TRAPPED BY BROKEN VOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 242, 12 October 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

TRAPPED BY BROKEN VOW.

A dark, moonless night in early summer. A man, white-faced and panting, walking swiftly along the dust-covered road that stretched from Southend to London—a solitary pedestrian in a world of silence and darkness. Suddenly, from the roadside hedge, a dimly-outlined figure steps out —a man in police uniform. The pedestrian halts with a half smothered exclamation of surprise and annoyance. Then he pulls himself together and asks: "Am I right for London?"

"Quite right, sir," answers the constable as he closely scrutinises the stranger, and, apparently satisfied with the inspection, adds: "Go straight ahead. Good night.' , ' ; Good night." responds the wayfarer, as he walks swiftly away. A few hours later 'the man of the mysterious night tramp appears at his office at the London docks, spruce, brisk and smiling, every trace of travel and fatigue removed. A Terrifying Spectacle. He is a strikingly good-looking man, dark-moustached, dark-eyed, the sort of man to whom love conquests, come easy. Certainly one of the last men who would he suspected of murder. And yet James Canham Read, who took his seat at his office desk that morning, had fled through the night from the s,cene of one of the most brutal and cruel murders in the whole history of crime, the murder of a woman whose only fault was that she loved him too well. While James Read was seated in his London office, apparently without a care in the world, a boy walking through a cornfield on the outskirts of Southend, one of London's favourite seaside resorts, and whistling as he walked, saw a glove lying on the footpath in front of him. He stooped to pick it up, and, naturally, began to look round for its fellow. Seeing a gap in the hedge he walked through it—and stopped, aghast and horrified, for his eyes had fallen upon a terrifying spectacle, that of a young and pretty girl, her face covered with blood, her sightless eyes upturned to the blue sky.

That the girl was dead and that her end had been tragic was obvious, even to the boy's terrified senses. Panicstricken, he ran as fast as his legs could carry him to Southend to tell the police of his horrible discovery. In a trice the machinery of the law was set to work to solve the problem of one of the most brutal and mysterious crimes on record. It was soon established that the dead girl was Florence Dennis, whose home was in Southend. From her married sister, Mrs. Ayress, the police learned that the. girl had been "keeping company" with a man called Read, a London clerk, many years her senior, but young-lookhlg" and handsome, a man whom she had "known for some years and had frequently met. Mrs. Ayress confessed that she, too, had been much attracted by Read, and had been jealous of her sister, Florence, to whom he paid more marked attentions. Her sister, Mrs. Ayress told the police, had received a telegram from' Read on the previous day, and had in all probability met him. "If Florence has been murdered," she said, "I believe it was Read who did it." It seemed to be clear that the girl had kept her tryst with her lover, and that for* some unknown reason he had murdered her. It only remained to arrest the suspected man. Seldom, in fact, has a murder case presented less apparent difficulty, but rarely has it proved so baffling and difficult, for Head was one of the cleverest and most cunning of all criminals, and to run him to earth and establish his" guilt was one of the most, formidable tasks ever undertaken and triumphantly executed by a British detective. James Read, the police discovered, was a clerk employed at the London docks. He was a pleasant fellow and very popular with his fellow clerks. Five years previously he had been introduced to Florence Dennis, on the pier at Southend, and ever since the meeting he had corresponded with her under. various names and from different addresses. At ten o'clock on the Monday morning, the day after the tragedy, he had appeared as usual at his office. A few hours later, however, he had vanished, and a considerable sum of money from the office safe with him. From that moment all trace of him was lost. Such was the problem—simple enough on the face of it—which Inspector Charles Baker, one of the cleverest detectives Scotland Yard has ever known, was called on to solve, that of running the fugitive murderer to earth and to get the evidence necessary to convict him of the crime. The skill with which Inspector Baker discharged his task, pitting his brains against one of the craftiest criminals ever known, has seldom been eclipsed even by the detectives of Paris, reputed to be the cleverest in the world..

