Woman Accused of Slaying
Five Men to Get Insurance
LOS ANGELES, Calif., May 13 – Mrs. Lydia Southard, a vivacious brunette of 28, is under arrest in Honolulu on a charge of having killed her former husband and a brother-in-law by poisoning them with arsenic, the sheriff’s office announced here Thursday.

The arrest of the alleged “woman Bluebeard” followed a chase of several months in the United States. She was traced to Honolulu, where she was with her fifth husband, Lieut. Paul Southard of the USS Chicago.

She will be returned to this country for trial in Idaho as soon as possible, the authorities declared.

Mrs. Southard poisoned her four husbands, it is alleged, for the purpose of getting their life insurance. The brother of her first husband, who held an insurance police jointly with the husband, also died under mysterious circumstances.

In each case it has been discovered arsenic was the cause of death, though the woman has gone unchallenged until her arrest in Honolulu.

The chronological story of the alleged murders starts in 1913, when the woman married Robert C. Dooley, a prosperous rancher of Twin Falls, Idaho. Within a few days after the marriage, Dooley, with his brother, Edward, took out a $10,000 life insurance policy, two years later Edward died after a short illness. The husband died under the same circumstances a few weeks later. The insurance was paid to Mrs. Dooley, the present Mrs. Southard.

A year later William McHaffle, also of Twin Falls, married the widow. In 1917 he obtained a $5,000 insurance policy. He died in 1918 in Billings, Mont.

After another interval of a year, she married Harlan C. Lewis in Billings. He died four months later.

Edward F. Meyer was the next man. He married her in 1920 in Pocatello, Idaho. Coming to Twin Falls, the newly married couple spent one night together at a ranch near there. Meyer died within three days in a local hospital.

Though he was insured for $10,000, she did not attempt to collect the money. Operatives working for the life insurance companies had started to compared notes, and after careful investigation a complaint was issued by the district attorney in Twin Falls, charging Mrs. Meyer with the murder of her husband.

Detective Ormsby of the Twin Falls sheriff’s office traced her to this city where it was discovered that she had married Lieutenant Southard on Nov. 28, 1920.

The next month Southard was transferred to the Hawaiian Islands and his wife left for Honolulu from San Francisco Dec. 29.

Investigation has revealed, according to authorities, that in each case, Mrs. Southard waited until her husband was sick. Then, it is alleged, she administered the poison and the doctor, knowing the man to be sick, would assume that he died of natural causes. A death certificate, showing that some disease was the cause of death, was signed in each case. Exhumation of the bodies of two of the dead men has revealed the presence of arsenic in their stomachs.

Woman’s Death May Be Laid
To Escaped Female Bluebeard
Topeka, Kan., August 1 (AP) – Lyda Southard, four of whose six husbands have met death under mysterious circumstances, today faced return to Idaho, where she escaped from the State Penitentiary while serving a 10-year sentence for the fly-paper poisoning of Ed F. Meyer.

The “Feminine Bluebeard,” booked as a 39-year-old housewife following her arrest here Saturday, declined to see callers, but was quoted by Perry Brush, chief of police, as having admitted her identity. She also was identified by fingerprints.

Meanwhile from Denver, where the woman’s sixth husband, Harry Whitlock lives, came word that District Attorney Earl Wettengel planned to investigate the death of Theodosia Whitlock, Whitlock’s mother.

Mrs. Southard married the Denver man last March, almost a year after her escape from the Idaho institution by scaling a 16-foot wall.

She was arrested here when she called for mail from Whitlock, whom she left hurriedly after explaining her “mother was ill in Akron, Ohio.” She was identified in Denver following her flight after the arrest of David Minjton, 45, who confessed he aided in her prison escape.