Commonwealth v. Watkins

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Walling,

On November 22, 1928, the defendant, Nicholas Watkins and Clara Hatcher, his common law wife, resided on the second floor of an apartment house at 1733 Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia. Sometime after his return from work that evening, the defendant announced to other occupants of the building that he had found the apartment locked and, on gaining an entrance through a stair window, discovered that his wife had been murdered and the home robbed. An investigation disclosed that the wife’s body was lying on the bedroom floor in a pool of blood and that she had received…