WOMAN KILLS HUSBAND.

Gisborne Times, Volume LX, Issue 9798, 7 May 1924, Page 7

WOMAN KILLS HUSBAND.

FATAL ATTACK WITH AXE

END OF A LONG ROMANCE,

“CUT MY HANDS OFF.”

Mrs Edith Cluckman, who confessed to the Aid- York police that she baa killed her husband with an axe, held out her hands to have them cut off. She explained to the astonished police that under the Tsarist regime in Russia, where she and her husband were barn, the police would have severed her hands, and .she was willing to make this sacrifice for her husband, whom she still loved.

The husband, Samuel Cluckman, a Now York tailor, was found with his head almost severed, and an axe almost buried in his lace. Beside him was his weeping wile, who told the police:—. '•Y could not help it, 1 loved him so. I had to keep him from other women.

“He told me to jump from the window, and said he would pay my way back to England, but i could not leave him.” Mrs Cluckman added that during Iho quarrel her husband threatened her with an axe, saying, “I might as well kill you, then myself, since you won’t stop nagging.” As her husband raised tho axe the woman kicked him and the axe 101 l to tho floor. A struggle followed, and she secured tho axe. As the man struggled to his knees, his wife with one blow almost severed his head. Mr and Mrs Cluckman were sweethearts in Russia 25. years ago, but parted. Nine years later she went to England—where her mother is said to he still living—and subsequently went to America, where, meeting Samuel, who was now head of a prosperous New York business, the romance ,was renewed, and they married soon afterwards.

.Disputes were frequent over the husband’s association with other women', and on the night of the tragedy neighbors, hearing shrieks in their apartments, summoned the police to quell what they thought was an unusually violent quarrel. When the police arrived, however, the man was dead.