CHEERS FOR MURDERESS.

Colonist, Volume LIII, Issue 13225, 30 September 1911, Page 3

CHEERS FOR MURDERESS.

An extraordinary illustration of tho effect of a beautiful woman's tears was furnished in San Francisco on August 5, when jurymen, lawyers, journalists, and polica united in cheering Mrs Anna Langley, aged nineteen who on the previous Wednesday afternoon shot and killed her husband. James Langley, a small shopkeeper. When the self-confessed murderess appeared at the coroner's inquest she described her sufferings at the baud: of her husband in a voice of such pathos that tho jury unhesitatingly returned a verdict "that tho unspeakable cruelty of tho deceased had driven his wife temporarily insane."

Within an hour the prisoner war taken before a grand .jury, whose members, according to an "Evening Sun" telegram, mingled their U'lirp with hers while she recited tho tale of her wrongs. "I would have worked mv fingers to the* bone." the youn: wife exclaimed, " if Jim would liavr been good. That was all I wanted." Tn loss than a minute after she had boon led back to the gaol, the .(.'.rand jury, in a frenzy of emotion, hurried to her cell, and announced that shr was exonerated and would be releascc' on her own recognisances.

The jury, the despatches r-tate stood round the beautiful prisoner like a crowd of awkward schoolboy.' trying to express their symp.-.tliv. Some hastened out nnd hcrgh' flowers for her, while tho lawyers ;:n<-' journalists present pulled out of thei1 pockets handful;; of money and hands,-' them to Judge Wel.lor, who. however would only accept £20 as bail.

Amid tho cheers of the onlookers, the police commissioner, Mr. Sullivan and tlie chief of police, Mr. White, escorted Mrs Lankley in a motor-car nnd drove her to her mother, froir whom and from the neighbours shr received enthusiastic expressions of affection.