TWINS DONE TO DEATH

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19691, 7 August 1929, Page 5

TWINS DONE TO DEATH

DEMENTED MOTHER'S ACT. [THB PKESS Special Service.] ! —I AUCKLAND, August 6. A shocking tragedy was enacted in a dwelling in King Edward street, Mount Eden, this morning at about 11 o'clock. The first intimation of it was received when Mrs W. Cubis, wife of William Cubis, railway employee, rushed into the street crying: "Oh, my babies! My beautiful babies! You know how I loved them." An investigation was immediately made. Within the house were the twin sons of Mrs Cubis, aged four years, both dead * Each had a stocking twisted round its neck, and both had evidently been strangled. The body of one child was warm,' but efforts to -evive it failed. Mrs Cubis was later arrested and taken to ttye mental hospital. She is 38 years of age and is stated to have been in poor health. The husband's first notification of the tragedy was the following telephone message: "Comb home at once and be prepared for the worst." The scene of the tragedy was within a few hundred yards of Dominion road Post Office and in the midst of a quiet residential area. It is thought that the second boy must have been done to death some time after the first. There is another child, a boy aged eight, who is away at present. Mr Cubis said that he got up early this morning and gave his wife a cup of tea in bed. One of the twins was in the bed, and the other wa? sleeping in a cot alonggside. He then ad his breakfast and .alter bidding them all good-bye went off to work. It is understood that Mrs Cubis had only returned in the last couple of months from a nursing home, where she was treated for neurasthenia. For a long time she was away for the good of he*' health on her people's farm at Albany.