PETERSON CASE IS
SENT TO THE JURY.
GIRL WIDOW ON STAND TELLS
STORY OF KILLING.
Mistreatment and Brutality by the
Dead Man Told by His
Slayer and Two of
Her Sisters.
The case of Rose Peterson, charged with murdering her husband, Fred L. Peterson, was given to the jury in the criminal court at 10 o'clock last night.
After having retired for an hour with no symptoms of a verdict, the jury went to the Ashland hotel for the night at 11 o'clock, under the eye of a deputy county marshal, with instructions from the court to return at 8:30 o'clock this morning.
The second day of the girl-wife's trial was almost monopolized by herself. From morning until 3 o'clock in the afternoon she sat in the witness chair. Most of the time she bowed her head and talked brokenly through the folds of a handkerchief, which she kept over her eyes. She seemed to be crying.
But part of the time, especially when she was illustrating how she tried to fire a shot to end her own life, the expression changed. The handkerchief came from her eyes. The blue eyes flashed out with the same determined gaze that must have met Peterson when she said to him, after they had been living together seven weeks and no marriage:
HER STORY FROM CHILDHOOD.
"You will have to marry me, or I will follow you to the end of the world and kill you."
She began at the beginning. It was the days when she was 16 that her story began. She began going with Peterson at that tender age, when few girls stand behind a press and feed sheets of paper into its maw during a whole tiring day. The two went to St. Joseph, because her parents objected to the attentions of Peterson on account of his youth. For a time they lived on the girl's wages. Peterson did not work then.
"At first Fred told me he could not find a preacher to marry us," said the girl. "Then, after seven weeks of living in St. Joseph, his mother came to take him home, saying we were too young to get married. I told him if he went back without marrying me I would follow him to the end of the world and kill him.
THOUGHT HE HAD A KNIFE.
"We were married and lived together in Kansas City for six months. I couldn't stand it to work all the time, and Fred struck me. He left me, and went away for two years.
"On December 22, the night of the shooting, we had gone to a dance together. Returning from the Eagles' clubhouse we got off a car at Eighteenth and Askew. We quarreled. He put his hand into this pocket and started towards me. I thought he had a knife. I took the revolver I carried out of my handbag, and tried to shoot. One hand would not pull the trigger. I put both hands to it and closed my eyes. When I opened them Fred was lying on the street.
TRIED TO SHOOT HERSELF.
And then Mrs. Peterson related how regret overcoming her, she had pointed the pistol at herself and had pulled the trigger. The bullet, she said, went through her hat, both brim and crown. She put on the hat and showed the jury.
Going through every motion of her attempt at self-destruction, the witness showed how she had tried to shoot. Bending her right arm, she placed an imaginary revolver twelve inches from her cheek and pulled an imaginary trigger. This time she used but one hand and was able to handle the firearm.
On cross-examination Mrs. Peterson was asked repeatedly why she had no powder burns on her face, and why the hat showed no scorching. She said her hair was slightly singed, adding that she could not have received any burns on her face. She said also that the hat was too far away to be scorched. The distance was about twelve inches.
BEATEN AND DRAGGED ABOUT.
Dr. H. H. Lane testified that Mrs. Peterson had come to him for medical advice. She was suffering, she said, from an ailment that might have had its beginning in a blow.
Agnes Donahue, a sister of Mrs. Peterson, said that one night she visited the Petersons.
"I saw Fred hit my sister, then put one hand over her mouth, the other under her chin, and drag her out of the room. When he went out of the house, she followed. I saw him strike her there. I ran back into the house. When I got home that night I told my mother what I had seen.
Margaret Parker, another sister of the defendant, said she had seen marks on her sister's body which indicated that she had been beaten.
Arguments for defense and prosecution were closed last night.
