The News Democrat

DIABOLICAL
WIFE MURDER
IS CHARGED

San Francisco, Nov. 26.-The police of Oakland yesterday unearthed a most diabolical crime and have taken into custody M. A. Wilkins, a stationary engineer, and will charge him with the murder of his wife, whose body was found buried in quick lime underneath a shed in the yard of the Wilkins home in Elmhurst, a suburb of Oakland.

It was known that Mrs. Wilkins had given birth to a child and Wilkins stated that she had gone to the home of her parents in the East.

A friend of the dead woman, Mrs. J. M. Anderson of San Francisco, had been staying at the Wilkins' home during the past few days and now asserts that Wilkins had endeavored to induce her to leave her husband and go away with him.

Her suspicions became aroused and Monday night, in a dream, she saw the body of her former friend lying on the ground, with the arms crossed over the breast.

She returned to San Francisco and informed her husband and the two told the story to the Oakland police. The result was the finding of the body in a trench under an old carpet in the shed, lying as described by Mrs. Anderson.

Wilkins at first said his wife had committed suicide. Later he asserted she had died during child birth and that he had buried the body to save expenses. At last he refused to talk further.

Mrs. Anderson says that she was awakened from her singular dream by Wilkins, who was standing over her with a knife in his hand. When she asked what he meant, he replied that she had been talking wildly in her sleep. He put away the knife and asked her to take a drink of water. She sipped some of the water, but did not swallow it, suspecting that it had been poisoned. This proved to be the fact.