THE MURDER IN THE PLAISTOW MARSHES.

Bruce Herald, Volume II, Issue 51, 30 March 1865, Page 8

THE MURDER IN THE PLAISTOW MARSHES.

The trial of Kohl for the murder of his countryman, Furhop, in the Plaistow Marshes, Essex, has taken place in the Central Criminal Court. The prisoner elected to be tried by a mixed jury. At the close ol the case for the prosecution Mr Best addressed the jury for the prisoner, and the Solicitor-General replied on behalf of the Crown. The Chief Baron summed up the evidence, and the jury, after a deliberation of about 40 minutes, returned a verdict of " Guilty." Mr Jus-: tice Blackburn passed sentence of death, and warned rhe prisoner that he need entertain no hope of mercy. Subjoined is a resume of the circumstances connected with the perpetration of this atrocious murder, and of the incidents deposeel to by the several witnesses at the trial : — Edward Karl Kohl had lived in England for some time ; . he had worked for a butcher, and subsequently in a sugar bakery, but had fallen out of employment, and was in extremely poor circumstancs, when on his return from a short visit to his native country he married a young Englishwoman in tbe first week of last October, anl took a lodging-house in Hoy street, Piaistow Marshes. With him there came to lodge a fellow-countryman named Tiieodore Christian Furhop, whom he described to his English acquaintani-es as ' a young merchant whom he had known in his own country for a long time ;' with whom, in fact, he had been 'brought up as a brother' Kohl had met Furhop on board the steamer from Hamburg, and finuing that he was comparatively well off, and had cash and clothes, and a watch and portmanteau and trinkets, had taken advantage of a confiding nature to prevail upon die unfortunate young man to come and lodge with him, and bring all his property to the house. To the day of his death in Plaistow Marshes, Furhop lived under Kohl's roof, and on terms so friendly and intimate that, with or without his leave, Kohl had pawned the young man's watch and chain and other things. On the morning of November 3 Kohl was seen, by several witnesses, walking with Furhop along the bank of the Thames towards the ieed-bed. They were going along a path that skirts the reed-bed and leads to it, and were seen together about a quarter of a mile from it. Furhap was never again seen alive; and in that reedbed towards which he was seen walking with his friend and fellowcountryman on November 3, his headless bod}'' was found five mornings after by a young shipwright lad who was out shooting birds, about 10 yards from the path leading towards the ai ver, and about 50 yards from the river bank. It was by the merest accident that the body was found in this unfrequented place; a high tide a would have washed it out to sea. The body had been gnawed by rats ; it was without a head, and strinned to the shirt, hut the. boots and, trousers had not been taken off. Next day the head was found in a rat-hole fall of blood, round which the earth had been trampled down. The head and neck showed wounds and. fractures which a surgeon at once pronounced to have been inflicted partly by a: knife and partly by a

hatchet or chopper. On the day when. Kohl and Furhop were last seen togetherKohl returned alone to hig own- houseabout 10 o'clock, having called upon a, friend and fellow-countryman by the way. It was hard dry weather, yet his boots and; clothes were covered thick, with mud ; not the- mud. of London streets, but of a rivermarsh or reed bank. He said he had be-, come muddy horn riding in, a butcher's, cart. When, asked what had become of'John' (as he called poor Furhop), hesaidr he had left ' John' outside a sugar-bakery in the Commercial road while he went into ask for work, and that when he returned.into the street 'John' was gone, and he- • had seen no more of him. This, was one-^ account he gave ; another was that he had; left John in a public-house;, another that he had lent 'John' a halfpenny to go overall iron bridge,, at a distance of some five miles from the place in. the marshes where they were last seen together that morning at iO o'clock. Having scrubbed the mud off his clothes, he- said, ' If John does not . return in two hours, 1 shall break open his box;" and break it open he did; and affected astonishment at some of his friend's clothes, which he himself had pawned,, being missing. ' Now that John's things are gone/ lm'said to a man whom he had. asked to be a witness to his breaking open,, the box, ' John will never return,' though he had missed him that niorning in the Commercial-road. But how had the murder been committed ? ' Partly,' said the surgeon, who had examined the body and. the head, 'by a sharp instrument and. partly by a blunt one.' One of the lodgers in Kohl's house had a hatchet' which Kohl was in the habit of borrowing to split wood. He had borrowed it the day before. Fin-hop was missing, and he returned it the day after. The person to whom it belongeei remarked that the top of it was,, painted red; and he said that he had put the paint there to make the blade stick tighter to the handle. On a minute exa-.. uiination of this hatchet, small portions of' cotton and linen fibre, and also a very small portion of human skin, were found atrached to a part of the jagged edge. On, the prisoner's clothes Dr Letheby discovered two or three spots of blood, and of ' the same paint as had been used to paint the hatchet. On a further search in the reed-bed a clasp-knife was picked up between where the body and where the head was found. The clasp-knife, it was sworn,,, had been seen in Kohl's possession on the Sunday after the murder. On the following dav he was twice seen at a short distance from the reed-bed; early in the morning, and again in the afternoon, and must have dropped the knife, accidentally or otherwise, on one of those visits to the . river bank. Two human hairs were found hanging to the knife. The Solicitor-Ge-neral impressed upon the jury that an entire stranger to the murtlered man could:-, have had no motive to prevent the identi--fication of the body, and would certainly not have revisited the spot of the murder. On the other hand Kohl, as the nearest, almost the only friend in England of the deceased, and the last person seen^ in his co apnny, would naturally be. the first ob- , ject of suspicion if the body were identified. As to motives, indeed, for the commission of the crime, as the Solictor-Ge--neral observed, ' murders are often committed without any assignable motives;' in this case they were not far to seek. I Kohl was a man in very needy circumstan--ces before the murder ; he was the possessor of several sovereigns immediately after, and talking freely of going to Germany and coming back to set up a public-house. When confronted with the body of Furhop, he had turned deadly pale, and when ap--prehended he had dropped, his hands and made no reply. That a man should be, affected at such a spectacle, as the counsel for the defence fairly contended, was only natural ; it was still more probable that a man should, be intensely affected at the, sight of the headless body of his friend. Perhaps this murder in the PlaistowMarshes. is remarkable among murders, more particularly from, the perfect dovetailing of the materials for conviction, theeircumstmtial evidence of the hatchet and. the knife,, with, the direct, evitlence of theprisoner having been, last seen in company with the deceased walking towards the reed-bed, vdiere the body and head were, found. No possible- doubt,. or caution, orhesitation, or alternative that could be conceived was omitted Uy the very able de--fence; but it was a case in which all such, 1 suggestions. only conspired to heighten. the. t

color of the evidence for the prosecution and to: bring' out in more damning and more fatal relief the whole conduct and demeanour of the murderer from his first acquaintance with the deceased to the day On which he slaughtered his friend, and declared that ' John would never retdrn.' But the dead do sometimes return. . The murder having been committed in Essex, Kohl has been executed to-day, Jan. 26', at Chelmsford, to Avhich place he was conveyed shortly after the trial. He is said to have been most violent for some time after sentence of death was passed UHpn him, and to protest in the strongest his entire" innocence of the crime, j