The Wilmington Daily Republican

POISONED HER THREE CHILDREN
Two of Them Died and the Heartless Mother Is Under Arrest.

PARIS, Tex., March 11.—A shocking double child murder was committed three miles southeast of Roxton, a small town fifteen miles southwest of here. Mrs. Mollie Carruthers, the wife of William Carruthers, a respectable, well-to-do farmer went up to her room and gave her three children large quantities of morphine. In the morning her husband, who was sleeping in another room, heard heavy breathing in the children's apartments, and on going there found two of the children in a heavy stupor, from which he was unable to arouse them. Mrs. Carruthers said that she had given them some chill tonic. Physicians were summoned, but could do nothing for the two youngest, one 11 and the other 4 years of age, and at 9 o'clock both were dead. The eldest, a girl of 14, recovered and is now out of danger.
An investigation was begun, and in a few hours Mrs. Carruthers and Jim Strange were arrested. They were brought here and lodged in jail.
After her arrest Mrs. Carruthers admitted that she had given the children morphine for the purpose of killing them. She said that it was done to get them out of trouble, and that she intended to follow them. It developed, however, that she and her husband were on bad terms, and that Strange was the cause of it. She had left her husband once and gone away with Strange, but Carruthers had followed her and took the children from her. This caused her to return home. She had been carrying on a secret correspondence with Strange, and papers and other evidence in the possession of the officers show that Mrs. Carruthers and Strange had planned to destroy the children and then leave the country.