MURDER OF A BRIDE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8797, 7 December 1906, Page 2

MURDER OF A BRIDE.

GIRL-NURSE KILLED BY

LUNATIC.

NEW YORK, September 28.—Another of the tragedies of insanity has occurred at the Mattawan Asylum, where Mrs Lizzie Halliday, a gipsy woman and a criminal patient, to-day murdered her young nurse, Mies Nellie Wicke, with circumstances of cunning and fiendish brutality characteristic ccf the' crimes of the insane.

Halliday lived a roving life for years in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, and was queen of a gipsy tribe. Then she married a farmer, and after a few years committed a series of atrocious crimes. She fired the homestead, burning her imbecile son. alive, murdered her husband, and hacked two women — a mother and daughter — to death, after luring them t^> the farm. It wafe proved at her trial that before she married Halliday, she had committed several other murders.

In tho asylum she had come to *be regarded lately as a model patient, tranquil, tractable, and very grateful and responsive to kindnesses. She was esper lly attached to her young nurse, by ..ose intercession the severity of her confinement was relaxed, and jshe was permitted to enter tho " harmless " ward.

The nurse, becoming engaged to be married, resigned her position. The resignation should have taken effect today, and the marriage next week.

The prospect of parting . greatly eycited the woman Halliday, who wept, and implored her to stay. Then she fiercely said, "Do not leave, for I'm a gipsy and can read the future, and if you leave thei*« will be blood.'' " Nonsense, Lizzie," said the nur^e, " I am going to marry a man who lojfes me very dearly, and I shall be very happy." At that moment she unlocked the door of an adjoining small room.

Like a flash, before the others in the ward realised that there was trouble, tho madwoman; who had been grovelling at the nurse's feet, sprang up, dragged her victim into the small room, seized her keys, and locked the door behind them. The other patients and the attendants beat helplessly on the door, from behind which came the mingled shrieks of the nurse and the fiendish, laughter of her assailant. When the dcor was burst in, Halliday wus aittirat chuckling m a corner, and the nurse was lying in. a pool of blood on tho floor. The maniac Had seized the nurse's scissors, which were attached to a chain at her waist, and with incredible fury had stabbed her more than two hundred times in the neck and face. Miss Wicke died a few minutes later, just as her intended husband arrived to remove her boxes.