DASTARDLY DADS FROM THE ARCHIVES (Avondale, Pennsylvania - 1907)

Stepdad IRWIN A. LEWIS is accused of murdering his 5-year-old stepdaughter. Note that the child was from an earlier "illegitimate" union of the mother--the unmarried father "unexpectedly departed for the South" before they could be married. A reminder that children have always been at special (but not exclusive) risk from new stepdads/boyfriends.

From the archives of the New York Times, June 22, 1907.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A0CEFDA133EE033A25751C2A9609C946697D6CF&scp=135&sq=father+child+murder&st=p

ACCUSED OF KILLING CHILD.

Five-Year-Old Stepdaughter's Body is Buried in Yard.

Special to the New York Times.

PHILADELPHIA, June 21.--The body of five-year-old Mary Newlin was found to-day buried in the yard of the home of her stepfather, Irwin A. Lewis, near Avondale, thirty-five miles from this city. Lewis is under arrest. John Newlin, her grandfather, is a nephew of William L. Elkins, the millionaire.

The child had been strangled with a piece of tarred rope and over her head a burlap bag had been drawn. Near one of the little girl's hands was her mouth-organ. This she had apparently clutched tightly up to the last, and the fact that it lay in the grave beside her is taken as proof that the child was murdered beside the hole.

In suspecting Lewis of the murder of the child, the District Attorney's most important clue had lain in the facts of Mrs. Lewis's past. More than five years ago she was employed as a nurse in the Chester County Asylum for the Insane. There she met Lawrence Butler, who was an attendant there. They were to have been married, but Butler unexpectedly departed for the South soon after he and Edna Newlin, as she was known before her marriage, were compelled to leave the employ of the hospital. She returned to her father's home, where her child was born.

Lewis and Edna Newlin had been childhood sweethearts and he had known all the facts of her life. Five months ago he married her. That the presence of the little girl was a cause of irritation to the stepfather was the motive for murder upon which the District Attorney worked.

Little Mary disappeared last Sunday and her stepfather insisted she had been kidnapped.