The Warrington Examiner. — 1869-05-01 (Warrington, Cheshire, England)

AMERICAN MURDER. •  For several months past Philadelphia has been excited by a tragedy which, from the peculiar circumstances attending it, also attracted attention in all parts of the United States. On a Sunday night in November last, Mrs. Mary .E. Hill, an elderly widow. lady, was murdered in her own residence, while lying asleep on a sofa, by a blow from a kitchen p- ' oker and her body thrown out of a window into an area at the rear of the house. Her son-in-law, G. S. Twitchell, and his wife, Camilla (Mrs. Hill's daughter),who lived at and were in the house at the time, were arrested for the murder. Twitchell was a young, weak, and inoffensive creature, and of an amiable disposition, while his wife—several years older than he—was a termagent whom he had been forced to marry by his father, whose mistress the woman had been. All moved in respectable society and were in comfortable circumstances. Twitchell and his wife were arraigned and under the law of the State of Pennsylvania were allowed separate trials. The evidence against them wa s purely circumstantial, and they were defended by some of the best criminal lawyers in Philadelphia. The husband was tried first, and found guilty after nearly two' weeks' trial; the wife was then tried, and the prosecution abandoning the case, she was liberated. Twitchell was sentenced to be hanged on the Bth of• April, and along with him another convict named Eaton, who had murdered a man in a drunken brawl. To save Twitchell every device known to the law was resorted to. His case was carried by appeal through every court that had jurisdiction of it, and finally to the Supreme Court of the United States to save his life. The governor was besought for pardon, but would not interfere in the case, and the friends of Eaten also endeavoured to get him pardoned. Twitchell's wife occasionally visited him in his cell, but treated him with coldness, and evidently was anxious to get rid of him, but dreaded the revelations he might make on the scaffold. Finally they quarrelled, and Twitchell made a confession, in which he charged his wife with committing the murder; said he knew nothing of it until she awoke him from sleep on the night it occured and told him of it; that he took an oath never to tell; and that she made him help her to throw the body out of the window to make it appear as if the death had been caused by the fall. This statement was believed by some and doubted by others, but popular opinion at the same time set a brand upon the wife. The day of execution approached, and Twitchell's condition each day betokened his fear of death ; he was broken-hearted, nervous, and terribly agitated at the thought of it. On the 7th of April he was so prostrated as to need stimulants, and was utterly cowed by the thoughts of the gallows. He took leave of his father and friends, his wife not coming near him' and finally had an interview with his fellow culprit who was to be executed with him, and who bore up bravely under ill-fortune. They were locked up in separate cells for the night, but in the morning of the Bth of April, Twitchell was found dead. He had killed himself by taking prussic acid. At noon Eaton walked out to the gallows alone, pitying the weakness of the other, and protesting his innocence of the crime for which he was to suffer. The dramatic nature of Many of the features of this tragedy and the great share of local attention it has engrossed give it an importance beyond that usually attached to homicide cases.  COERESPONDENt(E: