The complainant was a withered Sicilian woman who claimed to
be his wife. Both spoke an almost unintelligible dialect.
The case on its face was simple enough. An officer testified
that on a Sunday morning in Mulberry Bend Park, at a distance
of about fifty feet from where he was standing, he saw the
defendant, who had been walking peaceably with the complaining
witness, suddenly draw a long and deadly looking knife and
proceed to slash her about the head and arms. It had taken
the officer but a moment or two to seize the defendant from
behind and disarm him, but in the meantime he had inflicted
some eleven wounds upon her body. No explanation had been
offered for this terrible assault, and the complainant had
appeared involuntarily before the Grand jury and afterward had
to be kept in the House of Detention as a hostile witness.
The woman, who appeared to be about fifty years old, was
sworn, and on being questioned stated that she had been
married to the defendant in Sicily three years before.
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