PODOLA GUILTY

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29010, 26 September 1959, Page 19

PODOLA GUILTY

Sentenced To Death (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, September 24. Guenther Fritz Podola, a Ger-man-born photographer, was sentenced to death today for the murder of a London detective by shooting. The sentence ended an 11-day trial fought on the unusual defence in an English Court of loss of memory—a plea rejected by the jury. In a dramatic plea from the dock, the 30-year-old, slim and fair-haired Podola said: “I cannot put forward any defence. The reason for this is that I have lost my memory for all these events. “I do not know if it was me or whether it was an accident or an act of self-defence ... I do not know whether I was provoked in any way. For these reasons I am not able either to admit or deny the charges against me.” The jury, after 37 minutes, found him guilty of murdering Detective-Sergeant Raymond Purdy, aged 43, in the fashionable South Kensington quarter of London on July 13. Purdy and another detective had been investigating a report of a man demanding money with menaces from Mrs Verne Shiffman, a blonde 3.0-year-old model, married to an American.

The Judge (Mr Edmund Davies) with a black cloth on his head—a sign that the death sentence was to be pronounced—then sentenced Podola. The Judge described the murder as a “foul and terrible deed." The evidence, he said, had been “of the most compelling character and certainty.” Considering Appeal Later it was learned that Podola’s legal advisers were considering an appeal. They were chiefly concerned with the verdict on the issue of fitness to plead and the reference to burden of proof. The trial on the murder charge hself began yesterday, after nine days had been taken up with the less of memory issue. Podola was sentenced under the Homicide Act of 1957 which abolished the death penalty for most kinds of murder, but kept it for the shooting of a police officer in the execution of his c.uty.