A VILLAGE TRAGEDY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 172, 23 July 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

A VILLAGE TRAGEDY.

HORSFOED FOUND 'GUILTY.'

(From Our London Correspondent.)

LONDON, June 10,

The trial of Walter Horsford, the young farmer of Spaldwick, for the murder of his widowed cousin, Mrs Annie Holmes, by strychnine poisoiiing, has ended in a verdict of 'Guilty.' Of the evidence adduced against him at the magisterial investigation I gave you full details at the time, and the evidence brought forward at the trial differed in no material particular and made the case damningly complete against the prisoner. Mis purchase of poison at the Thrapstone chemist's, his letters to his victim betraying his intimacy with her and counselling her to take.the powder, as it was quite harmless, Mrs Holmes' death in agonising convulsions, and' Hbrsford's denial at the inquest that he had ever sent her anything or been unduly .familiar with her, all these points seemed to leave no loophole to escape to the heartless prisoner, who, rather than, have his marriage bliss disturbed, put to, the cruellest of deaths his paramour. The counsel ■ for the defence only made matters more hopeless for the prisoner, if that were possible, for he endeavoured to show that Mi's Holmes was a woman of loose character by cross-examination of heir little daughter, he suggested that perjury had been committed by Miss Laura Horsford, who took charge of the murdered woman's house .after her death, he threw but hints that Walter's cousins, James Horsford and Benjamin Mash, were enemies of the prisoner's, and therefore capable of forging' documents in the prisoner's handwriting, and placing' the incriminating papers and powders under the mattress during the brief interval the house was unguarded when the unfortunate, woman lay stretched out a rigid corpse. Counsel called no evidence, and gave no explanation,of the purpose to which the strychnine purchased by Horsfoi'd j. had been put. He only suggested that as Mrs Horsford, on her husband's arrest for perjury at the inquest, had remarked, 'It's' all about- that woman Annie Holmes.' Horsford had no motive for killing his cousin, seeing that his wife was already acquainted with the connection between him and , Mrs Holmes, and, further, that it was absurd to imagine that Horsford \vr"M wish to murder a woman whom, according to his letter to her, ho only A'alued at half-a-crown, and, still more absurd, that if he did wish to kill her, he should go and purchase so much poison and so openly. Counsel hinted that the murder had been committed by someone else, who had entered the house the day after the murder and laid the packets of poison under the bed.. This line of defence only,- irritated Sir Henry. Hawkins, who, ijl a pitiless 'hanging' charge to the jury, tore to shreds all the suggestions the prisoner's counsel had thrown out, rebuked him somewhat unfairly for cross-examining Mrs Holmes' little girl as to her mother's loose, character, and suggesting that she had another lover who. might have wished, to rid himself of her, pointed out that a man who administered poison to a woman with intent to procure abortion only was guilty of murder, and adjured the jurors by the living God—a rumour had, it seems, spread that- some of them were favourably disposed to the prisoner—to do their duty. After half-an-hour's absence they Veturned with a, verdict of 'Guilty,' and for the first time the prisoner showed signs of emotion, the perspiration standing on his forehead and his eyes rolling in despair. Horsford's final declaration, 'All I have to say is that I am an innocent man,' called forth a ; scathing censure from the judge, followed by a recommendation to spend the little time that remained in prayer and penitence, and to make his peace with Almighty God before the last dread sentence of the law was carried into effect. So Walter Horsford disappeared from the Court, leaving the Huntingdonshire country folk to relapse into the rural stupor from which the sensational murder had rudely awakened them. Despite the coldblooded brutality of the act, there seems to be in Huntingdonshire a fair amount of sympathy for Horsford, coupled with a good deal of contempt for his victim.and to the petition which his solicitor is preparing for a. reprieve a number of signatures have been already subscribed. Bui if ever man deserved the gallows Walter Horsford does.