Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Edith Nadine Beals, Texas Acid Queen - 1962


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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 SEE: “Acid Queens: Women Who Throw Acid” for a collection of synopses of similar cases.

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