FULL TEXT: Judge J. D. Todd today found Mrs. Edith Nadine Beals guilty of disfiguring her divorced husband by tossing sulphuric acid in his face.
The
45-year-old Mrs. Beals, the mother of two teenage boys, pleaded nolo contendere
(neither guilty nor not guilty).
Todd,
following a two-hour hearing in 105th District Court, delayed sentencing until
9:15 a.m. Wednesday. He said he wanted to personally investigate the case.
“Somebody is lying to the
court,” Todd said after Eric Beals and his wife gave conflicting testimony.
Beals, 48, whose face is permanently scarred from the March 16 incident, denied
he had raped his ex-wife of 16 years. He also denied he had threatened her with
a pistol.
“And
I’ll take a lie detector test to prove it,” Beals, a radio and television
station engineer, testified.
Mrs.
Beals said her former husband often threatened her life and beat her.
She
said she got the acid to defend herself after he continued to come to her house
and threaten her following the divorce last January.
“You
knew what the acid would do, didn’t you?” Dist. Atty. Sam Jones asked Mrs.
Beals.
“I
knew it would keep him from raping me,” she replied. Beals said he was inside
his ex-wife’s car on Colonial Street and was writing her a check for a utility
bill when she flung the acid at his eyes.
“She
pleasantly leaned near me and asked me to take off my glasses because she
thought something was about to get into my eyes,” Beals said. “I took them” off
and something did get in my eyes.”
Beals
said the acid that missed him went through the roof of the car:
Mrs.
Beals also was burned about the face when some of the acid spilled on her.
“I
got the acid because I couldn’t stand his threats anymore,’ she said weeping.
“He wouldn’t leave me alone.”
[“Woman
Who Threw Acid Convicted,” The Corpus Cristi Times (Tx.), Nov. 2, 1962, p. 1]
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