WOMAN ARRESTED FOR MURDER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2719, 25 April 1906, Page 14

WOMAN ARRESTED FOR MURDER.

A dreadful murder, which was committed! at Stockton (California) on March 24, tccal's tho Maxwell-Preller case, which is familiar to Australian?. The lato event, like the former case, wps a trunk mystery. On Saturday evening :v new trunk standing on the. platform of the Southern Pacific depot at Stockton was discovered to contain the body of a man, and Ir.ter on it developed that the victim was Albert N. M'lvor, a niillrnan employed in a mine near Jamestown. The nian had been murdered bj' a woman whom he Ivlievcd to ba his wife, and this woman, Mrs Lacloux. waa anesred at a near-by town some 48 hours af+er the discovery of the murder. Sho is a woman of ordinary appearance, raised in a small town of California, and is known to the police of San FranoiAeo. though she vaa never before connected with any crime. After her arrest Mrs Ladoux bpcame very talkative, telling three or four different stories of tho murder. It now appears that she pave M'lvor opium in whisky. The man> was ?lroady drunk, and it is supposed that she waited until he was in a deep stupor. She then went out and bo\ijjhb a trunk, also some rope. Sho placed the trunk beside the bed, r.nci succeeded in g&ttinc; the man, who was not yet dead, into it. She closed the trunk, but could not rope .it. The man apparently died of suffocation after be'ncc placed in the trunk. The woman called an expressman, and had him place tho rope on the trunk and carry it io the station. She intended checking the trunk to some distant point, but became frightened, and lflff. it. She took a train for Sa-n Francisco, where "-he remained one night, and on Monday she started to Jackson to visit her mother, and wa« arrested as described. The object of the murder was robbery.