FULL TEXT: Memphis, Aug. 12 – Three children, one only three months old, were hacked to death in bed early today by a long-handled axe and ice pick and, several hours later, police inspector M. A. Hinds announced their mother had been taken into custody.
Capt.
Pete Weibenga had said earlier that the mother, Mrs. Mildred Davidson,
apparently fled the scene shortly after the slaying. She was walking alone,
heading in the direction of her home, when apprehended.
Hinds
said no charges had been placed, that a statement was being taken from her in
the attorney general’s office.
Weibenga,
head of the homicide bureau and in charge of the investigation, said Mrs.
Mildred Davidson apparently fled after the children were killed.
Robert
Davidson, father of two of the children and stepfather of the other, found them
in bed about 7 p. m., their heads slashed and skulls crushed.
The
dead: Jean Parkey, 15, Davidson's stepdaughter; Robert L. Davidson. 7, and
Peggy Ann Davidson, 3 months.
Davidson,
employe of an insurance company, said his wife awakened about 6 a. m., and
asked if he was going to get up and plant some corn in the garden. He replied
in the negative and went back to sleep.
About
an hour later, he added, he went into the front room of the duplex apartment
and found the slain children – one in a large bed, another on a couch and the
baby in her crib.
Standing
against a large fireplace in the room was a blood-stained axe which Weibenga
named as the death weapon.
[“Three Memphis Children Slain – Axe and Ice Pick Used in
Gruesome Murders,” syndicated (AP), The Tuscaloosa News (Al.), Aug. 12, 1943,
p. 1]
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For more Violence by Women cases involving axes and
hatchets, see: Give ‘Em the Axe
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[1342-12/9/21]
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