On
January 3, 1929, Wisconsin governor Fred R. Zimmerman, pardoned Myrtle Schaude,
after serving only 5 years for the crimes described below.
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FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): Whitewater, Wis. – No man, not
even her husband, ever paid flattering attention to Myrtle Schaude before
Ernest Kufahl came to room at her home.
The lines, perhaps, furnish the explanatory background and
motivation for the incredible mystery tragedy resulting in the woman being held
on charges of giving a deadly sleeping draught to her husband and attempting to
poison her four children.
Characters in the drama:
Mrs. Schaude, 36, pretty, capable, ardent, suppressed.
Edward Schaude, 52, hard working, conscientious, phlegmatic.
Kufahl, 29, prim and restrained.
And the children – Ralph, 16; Delbert, 12; Mae, 9; Lawrence,
5; all well-behaved and well-liked, helpless police say in woeful innocence.
In her cell in the county jail at Elkhorn, Mrs. Schaude
constantly is pleading to see her babies.
“I can’t bear the thought of being sent away from my
children,” she wails again and again.
~ PLEADS FOR CHILDREN.
Yet, according to the authorities, if she had not faltered
some weeks ago in sacrificing them, the children now would be in the cemetery
beside their father.
This, the police declare, is the story they’ve pieced
together bit by bit.
For eighteen years Mrs. Schaude drudged through her married
life. Her neighbors regarded her as a model mother and a stand-by in her
church. On the farm, she helped her husband in the fields.
When the family moved to town, she began keeping boarders.
Kufahl came to room at her house. He volunteered to help Mrs. Schaude wash the
dishes and tidy the house.
~ DRINKS AND DIES.
In the spring, Schaude became ill. His wife was exhausted
from nursing him, so Kufahl offered to take her place at night. Kufahl,
according to Mrs. Schaude’s purported statement, agreed to mix a drink that
would quiet the patient. Mrs. Schaude objected. But she says Kufahl insisted he
knew what he was doing and she believed him.
She placed the glass beside the bed. During the night
Schaude drank and died.
Kufahl threatened her with a similar fate. Mrs. Schaude
maintains, if she should breath the secret.
Last summer, dressed in her widow’s black, Mrs. Schaude
visited Kufahl on a farm near McGrath, Minn. They talked of marriage, she says,
but he objected that she could not take the children with her.
On a September evening she borrowed a neighbor’s automobile
and took the children for a ride. Before reaching a sharp turn in the road, she
produced a bag of candy. Strychnine had been placed in advance in each
chocolate drop. Ralph the driver, would be stricken first, and the car would
plunge over an embankment. The deaths would appear accidental.
But mother love conquered over clandestine infatuation. Mrs.
Schaude’s heart fluttered warningly as her offspring tasted.
~ KUFAHL DENIES GUILT.
“Spit them out,” she screamed, “they’ll poison you.”
And with her won fingers, she removed a sticky wad from baby
Lawrence’s mouth.
Ralph refused to be scared. He swallowed his candy. But the
mother rushed all back to town and called a physician. Ralph took sick, but
recovered.
District Attorney Alfred L. Godfrey stepped into the case
and began asking questions. Twenty-four hours later she made a clean breast of
it all, Godfrey declares.
Kufahl, also in Elkhorn jail, laboriously denies Mrs.
Schaude’s incriminating statements. And of her he will not talk.
“I am not going to injure her,” he tells all interviewers.
“When this is all over and she gets back to her senses, I don’t want any words
of mine to affect her feelings for me.”
[“Sordid Drama Has Central Figure In Mother Who Tried To
Poison Children After Killing Father,” Port Huron Times Herald (Mi.), Nov. 12,
1922, p. 14]
***
FULL
TEXT (Article 2 of 3): Elkhorn, Wi. — Mrs. Myrtle Schaude, Whitewater “poison
widow,” was sentenced late Wednesday to serve 20 years in the state prison at
Waupun for the poisoning of her husband and her attempt last fall to poison her
four children.
