Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1898 — Served Twenty Years. [ARTICLE]

Served Twenty Years.

Governor Mount on Monday paroled Mrs. Frances Kuntzler, who has been confined for twenty years in the women’s prison on the charge of murder in the second degree. Her crime, which was committed in Lawrenceburg, consisted in ordering her thirteen-year-old boy to shoot his father, which command he obeyed. After the deed was done, the woman assisted the youth in throwing the body in a well. The Dearborn Circuit Court convicted her in 1878. But the crime had so many extenuating circumstances that the wonder is not that she is paroled now. but that she was not absolutely pardoned, years ago. For years she had been subjected to the harshest treatment by her husband who was a depraved drunkard. He often whipped her and would drive her out of the house even on wintry nights. It was in a fit of madness that she told her son to put an end to such tyranny, but no sooner was the deed accomplished than she bitterly repented. When brought before the court she pleaded guilty, and during the long period of her imprisonment, save for some rebellious acts and an escape in the early years of her confinement, she has comported herself in a way to merit the approbation of her guards. For a long time she has been the gardner of the institution.