STRANGE STORIES FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 262, 9 November 1906, Page 2

STRANGE STORIES FROM AMERICAN PAPERS.

LITTLE GIRL'S CONFESSION OF MURDER. While funeral services over the body ol Wilbur Washington Winship, two years old, were being conducted in a room below, in Brewster. New York, Jennie Birch, fourten years old, who had nursed the dead child from infancy, signed a written confession made to Richard Mitchell, Coroner of Putnam County, in which she stated that she had administered the poison which killed the boy. She declared also that she had started a fire which destroyed the large barns on the farm of Herbert Winship, father of the dead cEild. The girl declared she billed little Wilbur Winship by giving him tincture of iodine on a porton of a peach. The death ol the child and the illness of Miss Birch indicated strychnine poisoning, according to the attending physician. Dr. Sutton, of Brewster, when questioned by Coroner Mitchell, declared the girl could not hare given the child enough iodine on a peach to have caused his death. ■

Showing no emotion, seemingly fearless of the consequences, at times joking and laughing, the young girl told her story to the coroner. As she spoke of preparing the poisoned peach for the child the words of a hymn being sung at the funeral services downstairs floated into the room, but the girl remained unmoved. THE DEPRESSION OP HARRY THAW. Harry Thaw, slayer of Stanford "White, is breaking down physically. Unable to reconcile himself to the - plan of defence which his relatives have chosen for him, the millionaire society man is subject to fits ot melancholia, and the utmost efforts of tne beautiful Evelyn Nesbit Thaw have failed to restore him to the normal state when in these depressed moods. Thaw is not able to determine just what the logic of the course decided upon by his attorneys is. He has consented to undergo an examination by the insanity commission, but he is not wholly persuaded -hat this course is for the best. The doubt arises, according to statements Thaw has recently made to visiting friends and his legal advisers, in his mind that his -mental uubaiance is to be established. He is incline*, to believe the course is for the purpose ot proving him sane. It is possible Thaw w\li rebel when the time set for the expert examination arrives and wiU fight the case on its merits. His wife pays him daily visits. On such occasions she is always handsomely gowned, and never wears the same dress twice. These visits do not improve the prisoner, for, immediately upon her departure, he commences to worry.