WIFE'S REVENGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 134, 8 June 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

WIFE'S REVENGE.

DIARY REVELATIONS.

DRAMA OF MARITAL STRIFE,

A murder unique in the annala _of American crime has sent a wave of emotion over the country, and everywhere une hears either fierce denunciation or frank sympathy for Mrs. Olive Adams (31), who has been sent for trial charged with killing her husband. Mr. Henry E. Adams, the distinguished chief of the Weather Bureau at Hartford, Connecticut.

The crime can be told in brief; it is the matrimonial revelations which have followed the young wife's confession to the police which complicate and confuse an astonishing drama of marital strife. Henry Adams suffered from insomnia due to his wild way of living, and each night, to induce sleep, he placed a spot of chloroform on a handkerchief and lay with the handerchief over his face.

One morning he was found dead, and his doctor, knowing his habit, certified that his death was due to an accidental overdose of the chloroform. It was only after the police had probed into the married life of the couple that Mrs. Olive Adams hysterically poured forth a dramatic confession,

forth a dramatic confession. _ • She had lain awake by his side, she said, her heart consumed with a fit of jealousy and weariness of many years of cruelty and neglect. Her brain snapped and she saw the way to freedom. Stealthily she groped for the bottle of chloroform and applied another drop to the handkerchief on her husband's face. His breathing grew deeper, his limbs lay heavy beside her. Time after time she. soaked the cloth and spread it on her husband's face. Finally his breathing ceased, she poured the last spot of the drug on the man's nostrils "to make cure," and with throbbing head and burning eyes lay waiting for the dawn. Mrs. Adams' defence is unusual. She claims that his cruelty "impelled" her to the last dread act, but that she was an involuntary agent in her husband's death in that she did not plan it, and that he himself drew her into a plot woven by fate and provided the means and the opportunity for his tragic end. Friends thought the couple, who were among the best know in the State of Connecticut, lived happily, and the young wife's disclosures, which have now been fully proved by the police, have caused a stir. Shrine In Bedroom. Adams, who was a strikingly handsome man, some time ago became a Buddhist and saturated himself in the rites and customs of the East. He built a costly shrine in his own bedroom, and, according to the wife, after worshipping, he compelled her, as an "inferior being," to degrade herself before the figure of the ■prophet. In moments of religious frenzy he induced her into exhausting Oriental mysteries, practised with curious torture instruments, and when she protested beat her into submission.

This statement is borne out by the couple's eleven-year-old son Ananda, who has told the police, "Often at night I heard mummy crying and pleading with daddy."

Mrs. Adams says that she might have endured her husband's cruelty but for the fact that he claimed the right as an Eastern devotee to turn their home into a harem. At one period he was making love to five different girls, including a handsome local typist

The accused wife declares that he often brought Miss Collins to the house and forced her to cook and wait on them. "Then," says Mrs. Adams, "my husband would order me out of the house so that I should not interrupt his love-making." The police have taken possession of the dead man's diary, in which there are passionate references to "Dorothy, Alice, Rose, May, and Claire." »

The diary contained such statements as "Whoopee, wonderful night with girls, plenty of whisky" and an entry which summed up the man's philosophy of life. It was written on March 20: "Christians say us Buddhists are pessimists. What of it? A cheerful pessimist is better than an optimist with a grouch. Don't laugh at the spiritualists. Wouldn't it be better to spend one's time after death making an ouija board wiggle than to spend all eternity twanging a golden harp 1"

The diary contained astonishing disclosures of Adams' devotion to his esoteric religion _ and of his deep research woTk into sinister human emotions.

There was much sympathy for the accused wife when these facts came to light. It was felt that no jury would convict her on the capital charge. She had been more sinned against than sinning. Woman's Own Guilt. Then like a flash came the revelation that Mrs. Adams was not guiltless of matrimonial infidelity. The dead man's mother, aged over 70 and m ill-health, came from afar to point an accusing finger at her daughter-in-law. khe is blonde and deceitful," she cried bhe has had her lovers while my murdered son was at work." The police opened a new line of inquiry *j- ?°7 the woma n behind bars stands indicted on moral grounds as having secretly matched every one of her husband s amorous intrigues with one of her own,

Came a day when slim, young Charles ™l ' f/° Uth Y ho , llV€d opposite Mr. and Mrs. Adams, stood at his door in the sunshine. Mr. Adams had gone to his office. Ihe youth was surprised when the young wife held up a piece of paper, which bore the words in big letters, "Come over " He went, and, according to his statement to the police, his visit began a long and passionate love affair with Mrs. Adams "I used to meet Mrs. Adams," he'said, either when her husband was at work or when he was out with Miss Collins I was never really fond of her, but 'she forced me to be her lover. We used to sit and read poetry and books about passion. After a time I became Mrs. Adams' answer to her husband for his own philandering."

Mrs. Adams had other lovers beside Ross. A well-known local builder, aged 55, and a neighbour have confessed that they often called at the home in secret The police have also found her diary which matches her husband's in its frankness and soul-searching. "I want love I will find it now Harry is faithless. I may be a fool—who knows, who cares?" and so it goes on.

Thus for the first time in history the police have two intimate records of the secret thoughts and acts of a victim and a killer.

Mrs. Adams is now awaiting trial—in hospital. Her health has broken down, and she is a physical wreck, as the result, she declares, of her husband's torture while demoniacal with Buddhist fervour.