FULL TEXT: New York, March 8. – For the third time within a
few weeks, the defense “I am a woman” has failed in a murder trial in New York
and vicinity, and today Mrs. Paulette Saludes, pretty French woman of thirty,
is lying in the Tombs awaiting a sentence of from 20 years to life imprisonment
for the killing of Oscar M. Marttelliere, insurance broker.
Mrs. Saludes made a spectacular attempt to kill herself by
taking arsenic and cutting her wrists as she was led across the Bridge of Sighs
after hearing the verdict, but did not hurt herself much, the prison physician
decided, later, when she attempted to smash her head against her cell wall, she
was bound to her cot. Her condition was not serious. It was reported last
night. She was hysterical, however, crying out in French to be permitted to
die.
New York had almost become accustomed to seeing women have
killed men turned loose. There were Nan Patterson, who was accused of killing
Caesar Young; Mrs. Jack DeSaulles, the pretty Chilean, who slew her husband;
Mme. Jacques LeBaudy, who killed her mate, “the emperor of the Sahara,” and
many other cases.
~ Same Old Defense. ~
Mrs. Saludes’ lawyer, who had pleaded “emotional insanity,”
the old plea that freed many women in this jurisdiction, stated plainly in his
defense that his client’s chief defense was really “I am a woman” inferring
that a woman whose love has been scorned and trampled by a man, as Mrs. Saludes
claimed had been done to her by Martelliere, should not be held responsible for
killing him.
While the pretty little French woman stood up unflinchingly,
at first, to hear the verdict against her, another woman, the widow, holding
tightly to her flaxen haired six year old daughter, who had been made an orphan
by Mrs. Saludes’ pistol, slumped down and cried, but looked pityingly at the
convicted woman as she was led away to the Tombs. Mrs. Marteilliere would not
talk about the verdict.
New york has shown unusual interest in the Saludes trial,
both because of its spectacular and dramatic incidents and also by reason of
the recent conviction of murder of two other women who killed men. They were
Mrs. Lillian Reizen, who killed Dr. Abraham Glickstein, in Brooklyn, and Mrs.
Ivy Gilberson, who killed her husband at Tom’s River, N. J. the city now looks
forward to the trial of Mrs. Mary Wells, pretty housekeeper at the Massapaqua
Inn on Long Island, who is charged with killing Captain James Pettit, proprietor
of the inn.
[“Woman Slayer Takes Poison – Mrs. Salaudes’ Attempt At
Suicide Fails. – Found Guilty of Broker’s Murder – Also Cuts Wrists And Beats
Head On Cell Wall.” Syndicated (Universal Services) The Telegraph Herald
(Dubuque, Io.), Mar. 8, 1923, p. 1]
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