Newark, New Jersey, July 12, 1923.

Fear crept into the black eyes of Mary Francis Creighton, and her pretty, swarthy face,

became pinched and drawn, as witnesses for the state of New Jersey testified before Judge Caffrey in a jury that the death of Mrs. Annie Creighton, her mother-in-law, on December 1, 1920, resulted from an illness which became evident immediately after the elderly woman drank a cup of cocoa prepared

by the defendant. It was the first sign of weakening of the inscrutable woman who has twice been

tried for murder and has born a son, all within a period of seven weeks. Only once before, when she and her husband John

were acquitted three weeks ago,

of the charge of poisoning her brother, Charles Raymond Avery,

had she shown any emotion.

She fainted then when the verdict of acquittal

was announced in the same courtroom

in which she is now being tried for the murder

of her mother-in-law. Following the finding of arsenic and the body of young Avery and the receipt

by prosecutor John O. Bigelow of anonymous information that Mrs. Annie Creighton and her husband,

Walter John Creighton, the defendant's parents-in-law,

had died within eight months of each other, under suspicious circumstances. The bodies of the

elder Creightons were exhumed. Physicians testifying for the state asserted in reply to questions

of J. Victor Alloya, who is prosecuting the case,

that the autopsycal and chemical examinations of the organs of the elder Mrs. Creighton

revealed the presence of arsenic. Alexander McLaren, brother of the dead woman, testified that his sister told him three days before her death,

that she had not eaten anything that disagreed with her, but that her desperate illness followed immediately after she drank a cup of cocoa, prepared by her daughter-in-law.

The defendant stood in the doorway of her mother-in-law's room during the conversation,

said Mr. McLaren, and made no denial. Dr. Thomas Boyle, the Creighton's family physician,

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