DARK CELL SENTENCE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3381, 4 July 1927, Page 2

DARK CELL SENTENCE.

“You will go to penal servitude for eight years, and you will spend each anniversary of your husband’s death in a dark cell,” said the judge in an Austrian court to Leopoldina Lichtenstein, aged 29, the handsome wife of a metal worker, whom she was accused of poisoning. The woman received the sentence with a shriek and fell unconscious on the floor of the dock. Her sister was seized with convulsions and had to be carried out of court. Her mother screamed: “I am the guilty, one. I ought to be locked up, nut my poor child.”

The evidence revealed a coldly premeditated crime by the administration of ratpoison in the man’s food, continued over a period of several weeks. The couple Were married in 1919, and lived fairly happily together until they made the acquaintance of a soldier. The wife appeared to have become infatuated witn him, and quarrels with her husband followed. At last they agreed on a divorce, and the woman went to live with her parents.

Lichtenstein, however, refused to consent to his wife marrying the soldier and she then returned to her husband. Shortly afterwards she left him again, but in response to his entreaties came back once more.

In July, 1925, Lichtenstein was admitted to Hi hospital suffering from acute pains. The doctors diagnosed the case as one of arsenical poisoning, and the man’s relatives declared that his wife had put poison in his food. Lichtenstein died on September 27.

The- post-mortem examination showed traces of arsenic in the bones, and the doctors declared it to be a case of arsenical poisoning, but not necessarily a criminal case. The man’s relatives persisted in declaring that his wife had poisoned him, and she was arrested, but not till 14 months afterwards.

The wife confessed to the murder, saying that she had given him rat poison in his food. She had bought three rubes of the poison in a drug store, and mixed Inc contents with bis coffee at breaafast, and also put it in vegetables and stews at dinner and supper, gradually in .’leasing the doses to a, tenspoonful.

The doctors said the essential basis of this rat-poison was thallium, which, so far as they knew, bad not been employed in a poisoning case before. The woman asserted that her husband bad treated her brutally, and had tried to force her to go on the streets, although he was madly jealous of her friendship with the soldier and had made her life a martyrdom.

At last she could stand it no longer, and resolved to put him out of the way to prevent his making some other woman unhappy. The husband’s relatives denied these stories, saying the husband was a steady, quiet, good-tempered, easy-going man, and, in spite of his jealousy, was still in love with his wife. The husband’s sister said that what she could not forgive was the wife’s conduct at her husband’s bier. Looking at the face of her dead husband, she said: “Hermann, you know I richer did anything to you.” The judge said that this speech was certainly remarkable, and the wife must have known that she was suspected. Before the speech of the Public Prosecutor, the woman asked to be allowed to say a 'few words to the jury. She said, in a firm voice; “I will say once more I had no intention to kill him. I only put poison once in his food, and I did not know what 1 was doing. It is not true that 1 was the guilty party in out quarrels. 3VXy husband s relations lia\e only accused me out of rage and bitterness.” After long deliberation the jury acquitted the woman on the charge of wilful murder by nine votes to three, and by the same number of votes found her guilty of manslaughter.