Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2025 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== The Detroit Free Press Thursday, 27 April 1939 Mother Bares Plot to Murder Her Son's Wife Police Trap Woman, Using Dictaphone In Her Cell. Arraignment of Three Schedule for Friday White Cloud, April 26 - MRS. MATILDA CASSIDY, 46 years old, and her sons, ELTON, 21 and CHARLES, 23, who have confessed to plotting the murder of CHARLES' attractive wife HELEN, will be arraigned at 10 a.m. Friday before Circuit Judge Earl C. Pugsley, Prosecutor J. Donald Murphy said Wednes- day. MRS. CASSIDY, the iron-willed mother who was the master mind of the scheme to kill the daughter- in-law she despised, was the last to confess. The three, charged with first-degree murder, waived examination Wednesday afternoon before Justice George A. Decker and were bound over to the Circuit Court. 'No Need of a Trial' When asked if he would enter a plea, ELTON, who confessed to the strangulation and hanging of the mother of four Feb. 26, told Justice Decker: "There is no need of a trial for me." Pleas of guilty, which all three told the Prosecutor they would make, call for mandatory life sentences. ELTON admitted Tuesday that he had killed HELEN CASSIDY, 20. CHARLES confronted with the admission, confessed that he had wooed his es- tranged wife back to their home for the express purpose of luring her to her death. His doting mother then sent him to Detroit so that he would have an alibi, he said. MRS. CASSIDY, cool in the face of prolonged questioning by officers, stubbornly refused to change her story until she met her sons face to face in a cell Wednesday afternoon. Tells Her to Confess ELTON told her, "We've told them all about it, so you might as well tell the truth. it will be better for all of us." As CHARLES turned his head so that he would not have to face his mother, she broke into tears. She sobbed out a full confession to Murphy, Sheriff Robert Hart and State police. She poured out the story of a mother jealous of the affections and well-being of an afflicted son, of the hatred of the family for a girl who refused to let the matriarch bring up the chil- dren in a religious belief contrary to the girl's own ideas, and of the family's deliberate plot to execute the wife. "On Feb. 8 I met CHARLES and ELTON in the milkhouse at my farm and we agreed that HELEN should be disposed of." MRS. MATILDA CASSIDY said in the confession statement. "We talked poison, but decided not because we were afraid it would hurt the children, maybe. So we agreed on hanging her. It was agreed that when this took place, CHARLES would leave this part of the State. "The arrangements for getting HELEN where she could be hung was left to CHARLES and ELTON. "On Feb. 24, CHARLES and I knew that HELEN was back on the farm. The next day CHARLES and I went to ELTON to tell him that CHARLES was going to Detroit. "On the way back to the farm ELTON and I talked about what to tell the police. Agreed on a Story. "We agreed that we would tell the police that HELEN was despondent and wanted to get rid of the children. When ELTON left me that day, he said he would see me tomorrow night. "I presumed from this remark that he would carry out the plan. But that night ELTON said that he would have to go home early. "I thought at that time that he had cold feet and would not carry out the plan. But the next day Old Tom (THOMAS CASSIDY, SR., her third husband) brought the children to the house. "I knew then that ELTON had carried out the plan. After CHARLES came back from Detroit, I said to them, My God, that was a terrible thing! It was a crazy thing to do. I wish we hadn't done it. Left School Early. In response to a question by Justice Decker, the CASSIDYS revealed that ELTON had gone through sixth grade in school, CHARLES through first grade and MRS. CASSIDY through fourth grade. The ingenuity of Sheriff Hart was credited Wednesday with the solution of the bizarre crime. Hart called to the CASSIDY home at 11 a.m. on the morning of Feb. 26, noticed that the rope around the neck of the suspended body of MRS. CASSIDY had been cut short. He looked around and found the severed end of the rope in a corner, with strands of human hair tangled in it. "It didn't look right to me," Hart commented Wednesday as he was asked to recount the inci- dent. "It didn't look like a suicide." Sheriff's Deductions. Hart reasoned that if MRS. CASSIDY had killed herself, she would not have tangled her own hair in the rope, would not have cut the rope after tying it, and could not have tossed the severed end of the rope in the spot where it was found. Other officers, however, believed the case to be a suicide, and Hart chose to let the suicide theory be adopted rather than excite suspicion. He preferred to work out his theories and to see what he could discover. Suspecting CHARLES CASSIDY, the husband, of being the killer, he checked with Detroit police on the CASSIDY family's story that CHARLES was in Detroit on the night of the killing. CHARLES was in Detroit, with a perfect alibi, the Sheriff found. Hart permitted the coroner to