I was in search of my great-grandmother, Isabelle Giroir Gauthreaux, when I dove into coroner records for Orleans Parish. Isabelle died in New Orleans after a failed appendix operation. She died hours away from home so I thought she might have been transferred to the morgue until her family could make arrangements to move her body to Amelia for burial.
I didn’t find Isabelle. But I did find Edna Arseneaux Weiss.
It was Edna’s brother-in-law, Adolph Davidson, who collected her body from the morgue. He also requested her shoes and clothing. Presumably, he planned to bury her in them.
Edna died in 1917 on a New Orleans street corner after her husband slit her throat. She ran a hundred feet after the attack – all while holding her 2-year-old son, Alvin. She ended up collapsing and dying on Canal Street.
Poor Edna. The day started ordinarily enough. She spent the day in the city with her husband’s sister, Louise Weiss Davidson. Toward evening, she and her husband left her sister’s house to buy Alvin a pair of shoes. For some reason, her husband grew angry as they walked down the street and slit his wife’s throat with a razor.
Edna was only 24. Her husband, Charles Joseph Henry Weiss, was 30. The Lunacy Commission found Charles to be insane. They seemed to largely base this finding on insanity in Charles’ family. Apparently his father and grandfather died of insanity – whatever that means.
Charles wasn’t set free. He was packed off to the insane asylum.
The murder happened in the days when reporters were allowed into jails to interview suspects. So, before Charles went to the loony bin, a reporter was able to interview him at the New Orleans jail.
Here’s what Charles had to say:
Yep, he accused his wife of slitting her own throat.
I don’t know what happened to Charles. Little Alvin died in 1990.
louisianagenealogygirl 