Wife Throws Acid on Mate's Face to Scar Him and Hold His Love

1920

NEW YORK, N. Y. — A frail little woman in her twenties sat in police headquarters and sobbed out a confession, say the police, that she had poured carbolic acid over her husband's face as he slept. She did this, she said, to disfigure him for life so she would not lose him to a "prettier woman."

When she learned that she had killed the man she would have saved for herself she fled, leaving her 8-year-old girl in a room adjoining the father's bedchamber. For weeks the woman was a fugitive from justice.

Mrs. Alexandra Sokolowsky, widow of Frank Sokolowsky, widely known organizer in the American Federation of Labor, who was murdered in New Haven on the morning of June 26, related this remarkable story.

Tries to Disguise Self.

She was arrested, wearing large tortoise shell rim spectacles to disguise herself and clad in a waist of flaming scarlet and a dark serge walking skirt.

Included in her alleged confession was a list of many dates on which the husband deserted her to seek the company of other women. It was the constant fear that she was losing her grip on the labor leader's love that led her to brood over her troubles and decide on a way to keep him to herself.

The woman's story follows:

"My husband was a big, handsome man. I killed him on June 26. He had been away since June 24 and I knew that he had been with another woman. He was so good-looking and such a great lover of women that I thought surely he would leave me.

Found Love Letter.

"He had come home a little after midnight and when I accused him of being out with another woman and told him that I had found a love letter in his pocket, he told me that I must leave him alone and that he was going out again.

"I often had been thinking of disfiguring him so that I could keep him. But I never had thought of killing him, for I could not have lived without him. When I got that last love letter that was addressed to him I was determined to do what I had planned.

"He fell into a doze and I took a pint bottle of carbolic acid and flung it on his face. I swear I didn't mean to kill him."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 2.