Commonwealth v. Abbott

The defendant was indicted for the murder of Maria L. Crue at Groton in the month of January 1880. At the trial, in order to exculpate himself, and for the purpose of showing the existence of motive on the part of the husband of the deceased to commit the crime, he offered evidence that Crue and his wife quarrelled between the years 1873 and 1877, while living in Lexington; that, in 1874, he was seen entering his own house through a window with an axe in" his hand, and immediately after, with the axe in his hand, uttered threats against his wife and a man not named; that the same man…