STRANGE CHARGE OF BLACKMAIL.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 143, 18 June 1910, Page 15

STRANGE CHARGE OF BLACKMAIL.

1 WOMAN AND FOEMEE FRIEND. ALLEGED £1000 PAYMENTS. ——— , j Mrs Violet Fraser, a handsome, fashionably diessed woman, appeared at Brighton Police Court to prosecute Bmil David Wnecher, an Austrian, who was charged with demanding £100 from her with menaces. Mrs Fraser alleges that Waeeher has obtained about £1000 from her by blackmail. According to the statement of her solicitor, Mr G. F. Donne, partly corroborated by her .evidence, she is living apart from her husband, and is DEPENDENT. UPON A VOLUNTABY. ALLOWANCE made her by a certain gentleman ia London and upon an income of her own. Eighteen months ago she -was arrested in Ostend on a charge of stealing furniture. She was tried in England and acquitted. She made the acquaintance of the prisoner abroad, and they lived, said Mr Donne, on very intimate terms. Since then he had persistently blackmailed her, by threatening to expose certain incidents in her career to the man from whom she receives an allowance. In many ways the prisoner had persecuted her, and she had paid him large sums, of money to quiet him. She came to Brighton, continued Mr Doune, to look after her sick child, and Waeeher followed her there. On April 26th, he demanded £100 from her, and when she refused, said, "You will give mc £500 rather than I shall do what I intend to do." "He accused mc," said Mrs Fraser, "of being an adventuress and a swindler, and said he would write letters to a large number of people denouncing mc." He particularly alleged that she was Implicated in a famous Paris jewel robbery. In this extremity she consulted a solicitor. PBISONEB'S DENIALS. Detective-Superintendent Wood deposed that he arrested the prisoner at Brighton railway station and found a letter in his pocket. The prisoner asked him to post it for him, but the witness refused, and opened It. , He found that It was addressed •to a certain London jeweller and contained the words, "If you want to know about your client, who is nothing more than an adventuress, apply at Scotland Yard." Other names and addresses of firms with: whom Mrs Fraser dealt were in the letter, as were also the names and addresses of the persons who prosecuted in the furniture case. The prisoner declared, "The charge is nothing but lies. I only asked her for my own money." ' The magistrate ordered a remand.