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Show Aged Mother pf Ogden School I Teacher on Tmi in Michigan ! . ' j Joseph Virgo, Undertaker, Is ; Called As State Witness; i Other Daughter Silent By GILMAN PARKER. International Ncvs Service Staff Correspondent. Cor-respondent. LAWTON, "Mich., April 20. Mrs. Sarah Tabor, an cighty-four-year-old woman possessing one of the strangest strang-est personalities that has ever come 'to the observation of Michigan criminologists, crim-inologists, is on trial here charged jwith murder in connect ioji 'with, what .is generally conceded to be thq.most unusual- dath..ifi:feteryf ijx ..the ihlstory Lot the. stsjta ii-j'W&ir'v 1 to tho charge that she murdered her I daughter," lurs. Maud Tabor Virgo in the early spring of 191G. and then hid , i he body in the young woman's "hope chesl" in the collar of the Tabor home . in Lav.-ton, where it remained undiscovered undis-covered for nearly four years. After a jury has been elected and it is not anticipated that this will require re-quire more than a day or Lwo the prosecution will outline a case whereby where-by it hopes to prove that Maude Tabor , Virgo's death was brought about cith er by the performance of a criminal operation or by the administration ol an overdose of chloroform, and that her aged mother was either directly lesponsible or that she held knowledge knowl-edge of her daughter's death, which would make her criminally responsible responsi-ble in the eyes of the law. Prominently figuring in the trial will bo the testimony of Joseph Virgo, ' an embalmer ot Kalamazoo, and declared de-clared by Mrs. Tabor to have married I her daughter as his fifth wife. Al-I Al-I though the young woman's body was j embalmed, and despite many circuni- stances which have pointed toward j Virgio as knowoldge more than he I has disclosed concerning the case, no change was placed against him when Mrs. Tabor was held for the murder. Virgo Involved. The prosecution is counting on an estrangement which has sprung up between be-tween the strange old woman and her nearly as strange alleged son-in-law to reveal many things. Chief among the riddles tho state attorneys will seek lu imv uusnuvu win utr. Did Maude Tabbr Virgo die as the direct result of a criminal operation, and was her body concealed to hide the fact? Or Did Mrs. Tabor purposely administer adminis-ter an overdose of chloroform to her daughter because her mother love made her feel that she was sparing Maude future disgrace and unhappi-ness? unhappi-ness? Or Did the young woman meet death at the hands of some one who afterward after-ward forced the mother to become a party to concealment of tho body in order to hide the fact of tho murder 7 A brief hislory of the known facts in the mystery is as follows: In the early spring of 191G, Maude , Tabor, quiet, studious, and a school (teacher from the time she left the j University of Michigan as an Lon-ior Lon-ior graduate, suddenly disappeared. Friends inquiring about her were told by her mother that she had gone West to teach school, to inspect some mln-!ing mln-!ing property and to care for her health. A little later the Tabor fam-jily fam-jily announced that she had died in a j western city. I Discovers Body. ' j Several months later Mrs. Tabor and her son, Walter, went to live in a small California city, leaving as the solo occupant of the Tabor homestead hero another daughter, Mrs, Florence Tabor Critchlow. One day early in last December Mrs. Crltichlow went to the cellar for some firewood, and in gathering it her hand touched a human hu-man foot protruding from a hole in the end of her dead sister's "hope chest." She immediately called for a Law-jlon Law-jlon attorney. When the lid of the I chest was raised, the body of Maude , Tabor was revealed, twisted and distorted dis-torted because of Its having been crowded in so narrow a space, but In ... (Continued on Page 5.) Hop'2t' , .Vtj-gb -was . ' , .. 1 nOUS-ST' ' aai i .i ti 1 1 ii , i m i u.Trri . . . - , xum I Hope Chest' of Maude j I Tabr Among Evidence BkW- (Continued From Page 1) I . f . remarkable stale of preservation due ( f -o--' .o its embalming. It was clad in a !(' ' irldal gown. A medical examination t lisclosed that the young woman was 1 o have become a mother. Search was made immediately for rs. Tabor and her son. They were ound through the enterprise of a Chl-,i Chl-,i :ago newspaper. Then some one re- j nembercd that Virgo had seemed at- !. entire to Maude for a time, and he vas brought into the case. He ad-: ad-: nitted before a coroner's jury that he ft Jf lad been In Maude's company for sev- H j ;ral months while she was teaching tf .chool In Kalamazoo, but denied he h , lad married her or that he was the j athcr of her unborn child. i j Contradicts Statements, jg "Maude left Kalamazoo and went JJ tack to Lawton in February, 1916," he il ( aid "From then on I never saw her M ! dive. When 1 called at her home m ibout two months later her mother M v old me she had died out west." gv He then admitted that he had made Pjlijlf 10 inquiries of Mrs. Tabor as to the pft - :irpumstances surrounding the deatli I ' if "her daughter, which was consid- 1 red strange, in view of their former '. . - riendshlp. . r When Mrs. Tabor was brought back jj, :o tawtou, howeer, she contradicted v.;.'' virgo's statements on numerous ft . joints, chief of which was that he had ieen married to Maude at LaGrande, : .'Jjj. ind. They lived together only a day, : " i -ho testified, Maude then returning to C ' iawton. I , ' "j Then, in answer to the state's at- ' . j orncy's questions, she admitted that , V ler daughter had died in her arms at I, o'clock in the morning of May 2, ' . :j 1916., She said that she had kept the . ;l; .; ipdy 'in a room in the house for a -;j i'eek before dressing it in bridal gar- nents and hiding it in tho "hope ,'h'est" which once had contained many bits of finery treasured by Maudo in anticipation of the time, she would become a bride. "The reason I hid the body was because be-cause of an agreement Maude and I had," the wrinkled old woman declared. de-clared. "We promised each other once wo would be buried in the same grave, f wanted to keep her body above earth till 1 died. Besides, i wanted to keep Maude's death a secret because be-cause certain persons would have harmed me. And I didn't want Virgo to come and take the body from me." Other Daughter Silent. Mrs. Tabor refused to be drawn out regarding the "certain persons" she mentioned. She also denied that she knew anything of the criminal operation opera-tion or the overdose of chloroform, which the coroner's jury found caused Maude's death. Her other daughter, Mrs. Crltch-Iow, Crltch-Iow, also an honor graduate of the state university and a poet and author, au-thor, has refused to make any statement state-ment concerning the case since her finding of the body, even before the coroner's jury. She is regarded as ani Important witness. In court, of course, she will have to testiiy or go to jail. Since her indictment on the murder charge Mrs. Tabor has been held In jail without bail. Despite her age, she has displayed a mentality so nimble that she has baffled questioners time after time, and the prosecution expects ex-pects a hard time of it in getting at the heart of the mysery, on |