BODY IN TRUNK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 70, 24 March 1931, Page 7

BODY IN TRUNK.

Ghastly Murder Craze in

Hungary.

DEATH OP YOUNG GIRL.

(Received 12.30 p.m.)

BUDAPEST, March 23.

The craze for trunk murders is continuing. Following the discovery of the strangled body of a pretty girl concealed in a trunk left in a railway carriage, the police arrested her lover, Schrieber.

The motive for the crime is believed to have been jealousy.

MURDER AND FRAUD.

Another German Crime to Gain

Insurance Money.

ALL BUT SUCCESSFUL

BERLIN, March 23.

A charge of murder is being heard in the Prussian town of Bartenstein against a furniture merchant, Fritz Saffran, hie secretary, Ella Augustin, and his clerk, Kippnich.

For the prosecution it was stated that Saffran insured his life for £7000. He and Kippnich then drove about the country seeking a victim to murder in order that his body might be mistaken for that of Saffran. One man escaped but later they stopped a cycling milkman and shot him.

The two men drove with the body to a warehouse, placed Saffran's keys, cufflinks and rings in the dead man's pockets, saturated the body with petrol and set fire to it. Saffran fled to Berlin and the bodv was buried as his.

The insurance money was paid over to the secretary. Later Saffran was going to Hamburg to embark for South America when a guard recognised him and informed the police.

A week ago the. trial took place in Helensburg, Germany, of Eric Tetzner, accused of murdering a tramp and burning his body in his (Tetzner's) car, thus effecting his own "death," with a view to collecting insurance to the extent of £7000. However, the police became suspicious, and on overhearing: a telephone conversation between the prisoner and his wife, arrested both. It was also revealed that Tetzner had made an unsuccessful assault with a spanner on a man named Ortner a couple of months previously. For this latter crime he received a sentence of twelve years' imprisonment. He was condemned to death on the first charge, and his wife was given four years for complicity in the crime.