WARNING FROM DYING GIRL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15646, 27 June 1914, Page 2 (Supplement)

WARNING FROM DYING GIRL.

"DO NOT BECOME SLATES OF MEN." A young American stenographer, Miss Augusta Edwards, who was convicted of killing her employer, George Rich], committed suicide by poisoning in prison at New Orleans a few weeks ago, when she learned that her plea for a new trial had been unsuccessful. Miss Edwards declared that Riehl wooed her as a single man. Too late she discovered that he was married and had children as old as she. Riehl promised to get a divorce, but he failed. Then she invited him to take a last walk with her, md during the walk she shot him in the back. Many leading women in New York and New Orleans society workod hard in defence of the young and handsome murderess." The case was taken to the Supremo Court; here the death sentence was confirmed, but afterwards the girl was reprieved. 11l her prison cell, before she died, she said, speaking with a weird composure, with no trace of emotion :

" In £he cemetery here is the grave of George Weill's mother. Ho put the ring on my finger one night as we stood by that grave, thus sealing the sacred marriage of our two souk. "My dream last night went back to that scene. I saw myself standing once more in the cemetery at night. On the other side of the grave, just as I saw him months ago, George Riehl appeared and beckoned me across into his arms.

"He needed me," she said, "because I belonged to him by all laws of life except the single one of man-made conventionality. Then I knew that he was dead, and I felt that I must go to him." Here the dying woman paused, overcome with agony. Then she said: "There is no juries. I want to warn all girls against becoming the slaves of men outaido wedlock. My fate should teach the world a lesson."