Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1913-04-23

RF Burton W. Gibson, the lawyer,
shall be convicted of the murder
of Mrs. Rose M. Szabo it will be
because of a very little thing,
writes Charles Somerville in the New
York World. The list is long of mer
land women too) who have gone to
gallows, guillotine, garote and electric
chair through some little inadvertence
in a well-laid scheme of murder
some apparently trifing accident that
has developed into a giant of condem-
natOry circumstances.
If Gibson be found guilty, then it
will have been shown that, having Sc
cured Mrs. Szabo's signature to will
in favor Of her mother in Europe, he
! lured the woman out on Greenwood
! lake in a roWboat and there strangled
her in brief struggle, using a mys-
| ferrous, 1ittle-known method of stran-
gulation accomplished by the slight
! pressure Of the thumbs on the carotid
/ arteries at the neck This is the con-
| tention of the prosecuting attorney.
| Of course a jury will have to decide
it. Gibson says that the boat upset,
| that Mrs. SZabo and he were flung
into the water; she drowned and he
was barely able to save himself. Then
as her attorney and administrator he
| possessed himself of her fortune of
about $4,000. But when Mrs. Szabo's
body was exhumed the physicians re-
ported that she had not died of
drowning. There was no sign Of wa
ter in the lungs. She had been stran-
| gled before she went into the water,
| they said.
This strangulation by the thumbs
on the carotid was alleged in a MUIR
der case once before, when Private
William G. Howard, U. S. A, was tried
at SueverviIle, Tenn, two years ago
for the murder of his wife as she
slept. Private Thomas A. Doyle swore
that he mad once explained to Howard
how a human being could thus be
slain and the killing, if done deftly,
leave only so slight a bruise on the
throat that the embalming would re
move all trace of it.
Small Thing May Convict Gibson.
But when Gibson heard the result
of the autopsy declaring that Mrs.
Szabo had died of strangulation be-
cause there was no water in the
lungs he only smiled. He confidently
advanced the suggestion that the I'M
dertaker who had embalmed the body
had with instruments drawn off the
water from all parts of the interior
~ h. u L 4
he had done this.
But the doctors said this was no
explanation at all. They called at
tention to the scientific and thorough
fy established fact that when water
is drawn into the lungs by a living
creature the lungs inevitably show
signs of congestion. Mrs. Szabos did
not.
So, if Gibson shall be declared
guilty, this little fact will have been
pivotal in swinging the jury's verdict,
for the embalming fluid left no tell
tale scars of thumbs adroitly pressed
on the victims neck
One single ill-considered statement
from the lips of Henry Clay Beattie,
the Richmond, Va, wife murderer,
first directed against him the suspi-
cion of Investigators who had gone to
the scene of his crime, unsuspecting-
ly, in all friendliness and sympathy
toward the youthful husband. He had
told his story of how as he drove
with his wife in his motor car at night
along the lonely Midlothian turnpike
a man had halted him with a shotgun
and berated him for careless driving.
When he made angry retort the man
in the road had answered with
charge of buckshot which Struck
Beattie's young wife in the face and
killed her.
He was really aiming at me, but
just the instant before he fired l had
leaned forward to throw in the clutch
and start the machine and the charge
struck my wife,
The relatives of his wife's parents,
to whose home he had brought her
body, believed his story. Her uncle,
an influential man, begged the as