WOMAN IN FURNACE

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 January 1925, Page 7

WOMAN IN FURNACE

STRANGE OHIO MYSTERY.

“Suicide,” the verdict of the coroner’s jury in the case of Mrs. Addie Sheatsley, whose charred body was found by her husband, the Rev. C. V. Sheatsley, in the furnace of their home in the little Ohio town of Bexley, so far from solving the mystery of how she came by her death, l(as only deepened it. ’

None of the townsfolk, least of all the county prosecutor, accepts suicide as the explanation. Even for such a’wisp of a woman as she was it would be an impossible feat, they point out, for her to have crawled through an opening only 14in. wide on to a bed of flaming coals and closed the door behind her.

The family had dinner together at noon. Milton, the elder son, a university student, and his two sisters left home at 12-15, leaving Clarence, a boy of 16, and his father and mother alone. The minister left nt 1.30, followed 15 minutes later by Clarence, as the boy told the police. Milton, returning at 3.15, noticed a peculiar odour before he entered the house. His sisters, when they came back at 4.30, asked him to go down to the cellar with'them to see what was in the furnace. Then he opened the furnace door a trifle, but closed it hurriedly when a volume of smoke poured forth.

Without investigating further lie left the house and went off to play football. It was only when the minister returned at 5 o’clock and opened the furnace door that the body of the missing woman was found.

A little time before her disappearance she had exclaimed hysterically to her husband, “I would like to be in that place you preached about on Sunday.” “That place” was heaven, which, in a sermon much commented on,, he had described as “a Paradise restored. ’ ’