The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-04-10
Notable MUrd 9rs--WOmen in and
Near New York.
JAMES MOLE. " IMPENDING DOOM.
Jealousy al Excuse 0ttener Than 1t is Rea-
SOn-Popular Indignation Against
Stevens, the POisOner.


brings to mind long and hideous list o.
crimes that have been committed in or neal
the metropolis of the New World in the name
of the sexual passion.
Nolan is bad young man, but he does no
appear to be quite so low in the depths as
Patrick Coffee, of Jersey City, who was t.
have been hanged in January for the muir
der Of his mistress, Alice Smith, but escaped
the gallows By virtue of q committed sen
tence. Hanging would seem to have beer
good disposition to make of Patrick. The
crime by which he forced himself upon the
knowledge of the public was not one capable
of working any sympathy or susceptible Of
any excuse He was a drunken and vicious
grocer, maintaining Illicit relations with q
woman who professed to be friend of his
wife. The wife had demonstrated some
prejudices against the relations between her
friend and her husband, and u sort of council
was held by the trio for discussion of the sit
uation. Beer and argument having alike
failed TO lure the Angel of Peace to perch
over the Coffee hearth, Patrick seemed to
suddenly view his mistress, Miss Smith, in q
new light-that Of bone of contention-and
deliberately shot her. He afterward casual
ly mentioned a vague perception that his
action was i'll advised
THE MURDERS or WOMEN
1t is common TO suppose that there are a
great many murders Of women, and that
such murders are almost always prompted
by JEALOUSY. Both suggestions are erroneous.
Outside thoss incidental to robbery, crimes
in which sex was no consideration, the killing
of women-sweethearts, mistreSses and wives
in New York, the largest city in America,
have only numbered about score within
thirty-four years past. And of those it is
extremely doubtful if more than eight were
caused wholly by jealousy. That is the ex-
cuse generally pleaded by the assassin, as it
is understood to be the one most likely to
evoke sympathy, but it is seldom genuine.
Domestic infelicity through incompatibility
of temper, inebriety and various other causes
are generally found much mere active than
jealousy in impelling to deeds of blood
Take the case of James Hoar, for instance.
Most persons said, at the time, that that was
a clear case of jealousy, but it was not He
had deserted a good and charming wife and
abandoned his children to live with a mis-
tress. When he found that she had another
lover, a sailor, he grew furious, and in his
rage killed her. His jealousy was mingled
with egotistical anger at her deceit and re-
morse for the sacrifice he had made for so
unworthy an object, but he only avowed the
jealousy. He was hanged in the Tombs on
July q, 1854
A real case Of jealousy was that of poor
Pietro Balbo, who was hanged on Aug 6,
1880, for the killing of his wife. Pietro was
an honest, Industrious sober young man,
who loved devotedly his beautiful young wife
Carlotta. She was grossly unfaithful to him.
and had the brazen effrontery to avow to
him her shame and her determination to
abandon herself to her lusts i'll defiance of
him In q moment of madness and despera-
lion he plunged q stiletto in her heart Over
10000 names Of citizens, many among them
of prominence, were signed to a petition to
Governor Cornell beseeching clemency for
him; the italian government interceded in
his behalf; his good character was established
beyond question, as also the fact that his
wife had squandered his hard earnings on
her paramours and impudeRtly boosted to
him of her dishonor. Yet the governor re-
fused to interfere.
Emil Andre, who in a fit Of jealousy muir
dered his wife on June l3, 1872, without any
thing at all approximating to such justifca-
tion-or at least extenuation-as Balbo had,
got off with the mild punishment of four
y
plea of insanity. He was much moro fortu-
nate than Adolph Reich, whose death SEN
tence was recently committed to imprison-
ment for life. And, by the way, Reich's
crime seems to have been one Of those at
tributable to jealousy; at least that is the
reason he chose to assign for shooting his
wife. But they used to do rather more
judicial killing in former years than seems
l.. FL,
was executed in the Tombs on Oct 10, 1866,
and George Wagner, whose execution fol-
lowed at the same place on March l, 1867,
both killed their wives because of alleged
evaporation through belief in their IN
faithfulness, but that plea did not save their
necks. Two of the late vintages from this
peculiar field are the cases of Carolin and
Thomas. Ferdinand Carolin, for the butch
cry Of his wife, has, it is true, been once sem
fenced to death, and was to be hanged on
February Is last, but stay of proceedings
has been granted by the court of appeals in
his case, ind he may live long. Joseph
Thomas, colored man, killed his wife on
the 22d of last December, because of her al
legged preference for a white man named VIII
liam Gilman.
A DESPICABLE sCoUNDREL-
One of the most despicable scoundrels ever
hanged in the Tombs was the wife murderer
James Stevens, executed on Feb. 6, 1860. He
was a teacher in a Presbyterian Sunday
school So was his niece, an attractive young
woman, for whom he nourished an insane
passion. To get his estimable wife out of the
way, SO that he might marry the niece,
Stevens undertook to kill her by a slow sys-
tematic course of arsenical poisoning. He
gave the deadly mineral in a succession of
very small doses, SO that its effects might
simulate disease and avert suspicion of the
real cause of her illness. She suffered terri
bly,, and when death came to her relief was
found to be literally filed with arsenic his
guilt was demonstrated beyond question and
eventually confessed. A more abject coward
never faced the ganows. He swooned when
called upon to go out and be hanged, had to
be carried to the fatal spot and seemed half
dead with fear before he reached it. After
ward, when his body was taken to an under
takers shop on Pearl street to be prepared
for burial, a mob followed it there, from the
prison gates, hooting, kissing, yelling, hurl-
ing execrations aud mud, as an expression of
the popular detestation of him. It was not
simply the killing of the woman that was
deemed 50 revolving, but his treacherous, cold
blooded, devilish cruelty and hypocrisy. He
used to give her some arsenic and then pity,
condole with and kiss her; give her some
more arsenic and kneeling down by her bed
side pray fervently for her That was why
he was SO unpopular even IS corpse.
For lack of some sensible reflection August
LEIGHTON shot his sweetheart because she re-
fused to marry him and. as he thought, was
likely to mate with another man, as a natural