The fear of death the hands of her husband hung over Mrs. Orabel Tompkins for several years.

Her relatives said Saturday.

She told us of things that happened, how the man choked her, but she refused to leave him.

She felt it was her duty to stay with him unless he could be committed to some institution.

They called her a martyr to duty and told how she lived in constant fear of violence.

Mrs. Will C. Conrad told Saturday of the romance of her sister, O'A. Bell and Ray Tompkins.

Orabel Clover met Ray Tompkins 12 years ago, when both were students at Bradley Polytechnic Institute in Peoria.

Friendship became love. They were married at the Clover home near Clifton, Indiana.

Said Mrs. Conrad,

Ray was one of the best men I ever knew when I first became acquainted with him.

He was that way for nine years. He was good to Oura and the children.

Then he had a nervous breakdown three years ago, and I think his mind was unbalanced. Not long

afterward, he met a young woman who was a teacher here, and she was the cause of all this trouble.

They were at our house Thanksgiving for dinner. Another sister, Mrs. Victor Rubin, of Chicago,

was there, too. When Oara and Ray went home, they had a terrible quarrel,

and the next day he moved to rooms over the garage, which he had fitted up as a studio.

O'ra told me she was going to get a divorce, and I helped her prepare the evidence. The papers

are her lawyer's office, Churchill, Bennett, and Churchill.

She and Ray were to have gone there Friday the day she disappeared to take over division of the property.

Mrs. Tompkins went from physician to physician, constantly trying to have her husband attended to.

The wife tried time and time again to have Tompkins committed to an institution

for safekeeping. Her stories of being choked by him in moments of violence led relatives to

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