Springfield Weekly Republican

VOODOOISM AND MURDER.

A Strange Case of Poisoning in this City.

The sudden death of Freddy, the two years and a half old son of J. W. Smith Barr's colored cook, on Sunday proves, after analysis, to be a genuine case of arsenical poisoning, and the alleged murderess, a good-looking mulatto woman of 25 named Julia or Lizzie Shepard, and hailing from Madison, Ct., was arrested Wednesday.

The Shepard woman, coming to this city three weeks ago in search of a friend named Smith, went to J. W. Smith's, and, though finding it the wrong family, was permitted to remain, being of respectable address. The child Freddy was much thrown in with her, as Mrs. Smith was sick and he soon seemed to be constantly "ailing," vomiting much, accompanied with violent contraction of the leg and arm muscles. These attacks were especially noticeable after the child had taken milk, which the woman often gave him. Miss Shepard would express great solicitation for the child, but after a time the boy conceived such a dislike for her as to scream whenever she approached him. She also said that he was too handsome to live, and would die at a certain time. The family were naturally alarmed, and secured prescriptions from two physicians, and the boy appeared to mend. But on Sunday afternoon the child suddenly died, after violent spasms, and the Shepard woman left.

After the Shepard woman's arrest, three suspicious looking bottles were found in her trunk, one of which contained arsenic. What lends additional force to the charge against her is that a robust six-years-old boy in the Union-street family where she went on Tuesday, was the same night attacked with symptoms similar to the Smith boy's, though he recovered the next morning. A pudding she carefully prepared for the family Wednesday is preserved for the chemist. Miss Shepard had also washed and ironed all of her clothes intending, she said, to leave town soon for Troy. She is an unusually smart, active and neat-appearing woman and is withal rather stylish, and she protests her innocence of the cause of her imprisonment. The Union-street man says he caught her face suddenly off its guard Tuesday, and found her regarding him in a manner that he describes devilish in the extreme; and he suspects that the pudding was for his benefit. No motive for the crime is known. If the Shepard woman did it, it could hardly be to gratify a personal spite, as she is almost a stranger here. About the only explanation is that she wanted to be considered a Voodoo prophetess, a character both dreaded and revered among the blacks in the South; and so to gain a reputation among colored people here, prophesied the death of the child, and then took pains not to be misreading the future.