WOMAN SLAYER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 15, 18 January 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

WOMAN SLAYER.

GIVEN 25 YEARS' GAOL. STRANGLED MAN AND BURNED BODY. Laura Weaver was sentenced lo 25 years' imprisonment at Toulon (111.) for the murder she committed to hide her shame. The girl, who is 21 years old, and weighs 2301b, pleaded guilty to the charge of killing Wilmer T. Kitselman, with whom she lived and who was known as her husband. She repeated to Judge Joseph E. Daily the statement she made to Sheriff W. 0. Edwards, that she strangled Kitselman in their home while he slept' and that she carried the body to an automobile, which she drove to a lonely road near Annawan, in Henry county, where she poured gasoline on the body and set it on fire. Kitselman was drunk, she testified, and she became enraged as she sat watching Hm sleep. She took off his belt and put it around his neck and pulled it tight, then waited for him to die, she related. Feared He'd Tell Family. Her motive was explained previously by three witnesses whose testimony was intended to show mitigation. Kitselman had threatened to tell her relatives, who live at Naperville, 111., that they were not married and that he had met her in a resort in Peoria, the Court was informed. Dr. Harold A. Hobert, of Aurora, testified that lie" had given her a mental examination and his conclusion was that she is mentally deficient. Her brother, Howard Weaver, testified that their mother died when Laura was 13 years old and that she then left home. Her brother-in-law, Joseph Weisenberger,. testified that on several occasions Kitselman and Miss Weaver visited his home and represented themselves as being married. Then the girl was called to the witness stand by her counsel, Attorney Charles W. Hadley. For months since the murder—it occurred on July 7 —she has calmly conthe possibility of being sentenced to death in the electric chair. Many times she had said the chair held no terrors for her. Tells Why She Killed Him. She told her story simply. "He promised to marry me, but he didn't," she said. "Often he would beat me. I wanted to leave him, but I didn't because he said he would tell my father and my sisters we weren't married and what I had been doing since I left home. I didn't dare leave him, so all I could do was to kill him. "We came to live at Wyoming, and he got a job as cook and I went to work in the knitting mill. But he wouldn't stay at his work, and he was drunk all the time on what I earned. That night he was so drunk he couldn't move. I couldn't stand it any longer. When he was dead 1 wrapped him up in a blanket and carried him out and burned his body."