MURDERER EXECUTED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 16, 31 October 1935, Page 5

MURDERER EXECUTED

MRS VAN DER ELST’S PROTEST.

CHALLENGES POLICE TO ARREST HER. 'United Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 9.45 a.m.) LONDON, October 30. Alan James Grierson has been executed. Mrs Van Der Elst demonstrated outside the prison and challenged the police to arrest her. Hundreds surged round the nowvfamiliar car. ..The police forbade- sandwichmen carrying boards advocating abolition of capital punishment to walk near the prison.

Grierson was charged on July. i 8 with the murder of Mrs Louise Gaun with whose daughter ho was to have married to-day, her twenty-first birthday, and from whom he had borrowed money. On Juno 22 Mrs. Gaun was found unconscious in a locked flat at Gloucester Road, Regent Park, which she occupied with her husband and daughter, acting as. caretakers in the absence of the tenant, Miss Riley. Grierson, who was unemployed, first met Miss Gann on April 20, arid on June 3, with the consent of her she invited him to occupy Miss Riley’s bedroom in the -flat. On June ?,• however, he stole a ring and a brooch, the property of Mrs Gaun, and left the house. Next day Mrs Gaun received a note saying, “Forgive me — Alan,” and enclosing pawn tickets for the articles which lu\d been pawned, for £5. He asked to be allowed to return to the flat, and this was agreed to.