TO SAVE HIS SON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 237, 7 October 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

TO SAVE HIS SON.

CONFESSION BY SLAYER.

First description of wliat happened nt the lonely farm of Walter J. Parsille, Mannvillc farmer, on the night of September 30 last year, when Parsille was shot down and robbed by Kenneth McLcan, is given in a statement by McLean. The slayer, former Tcnnessean, is under sentence of death, awaiting execution on October 6. His son, William McLean, also has been sentenced to death, but efforts to save him from the gallows arc in progress. The elder McLean absolves his son from blame in connection with Parsillc's death, declaring the younger man sought to prevent the robbery. Kenneth McLean had been drinking heavily during the days immediately preceding the shooting, according to the statement. " The object of making this statement is to tell the truth before I am hanged. . . . This is the first time the story ho« been told. I never mentioned the ease to anyone else. I am a man who tells no one," says McLean.

Ho gives detailed description of his movements in Alberta when lie was employed on a threshing gang in the Mannvillo rlisfrict, and later describes his flight through Canada and United States, and his arrest in Tennessee, lie was brought back to Canada and tried at Vegreville recently, as was his son. Both were convicted, the son later giving evidence-which definitely connected t'ne older man with the killing.