Wife Slain by Jagged Glass, Husband Held

Camden Courier-Post – June 26, 1933

Accident Hoax Broken by Cops after Grilling Family; Friend

On Deathbed, She Orders 4 Children to Say She Fell on Stairs

Command Arouses Concealed Detectives

Woman Slashed by Broken Decanter; Man Faces Murder Charge Today

A death-bed command of a South Camden mother to her four children to stick to their story failed of its motive last night and the woman’s husband was arrested on suspicion of murder.

The charge will be changed today, police said, to one of murder.

“Say only what I say, that I fell down the steps.”

Mrs. Philomena Marcozzi, 41, died in West Jersey Homeopathic Hospital shortly after she made that remark at 4 p.m. yesterday. She bled to death from a severe cut on her left arm.

At her bedside were her children, Josephine, 15; Ida, 13; Louise, 17, and David, 19.

Cops’ Suspicions Aroused Nearby

Out of sight of the dying woman, stood Detectives Clifford Del Rossi and Fiore Troncone.

Their suspicions aroused, the sleuths renewed their investigation. As a result the woman’s husband, Guilio Marcozzi, 55, of 321 Line Street was put in the city jail last night, charged with the death of his wife.

Mrs. Marcozzi was cut with the jagged edge of a broken wine decanter, during an argument with her husband over the cleaning of some hardshelled crabs.

But it wasn’t the children who said that.

A neighbor, Mrs. Ida Lupini, 31, of 311 Line Street, was in the Marcozzi home when the children returned Sunday night from a crabbing trip to Sea Side Heights. She told police, they declared, that she saw the children jubilantly deposit their catch on the kitchen table.

Then she watched, alarmed and afraid to leave, as Marcozzi told his wife to “throw them out.”

The wife refused.

The husband insisted, and when his wife told him he should clean the crabs, he grasped the wine decanter and struck the mother over the temple, Mrs. Lupini said.

Cut by Jagged ‘Glass’

The decanter broke. Grasping the long, neck of the bottle, Marcozzi continued to attack his wife. He swung the jagged edge towards her breast, and to protect, herself she raised her arm.

The broken bottle cut deeply into her skin. An artery was severed.

Then the children rushed, the mother to West Jersey Homeopathic Hospital.

That is the story Mrs. Lupini told, according to Acting Chief of Police John W. Golden and Assistant Prosecutor Rocco Palese.

The mother told hospital attaches she fell down the steps of her, home, cutting her arm on the broken bits of a bottle she was carrying at the time.

The children, hearing this story, corroborated her.

Wife Dying — Man at Work

The father failed to appear at the hospital. Police were forced to get him at his work yesterday, according to Detective Joseph Carpani, when his wife was dying.

Last night he denied the crime. He said he was not at home when his wife suffered the fatal injury.

But his children, confronted with Mrs. Lupini’s tale, broke down and confessed, according to police.

Eighteen hours of almost constant questioning of the Lupini woman by Detectives Carpani, Del Rossi and Troncone solved the tragedy. All three were complimented last night by Acting Police Chief John W. Golden.