END OF MAN-HUNT.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20756, 17 January 1933, Page 7

END OF MAN-HUNT.

ARREST FOR MURDER OF SPATCHETT. (UNITED TRESS ASSOCIATION— BY EIjBCTJMO TELEGRAPH—COPYfitGHt.; LONDON, January 15. Samuel James Furnace, aged 39, was discovered staying in a houso at Southend. He was taken into custody and charged with murder. This was the bald statement endiug one of the most interesting man-hunts in the history of English crime. Furnace had not disguised himself, and did not resist when apprehended. When the police entered he was sitting before the fire, his reluctance to leave which was ascribed to illness by the aged landlady. [Scotland Yard broadcast last week that Samuel Furnace was wanted for the murder of Walter Spatchett at his office near Hampstead. The announcement followed a five days' hunt for Furnace wherein 50,000 police throughout the country had been engaged. Furnace, a master bulider, at Chalk Farm, had his office in a shed. The alarm was given one night that the shed was afire, and a fireman found a man, later identified as Furnace, amid the ruins. It appeared at first to be a simple case of a man overcome by smoke in a sudden fire in his office, but sensational developments' soon followed. The first was when it was revealed that there were three shots in the body. Tho detectives then found that the dead man was not Furnace, but Walter Spatchett, a young rent-collector. The murder was carefully staged to give the impression that it wan ft case of suicide, as a sheet of paper in a typewriter, which survived the fire, was manifestly intended to suggest that the victim was contemplating suicide. Spatchett is said to have been a secret service agent of the ''Black and Tans" during the Irish troubles in 1921. The police theory is that the murder was inspired by political revenge.] PRISONER TAKES POISON. (Received January 17, 1.25 a.m.) LONDON, January 16. Furnace was found to-day Writhing in his cell, and was rushed to hospital, where he was found to be suffering from the effeets of poisoning.