Amanda Shirley

d/o William N. & Zelda (UTTERBACK) SOVERN. 1st w/o Jasper Edmund 'Ed' SHIRLEY. Murdered.

A MURDERER BROKE HIS VICTIM'S NECK

Harrison County Woman Was Slain Sunday

Alone With Baby Daughter

Mrs. Ed Shirley was Attacked and Killed While Her Husband and Sons Were Away on an Errand - Slayer Locked House and Fled Her body unbruised, but her neck broken, the body of Mrs. Ed Shirley was found Sunday afternoon by her husband in an upstairs chamber of the Shirley home, seven miles north of Melbourne. Death was apparently the result of an encounter with some murderous fiend who had entered the house and attacked her while her husband was absent. Mr. Shirley and his two sons left the home Sunday morning to go to a relative's for some peaches. They left Mrs. Shirley and her two and a half year old daughter alone. That afternoon about two o'clock the father and boys returned.

Every door in the house was locked. Every window was fastened, save one. The little girl was locked in and too small to open the door, so one of the boys climbed through the unfastened window and turned the key. Upstairs in a room where Mrs. Shirley had evidently gone for a nap, the chamber door was locked. Inside the room were signs of a fierce struggle and on the bed was the body of the murdered woman. Save for some blue marks on the wrist where her assailant grasped her, there were no traces of a fight on her person. A broken neck was sufficient to show that her end had been violent.