classify the death as a suicide without holding an inquest and continued to work on the case. Several days later he laid his facts before the State Police and asked their help. Had Been Smothered. "And I certainly got co-operation," the sheriff said. The body was sent to Lansing, where an exami- nation by Dr. LeMoyne Snyder, State Police medico- legal expert, revealed last Friday that MRS. CASSIDY had been smothered to death before she was hanged. From there on, the strange mystery advanced stead- ily toward a solution. Hart and State police arrested ELTON CASSIDY, his wife EDITH, his mother, his brother CHARLES and THOMAS CASSIDY Monday and placed them in cells at the Newaygo County Jail. CHARLES and THOMAS were segregated, but ELTON and his mother were placed in adjoining cells, with only a grating between, so that they could converse freely. Concealed in the partition between the cells was a microphone, with a dictaphone attachment arranged so that a stenographer in another room could record their conversation. Much of it was inconsequential, but the following questions and answers recorded late Monday night and Tuesday convinced officers that a confession would be forthcoming. ELTON Breaks First. ELTON broke first, followed by CHARLES, and Wednesday MRS. CASSIDY gave full corroboration to the plot to kill CHARLES' wife. This is what the stenographer heard: ELTON - Do you think if you owned up to it, you could get the rest of us off? ELTON (later) - Why don't you say that you did it, and say that the rest of us didn't have anything to do with it? MATILDA - How could I make them believe that I could have hung her up and everything? ELTON - Tell them that you smothered her and hung her in the stairway. ELTON (later) - Don't you open your mouth and I won't. I don't think they have so much on us. MATILDA - Do you think CHARLES has said any- thing? ELTON - I think he has. Both ELTON and his mother noticed the hole in the wall leading to the concealed micro- phone, and commented on it, but they did not know what it was. After the confessions, THOMAS and EDITH CASSIDY were released from custody. ------------------------------------------------- Boy, 4, Is Glad Daddy's in Jail Slain Woman's Brood with Grandparents Big Rapids, April 26 - Four children, the oldest 4 years old, played at the home of their grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. NATHAN MORLAN, Wed- nesday as their father CHARLES CASSIDY, their Uncle ELTON and their grandmother, MATILDA CASSIDY, faced trial for the murder of their mother HELEN. CHARLES, 4 years old, who suffers from a speech impediment, as does his father, re- vealed a hatred for his father, saying, "I'm glad daddy's in jail 'cause I never liked him." He said that he never liked to go to his Grandmother CASSIDY'S house, although he wouldn't explain why. His testimony that "ELTON dragged my mommy by the hair and put a rope around her neck," helped to solve the murder case and led to the confessions Tues- day and Wednesday. Knows Mother is Gone. Asked about his mother, CHARLES replied somberly, "Mommy's gone away and never will come back." The next oldest child, THOMAS, 3, still believes that his mother is hanging in the stairwell of their farm home, where he saw her constantly Sunday morning, Feb. 26, after her murder by ELTON. The other children are JUANITA, who will be 2 in August, and BERNARD, 4 months, the baby who was nursing a bottle of frozen milk when his mother's body was found and who nearly lost an arm by amputation as the re- sult of exposure in the subzero weather. MORIAN, a WPA worker, said he held nothing against the youth who married his daughter and plotted to kill her. Blames All on Mother. He blames Mrs. MATILDA CASSIDY. "She was the cause of all the trouble," he declared. He scoffed at talk of a feud between the families and said there was no quarrel be- tween the CASSIDYS and his daughter over religion. HELEN accepted the faith of her husband when she married, he said. However, police contended that the training of the children was one of the principal causes of the plot to murder the mother. MORIAN, apparently reconciled to the loss of his daughter, commented jovially, "Why, I was even accused of murdering her by a fellow I work with on the WPA, to get burial insurance I had on her. It's too bad about CHARLES; I always liked him." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Grand Haven Daily Tribune Friday, 28 April 1939 White Cloud, April 28 - Circuit Judge Earl C. Pugsley sentenced Mrs. MATILDA CASSIDY, 46, and her two sons today to life imprisonment at hard labor and under solitary confinement for the slaying of her daughter-in-law, HELEN, 20. MRS. CASSIDY will serve her term in the Detroit house of correction. CHARLES, 23, the husband of the slain woman, and his brother, ELTON, 26, will be taken to the southern Michigan prison. All three had signed confessions stating that they plotted to kill the young wife so as to get undisputed custody of her four chil- dren. MRS. HELEN CASSIDY was slain last February 26. ===========================================================================