The Sentinel=record., 1913-01-12
MRS. ODEN, FOUND WITH BRAINS SHOT OUT, NEITHER SUICIDE
 NOR MURDER VICTIM.
PREDICTED THE FATE SHE MET
Her Last Words Were Headings With Neighbors to Come to Her if Any thing Happened During the
 Night.

Fighting with the desperation that only a woman alone and suffering from some unspoken anguish can fight, against an impending fate which her last words in life proved were weighing strongly on her mind, Mrs. A. F. B. Oden in her cottage home on the crest of a knob on Superior street went to bed Friday night
 Early yesterday morning her life less body, the brains of which had been scattered over a wall with the contents of a shotgun, was found by the same solicitious neighbors in whose friendly ear her premonitions of death had been confided the night before.
 Late yesterday afternoon coro- ner's jury made such inquiry into the case as there was at hand. The tragic death of the woman had at first been regarded as a suicide, then as mur- der, but the verdict of the jury was that death was accidental
 CircumstanSes surround the case
 
 tory of incident of this character The wife of a well-known citizen of Hot Springs for years, A. F. B. Oden they had separated, and one week before yesterday, Mir Oden had taken his final departure from her house. The probability that murder had been com mitted. as pointed to by some of the circumstances in the case, and the fact that there seemed motive from no other source than probable great ly disturbed family relations, led to the arrest of Oden, who was held during the day, but was released last night after the coroners jury had re- turned it's verdict.
 MT Oden, represented at the hear ing by Judge J. B. Wood, took the stand voluntarily and swore to posi- tive alibi in the case, which is un- controyertable, and removed him from suspicion in the matter With the likelihood of the case being a murder eliminated, and the fact that it was almost impossible for the wom- an to have committed suicide in the manner in which she met her death. the jury decided that she was handl- ing the shotgun she had borrowed for her self protection, when it be- came discharged, and her head was torn apart with the load fired at close range
 The most peculiar and stubborn fact in connection with any theory Tn the case was the situation of the body with reference to the bed and the shotgun, when found. The small de- tails are ineXplainable. They do not compare. But they are all possibili- ties, and are all as contrary to one theory as they are to another.
 The woman, living alone in her cottage, must have had some money. and if she did, that was missing. She had owned small spangle purse in which she carried her money. She was woman with a bank account. She owns property here and in Wash ington, and was estimated to be worth 5000 in her own right. Be sides this, she should have had some keys. A woman within her own home has keys. But Mrs Oden's- were never found. Moreover, a witness tes- tified that a substantial little house locker, made of metal such as is kept in most homes for the preser- vation of private papers, a small metal box with a lock and key, had but a day or two before contained some private papers belonging to Mrs. Oden. The metal locker was there yesterday when the search was made, but the papers were missing,
 A fact contrary to the first ad- vanced suicide theory, was exposed when it was testified that when she had borrowed a shotgun to protect herself if harm came to her in the night, she was offered a revolver, but she refused that, and took the shot gun The woman suicide commonly uses poison, and sometimes a pistol, but most unlikely would she choose a cumbersome double-barrelled shot gun, to which she was unaccustomed.
 Also in opposition to the suicide theory, the theory that the shotgun she borrowed was borrowed to kill herself, is the fact that she sought further protection than the shotgun. She had owned a little mongrel pet dog "Snooks" by name. The little dog had some time before been given to a neighbor. "Snooks' was a house dog. one that parked when providers came around. and Mrs. Oden went to the neighbor to whom she had later given the dog, and borrowed it for the night She said she feared great harm during the night and wanted the