MURDERER FREED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 57, 8 March 1930, Page 4 (Supplement)

MURDERER FREED.

SERVED FOUR YEARS OF LIFE SENTENCE. George Temperton, aged 22, a reprieved murderer, has been released from Maidstone Gaol after serving four years of his life sentence. The release follows the visit to the Home Secretary, Mr. Clynes, of two Yorkshire M.P.'s, Mr. T. Williams and Mr. T. Smith, who mentioned Temperton among several men undergoing life imprisonment for murder for whom strong recommendations to mercy were made by'the jurv at their trials. They asked Mr. Clynes whether any application for reduction of _ sentences would be sympathetically received if it were proved that the conduct of the prisoners had be"- such as to warrant reconsideration of their cases. Temperton, a miner, of Edlington, near Doncaster, was sentenced to death in 1925 .for the murder of Mrs. Violet Turner, aged 23, who was living apart from her husband. He stated that they agreed to commit suicide together. An appeal against ■the death sentence ws dismissed, but Tern-, perton was reprieved a few days later. More than 9000 people signed a petition for his reprieve.