HE KILLED THREE WIVES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8950, 14 January 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

HE KILLED THREE WIVES.

A SUICIDE'S CONFESSION.

Columbia, S.C. November 29.—Stepbney Bailey murdered his wife about two weeks ago and burned her body in the furnace of a saw-mill. Upon being arrested hecut bis throat. He died from the effect of his wounds yesterday in the Berkley County Gaol. A faw hours before his death Bailey made the following confession to the gaoler — "My name is Stephney Bailey. I am about seventy years old. I have been married three times. I killed my first wife with a club. Her name was Catherine. I buried her in t!he garden, and after a while it was found out and the people dug her op and buried hsr in the graveyard. She had six children for me.

"My second wife's name was Mary. I killed her with a brick by hitting her in the head. I will not tell what I did with her body. She had one child for me—a boy. His name is Sabey. I don't know where he is.

•' My third wife's name was Sallfe. She was unfaithful to me for a long time. I told the man to stop, but he would not, and kept op his intimacy with her. My wife and I had not been in good terms for three or four weeks. That day I laid in wait for her in a footpath, and as she came along I bit her in the head with an axe, killed her, and dragged her body into tho bashes until that night. Then I sent my boy to the yard for a wheelbarrow, and when be came I sent him back to the bouse. Then I put the body in the wheelbarrow and carried it about a mile and put it in the furnace. ' At sunrise I started the fire, and about eight or nine o'clock it was found out. Sallie had seven children for me."

Bailey evinced no repentance for his murders, and so hardened was he that he had forgotten the details and dates of his former butcheries.