Mr. Baker's first step was to procure from Read's employers, the London and India Docks Joint Committee, specimens of his handwriting, for he suspected that the runaway would communicate with one or other of his relatives or friends, most probably with his brother, Harry Read, of whose handwriting the inspector also procured samples. A careful watch was kept on Harry Read, with the result that he was seen to call at certain newspaper shops, where letters marked "to be called for" were received. On inquiring at these shops Mr. Baker learned that the man described was receiving letters addressed to a "Mr. Edwards." Later letters, as they arrived, were handed to Mr. Baker, who opened and read them, and then replaced them in their envelopes for delivery to Harry Read when he called for them. , The handwriting of the letters, although it was cleverly disguised, the detective decided wa,s that of James Read. The envelopes were addressed by his brother, also in disguised writing. The letters, however, contained no address and no clue whatever to the murderer's hiding-place, while the envelopes all bore different postmarks, ranging fromLewes and Hayward's Heath to Croydon and Gomshall. Of these marks Mr. Baker took mental note, together with the times of posting, from which he observed that all the letters had been posted in the afternoon, thus allowing the writer time to travel to the various towns to post his letters and to return to his lair the same day. The problem he now had to solve was' this: From what central station was it possible for James Read to travel to and from the various places indicated by the postmarks in the same day? The Inspector worked hard at this problem, and after an exhaustive examinanatiou of railway maps and time-tables he fixed on two as' the most likely—Tooting Junction and Mitcham Junction. At this stage accident came ; to .his assistance, for he learned that Harry -Head had been seen to address a letter, in his South London lodgings, to someone at Mitcham—one of the two places in. which, the Inspector had already decided, Keacl was hiding from justice. ' ■ , Thus it was that one day, nearly a fortnight after the tragedy, three detectives presented themselves at Rose tta S e > Mitcham, and within a few seconds ttte handcuffs were on the,-wrists ol James Read, who, to the charge of murdering Florence Dennis, answered coolly.— "I am perfectly innocent. I thought of attending the inquesfc-but 1 stolen money from the safe.

SOUTHEND CRIME RECALLED. BRUTAL MURDER OF ARDENT LOVER—LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS ONLY CLUES.

Received Many Wires. But although the murderer had been thus cleverly run to earth it proved a difficult task to fix the guilt on him, so cleverly had he concealed his tracks. It was discovered, however, that for a long time Florence Dennis had been in the habit of receiving letters from some unknown person, addressed to her at a Southend newspaper shop, until the proprietor, disapproving of this secret correspondence with a young girl, refused to act as intermediary any longer. Inquiries at other similar shops revealed no trace of a continuance of the letters. As the letters had evidently ceased, the inquiry was directed to telegrams, and, although none were found addressed to the girl, it was discovered that she received .many wires from various parts of London addressed to "Talbott, Chief Post Office, Southend," a name which, it was later revealed, she had assumed for the purpose of communicating with James Read. It now became necessary to establish that these telegrams were sent by Read, which proved to be no easy matter. All were in obviously disguised handwriting, some in round-hand, others in capitals. A comparison, however, with specimens of Read's handwriting obtained at his office at the Docks'revsaled certain similarities with the handwriting of the telegrams. Thus it was fonnd that, both in the printed telegrams and in his Customs entry-book the capital "0" was smaller than the other letters in both, the horizontal strokes in such letters as "E," "F," and "T" had a decided upward inclination; the cross-lines of "H" and "A" projected beyond the sides of the letters; and the "M's" in both had the same peculiar formation, the central portion being separate from the two vertical strokes. Found Revolver. The telegrams and the ledger-entries were submitted to an expert, who decided that the writing in both cases were undoubtedly by the same hand.

Thus, after much patient questing and comparisons, it was established that for two years James Read had been in secret and constant communication with the dead girl by letters and telegrams, all cunningly disguised. Fortunately for the purposes of justice, Florence Dennis had defeated his attempts at secrecy by breaking her promise to him, and not only revealing the name of her mysterious lover to her married sister, but telling her of the telegram she had received from him making the last fatal appointment. It was further discovered that a constable patrolling the road near Benfleet, leading from Southend to London, had been spoken to about midnight on the day of the murder by a stranger, who had asked, "Am I right for London?" This stranger the constable identified as James Read, who had evidently tramped all the way to London through the night, after committing the crime, to avoid recognition by travelling by rail, and was thus able to present himself at his office on the following morning. Other evidence which completed the proof of his guilt was the finding in his possession of a revolver, which the bullets found in the dead woman's head fitted, and of a blue copying pencil similar to the one with which his last telegram to Florence Dennis had been written. Thus, caught helplessly in the net of evidence, James Canham Read's doom was sealed. The trial of Read for the wilful murder of Florence Dennis took place at the Chelmsford Assizes, Sir Frank Lockwood, then Solicitor-General, prosecuting for the Crown. Several witnesses positively identified the prisoner as the man they had seen walking with Florence in the lanes on the outskirts of Southend. Three more witnesses testified that they had seen him near the cornfield on the evening of the murder. It was proved also that the revolver with which the fatal shot had been, fired belonged to the prisoner. All the damning evidence of the telegrams, - the disguised handwriting, the elaborate attempts to conceal his hidingplace, was produced. As for the motive, it was suggested by counsel for the Crown that Florence Dennis, ignorant of the fact that her lover was a married man—he had, in fact, a wife and several children—had pestered him to redeem his promise to marry her, a promise which he was unable to fulfil, and that he had shot her in order to escape from the unpleasant dilemma in which he found himself. A further complication was that he had also promised marriage to another woman with whom he was pn most intimate terms. Never " has circumstantial evidence pointed more conclusively to the guilt of a maji charged with murder, and there could be no question of the jury'e verdict. While awaiting his execution at Chelmsford, Read protested again and again that he was innocent of the crime for which he was doomed to die; and the last words he uttered on the gallows, with the noose around his neck, were:—"l die an innocent man."