Commonwealth vs. Sears.
--This case will come up to-day before the
County Court of
Chesterfield, sitting as an examining court.
As we have hitherto neglected to publish them, we take this occasion to state the facts developed before
Justice Snellings, of
Manchester, who sent the defendant on to the
County Court for examination.
It was proved that
Sears, who is a Pennsylvanian, obtained license on the 10th of July last to marry the widow of
Geo. Tuckar.
Previous to the celebration of the rites of matrimony between them, the parties entered into a marriage contract, in which it was stipulated that none of her property should be subject to execution for his debts, but that in case she died intestate, her estate should pass into the hands of a trustee, who was to pay over the rents and profits thereof to
Sears until his death, when it was to take the course required by the
Virginia law of descendents.
Thus circumstanced, the parties were married.
On the evening of Monday, the 26th of August,
Sears asked his wife if she would like to have some milk toddy.
She replied that she would.
He went into the store-room, and soon returned and handed her the toddy.
Which she drank, remarking at the same time that it was the ‘"bitterest stuff"’ she had ever tasted, and shortly afterwards, when she had become very sick, declaring that the milk toddy had poisoned her. Some of her neighbors were forthwith called in, but when they arrived she was in convulsions, and survived but a short time.
Strychnine was found in the house the next day, and a tumbler, supposed to be the one in which the toddy had been mixed, was picked up near the house, having been thrown away.
A post mortem examination of the body of the deceased showed strychnine, or traces of it, in the stomach.
Sears will be examined to-day on the charge of willfully, maliciously and feloniously causing the death of his wife by administering strychnine, or other poison, to her. If sent on by the examining court, his final trial will take place in the Circuit Court of
Chesterfield at its next sitting.
