INHUMAN BRUTALITY

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17982, 29 March 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

INHUMAN BRUTALITY

Two little ' motherless children, whose bodies were found buried in a wood, and a former cabaret artist, who was branded as their inhuman slayer, provided the American public with its latest sensational murder trial. The court drama was staged at Camden, New Jersey, and ended in Gladys May Parts, JB, on whom notoriety had conferred the sobriquet of the “Iron Widow,” being convicted of murder in the second degree of Timothy Rogers, 2, and of the manslaughter of Dorothy Rogers, 4. Parks was setnenced to 35 years' Imprisonment. Briefly, it was alleged that the woman had beaten Dorothy to death and drowned Timothy beneath a water-tap, afterwards hiding, their bodies in the woods. Why Parks was dabbed the “Iron Wiuow” is a mystery, for she was not a widow, and, indeed, not even married. For a short period she was a cabaret entertainer and night-club hostess, and as she grew older she became a waitress, working her way from town to town across country. When she was arrested for killing the two children she aroused extraordinary interest by her brazen defiance of the police, who submitted her to the usual third degree examinations. However, nothing the police could do could break down her story that Dorothy and Timothy, who had been entrusted to her care by a widowed clerk with six children, had died accidental deaths. She repeated time and again that she had adopted the little ones from motives of mother-love and compassion for the widowed father, to whose wife she was related. When the police retorted that she adopted the children in order to extract blackmail from a number of men she shouted: “You are a pack of liars!” Parks has a round bespectacled face which is pasty white, without powder or rouge. Her brown hair is drawn back severely to a tight little knot at the back of her head. At the opening of the trial she explained she preferred a jury of men. “Women resent me,” she stated, “but men will understand my side of the cstse.."’ In November, as the “Iron Widow" went to 'the police station, a mob of indignant women attacked her, and she was bruised severely. Her wish to have a male jury was gratified. Mr Baldwin, the Public Proseoutor, terminated his outline of the case with the demand that “this hideous deliberate murdress, this flend In human form, must be sent to the electric chair." He spoke in a court crowded with women, who applauded him. Parks heard him absolutely unmoved, her pallid face betraying neither surprise nor fear. She listened impassively while Mr Baldwin asaerlcd

WOMAN RECEIVES SENTENCE OF, THIRTY-FIVE YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT. CAUSES DEATH OF TWO MOTHERLESS CHILDREN.

that for a small weekly sum she took care of the two children and grossly ill-treated them, and that when they died, as a result, she buried their bodies in a clump of bushes. For a time, according to the prosecution, Parks kept the remains of Dorothy Rogers in a box, and those of Timothy Rogers —“Tiny Tim,” the the prosecutor called the little hoy—in a portmanteau. Parks, in her first statement to the police, declared that Dorothy died from convulsions after being struck on the face. “I wanted to punish her for misbehaviour,” stated the woman, “and I didn’t want to hurt her. She wasn’t a strong child, and the blow was not very hard.” At first she put lye on the body to decompose the remains, and afterwards buried them herself ’ as she could not afford a funeral. As to “Tiny Tim,” she wenton, he fell downstairs, quite accidentally. To revive him she held his head under a tap, and the water, accidentally drowned him. For three months Allan Rogers, an insurance agent, the father of the, victims, sought for his children; but after their death Parks shifted her address rather rapidly, and it was only through finding her father that he ascertained at last where she was staying Rogers, who was at one time the fianoe of the “Iron Widow,” heard Mr Baldwin speak, but _ towards the close of his address he left, unable to bear the ordeal any longer. Before he went he told the judge of a letter he had received from Parks, apparent!! written after the death of his two children, in which the former cabaret entertainer stated: “We are all well, and hope you are the same. I can’t understand why you have been going around behind my back and blowing your head off to neighbours. They arc bad enough to put up with, but you aro worse. Timmy calls me mamma now and Dorothy oalls mo mother. I askerl If she wants to go back to you, and she said that she wants to stay with mo because yon heat her with a strap I did not kidnap them. Now I don t intend to loso them." Rogers added that Parks visited his homo In Woodbury, near Jersey, last May, where ho was trying to keep his six motherless children together with .the aid of a housekeeper. Parks, who

was the first cousin of his dead wife, declared that she was married to a wealthy merchant. One of the major sensations of the trial was created by the introduction of a statement by Parks swearing that Judge Corio, of the Commission Pleas Court, Atlantic City, had killed little Timothy Rogers

By Choking Him to Death. For this purpose, she declared, Judge Corio, who was once her lawyer in some property litigation, came to her house in Camden on August 22. At I that time she admitted that Dorothy i Rogers’s body was in the cellar. Judge ! Corio, she went on, saw Timothy in ] bed. ’He said: “That’s the child you ! are trying to pass off on me.- He 1 picked him up,” asserted Parks, ! “choked him, and put him in the sink. | Then he advised me to bury the body I somewhere, without clothes, which I ! did with the help of my brother-In- ! law.” . >' .. , Judge Corio,, in the witness-box, characterised this statement as an abominable invention. He swone ’that 1 lie had never been to the “Iron j Widow’s” house and bad never seen I j;ho woman’s little wards. Her motive, ! the judge went on, was to get even i with him because he had refused to i continue to act as her lawyer three ; years ago, and had ordered her out of ! his office. The Public Prosecutor accepted ! Judge Corio’s denial. - , „ I A story of the “Iron Widow s i brutality was told by Mrs Sadia Work, I who was her landlady. Every m.ght for ! the 35 nights Parks lodged with her i the “Iron Widow" spanked, shook or ! beat the children. She never let the j littlo ones out of the house. Every : night, ” testified Mrs Work, “I heard ; thorn ory, and I could tell by the.noise | that she was slapping them hard. A | tho neighbours complained, but I i could do nothing.” I In her defence Parks stuck to the ! story that Dorothy Rogers died after : a slapping, and that Timothy was killed by an accidental fall downstairs. She j oxousecl herself for accusing Judge • Corio on tho ground that he was a politician, and could have helped her if lie liked. “Tho only mistake I made," she concluded, “was in ,not 1 calling,in a doctor after Dorothy died.”