People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1893 — A HUSBAND’S CRIME. [ARTICLE]

A HUSBAND’S CRIME.

Be Murders Hie Wife, Who Refused to Live with Him Because of His Dissolute Habits, and Then Kills Himself. Chicago, April 11.—William William*, * painter, murdered his wife Monday night by cutting her throat and then committed suicide in the same manner. Williams had been drinking heavily for the past few weeks and his wife left him. Monday night upon her refusal to return to him Williams killed her and then himself. After leaving her husband Mrs. Williams took up her abode with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Boehnet, friends of her youth. She was 28 years old. She had a tall, graceful figure and was handsome. She had formerly been connected with a dramatic troupe and was taking lessons in her art with a down-town instructor preparatory to going on the stage again. Williams came to the house at a few minutes past 7 o’clock Monday night and persuaded his wife to come to the door and talk with him. As she emerged from the door Williams made a jump toward her. He seized her around the neck and drew a keenedged knife three times across her throat. With a scream the woman ran back into the sitting room. The Boehnets jumped out of the front window, trembling with fright, and their cries aroused the neighbors. Mrs. Boehnet went back into the house and found Mrs.. Williams lying on a sofa. She gurgled out a request that Mrs. Boehnet fan her. The latter started to do so, when a smothered cry from Mrs. Williams tore wider apart the ghastly slashes in her throat. A stream of blood burst forth and Mrs. Williams was dead. When his wife staggered back into the sitting room Williams coolly walked into a shed at the rear of the house and sat down on a trunk belonging to his wife. The cries of the neighbors apparently aroused the murderer. He started out of the shed for the street on a run with the bloody knife still in his hand. Officer Hagaman, of the West Chicago avenue station, now appeared and saw the man running. Williams led him a lively chase around the square, dodged through an alley and hid again in the woodshed at the rear of the Boehnet house. When the officer came upon him Williams had fallen upon the floor. As the 1 officer reached the door he pointed his revolver at Williams and ordered him to surrender. Williams looked at the officer, who saw that the flee’ng man had cut his own throat. He was not dead, and vainly tried to say something. He still clutched the knife. Williams was placed in an ambulance and driven to the county hospital. But he died on the way. In his pocket was found a picture of his wife as a tambourine dancer in her theatrical costume. Neighbors give the dead woman an excellent reputation. She was known to have been in great fear of harm at the hands of her husband and had several times expressed a feeling that terrible trouble was coming. The dead couple leave a 4 year-old son, whom Mrs. Williams had placed in the home for the friendless, paying for his board at that institution out of her scanty earnings as a seamstress.