Mrs.
Schaude, whose trial was scheduled to begin Wednesday pleaded guilty to a
charge of first degree man slaughter in connection with her husband’s death.
She was sentenced to serve 10 years’ imprisonment on this count.
The
woman also entered a plea of guilty to each of four counts which charged her
with attempts to poison her children on Sept. 21, 1923. She was sentenced to
four concurrent terms of 10 years each on these counts, this sentence to be
additional to the 10 years imposed for her part in her husband’s death.
~ HER SON’S BIRTHDAY ~
Mrs.
Schaude was sentenced on her youngest child’s sixth birthday. The boy, with his
elder brothers and sister, observed the anniversary of his birth in the
courtroom listening to his mother sob forth for the fifth time in public during
as many months the sordid story of her killing of his father and the attempt
upon his own, his brothers’, and his sister’s lives. He was spared the scene of
the sentencing of his mother to prison, as the children
were
led from the courtroom as Mrs. Schaude was carried from the witness stand to
her chair to receive the judgment of the court.
Mrs.
Schaude was on the witness stand two hours and a half telling her story fully,
freely and without hindrance from attorneys. It was what might be termed her
last request, before effacing her personality under a prison number, to explain
without harassing the sinister story of the last two years and a half.
Dist.
Atty. Alfred L. Godfrey and his associate, Jay W. Page, sat calmly at the state
counsel table their work done, not so much as making a scratch of a pen for
memorandum purposes or for cross examination. Legal technicalities and formalities
set forth in the text hooks of law schools for examining witnesses were
forgotten.
[“Mrs. Schaude Gets 20 Years For Poisonings – Youngest Son
Celebrates Sixth Birthday Listening to Mother’s Story of Slaying In Court,”
Appleton Post-Crescent (Wi.), Feb. 21, 1924, p. 1]
***
EXCERPT (Article 3 of 3): Madison, Jan. 3 – Myrtle Schaude,
Whitewater, “poison widow” today was given a commutation of sentence by Gocv.
Fred R. Zimmerman, through which she will be released from the state prison
immediately.
Mrs. Schaude has made frequent applications for a pardon or
parole in the last few years but requests were denied. She was convicted of
poisoning her husband and in 1924 was sentenced to 20 years in Waupun prison.
~ Affair With a Student.
The poisoning of her husband climaxed a love affair she had
had with Ernest Kufahl, a boarder at the Schaude home and a student at the
Whitewater Normal school Kufahl was held as an accessory.
Mrs. Schaude attempted to [place] blame for the poisoning on
Kufahl but he was acquitted. She later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Mrs. Schaude also confessed that she intended to poison her
four children but relented after she gave them poisoned candy and snatched it
from them.
The governor also pardoned George Ratseck, 72, Joseph Jorde,
59, and Henry Liso, 63, all convicted of murder.
Mrs. Schaude was convicted of manslaughter and attempted
murder on four counts in February, 1924, more than a year after the death of
her husband. His body was disinterred and traces of poison were found.
~ Son in University
Mrs. Schaude was accused of conspiring with Ernest Kufahl, a
roomer in the Schaude home, to poison the husband and the children. The
children, however, were saved from death by their mother, shortly after
poisoned candy had been given to them. She was convicted in Walworth county
circuit court and given three sentences that totaled 40 years. Gov. Zimmerman
today granted her conditional pardon and paroled her to Dr. Otis M. Johnson,
Fond du Lac, a Methodist minister, in whose home Mrs. Schaude will live for a
short time, until she goes to visit her daughter at Union Grove. The other
children, now grown, are a boy in the state university, another in Stout
Institute, and a girl at Dousman.
[The rest of the text discusses other, unrelated, cases.]
[“’Poison Widow’ Gets Release – Sentence of Mrs. Myrtle
Schaude is Commuted by Gov. Zimmerman. – Climax of Love Affair,” Ironwood Daily
Globe (Mi.), Jan. 3, 1929, p. 1]
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[1386-10/6/21]
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