oath to Keep Reason for Trouble Quiet.

Atlanta, Ga., Aug. 2.—Mrs. Daisy Ulrich Opie Grace told the jury how her young husband, Eugene Grace, Scion of an aristocratic Georgia family, received the bullet wound that paralyzed him in their Atlanta home on the fifth of last March. Her first words on the stand were: “Gentlemen, I am innocent. I did not shoot my husband, and he knows it,” indicating with a nod of the head towards her husband who lay on a stretcher near the witness stand. Says Grace Shot Self. Mrs. Grace then declared her husband shot himself during a struggle with her following a quarrel over another woman on whom Mrs. Grace alleged her husband had been spending her money. With flushed face and hands trembling, Mrs. Grace spoke in a clear but low voice, declaring that her husband had tried to kill her several times. Once, she said, he tried to drown her; again, he stabbed her, and finally, the day he was shot he seized a pistol and in the struggle that followed he wounded himself. Makes Long Statement. Mrs. Grace’s statement was very long. The salient features follow: “I did not shoot Mr. Grace and he knows it; as God is my judge, that is the solemn truth. Mr. Grace and I took a- oath over the Bible that we would never tell how this trouble happened, and not until after I was indicted did I even tell my attorneys. “Week after week I lay suffering in jail trying to decide upon the right thing to do. I knew that I was innocent' and I knew that I was being unjustly punished, but I also knew that I had taken an oath never to tell how Mr. Grace was shot. Decided to Break Oath.

"Finally I decided that I owed it to the name of my old mother and my little blind boy, regardless of my oaflj, to tell the whole truth about this difficulty, no matter whom it might disgrace. . “To me Mr. Grace was the most fascinating man I had ever met, and without shame and without strength to resist it, I have made for him every sacrifice in this world that a woman could make for a man. From the time I met him until the fifth of last March, I gave him $15,000 in cash. I was as true to him as any wife could be to her husband, and I always humored and petted him like a spoiled child. Says Husband Beat Her. “I dressed him in the height of fashion; I cooked his meals for him when my servants couldn’t please him, and I ceased to correspond with my widowed mother and sister in order to please him. I took his abuse and beatings time after time because of my extreme devotion to him.” Mrs. Grace gave a complete history of her relations with Grace and admitted that she married him two weeks after the death of her first husband, Webster Opie of Philadelphia. From the first Grace treated her badly and made constant demands for money. Several times, she alleges, Grace tried to kill her.