MURDER BY SUGGESTION

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 303, 20 December 1913, Page 17

MURDER BY SUGGESTION

A STRANGE WOMAN'S STRANGE

"story

Mrs Bessie Shackford, the young mother of four children who faces life imprisonment for the murder of her husband Edward at their farmhouse in Freedom, Nesv Hampshire, on September 30, is a psychological problem. In many respects she is the strangest woman that ever came within the rays of the criminal spotlight in New England. She claims that her husband's death was a love sacrifice, and that she was forced to play the role of executioner hy Hollis Wilbur Bean. She declares that Bean exerted an uncanny hypnotic influence over her. Mrs Shackfnrd's personality is puzzling and weird. Her terrible predicament is not worrying her a bit. She is as content in her five by seven cell hi the gaol as a normal woman would be in the happiest home. She is indifferent aboul her fate. She eats and sleeps in it way that shows perfect health and contentment, and she revels In flic newspapers and niagn&lnes. She reads ilir- accounts of her case tirst and is eager In discuss it with callers. She doesn't appear to feel the slightest regret or sorrow, but she insists that Bean inspired the crime because he wanted her to marry him. Only once during her weeks of imprisonment has she asked about her children, who are being cared for by her mother. A fortnight before his murder Shackford hail found a box of cartridges la a potato pen in his cellar. He asked his wife how they got there. She told him she didn't know. Shackford worried about the discovery. "Wilbur Bean made mc do it. He wanted tne to marry him. He kept teasing mc." Thus Mrs Shackford prefaces the following story:— "He said he would care for the farm and do all the work, and that we would be happy, but 1 told him It could never be so. that I did not love him nnd never could. 1 was afraid of him. Whenever he touched mc It sent a chill all over mc. He had a power over mc like hypnotism—a strange influence that I could not resist and which I dreaded like poison. "Over and over again I told him I could not do as he wished. "Wilbur and I went io the white meeting house, a sixth of a mile away, and hid a revolver I had bought. We removed a stone from the foundation of the church and put It in after we placed the pistol there. It was at night.

"The night Bean appeared we- were all sleeping in one room. I was on a mattress on the floor nt the foot of the bed. Lesley, my six months' old Infant, was lv his crib. Ernest, seven. Penley, live, ami Bernlce, •two, were sleeping with their father in the bed.

"It must have been after midnight when I was awakened by our dog. Opening my eyes 1 beheld Wilbur Bean crouching over mc. He said tbe time had come. I didn't want to do it. He lifted mc and led mc to the bed. He placed the revolver in my right hand and helped hold it.

"I was frightened nnd shivered when I felt his hand. I didn't know what to do. Edwin and all the children were asleep. Edwin was always a heavy sleeper. There wns no fear of waking him up.

Wilbur held my hand tightly. We crept rer. I don't recall seeing the flash or

hearing any report. "Then Wilbur ran away, and I didn't see him again until the inquest."