MURDER CHARGES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 182, 30 April 1936, Page 11

MURDER CHARGES

Train Crime Suspect Before Court ALLEGED STATEMENTS Detectives Tell Story Of Arrest By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. (Received April 29, 8.20 p.m.) Brsbane, April 29. On charges of murdering Edward Speering and Michael Francis Costello and of attempting to kill Thomas Boys on the Rockhampton train on April' 2, Herbert Kopit appeared at the City Police Court to-day when DefectiveInspector A. Jessen and Detective Garvey told the story of Kopit’s arrest in tlie Victoria Coffee Palace, Melbourne, when he was masquerading as a woman. Detective-Inspector Jessen said that Kopit made a variety of excuses for dressing like a woman and assuming wrong names, but finally, when the truth of his statements was challenged, Kopit said: “Well, as you will get me sooner or later, I may as well tell the truth. I come from Pialba, Queensland, and believe I am wanted for killing two men on a train up there.” Kopit explained that he joined the train at Gympie. using a first-class allline which lie stole from a commercial traveller at Cairns. “I occupied a sleeping berth until 5 a.m. and then got up and began to ‘barber’ a man in another berth. When the conductor. Boys, came along and saw me I struck him down with a tyre lever I had brought with me. He tried to get up and I gave him a couple more.” Kopit added that when he discovered the conductor was unconscious, he noticed the man whom he intended “barbering” sitting up and looking at him. Kopit rushed at him and struck him three times on the forehead with the tire lever. “I then ran to a sleeping berth in the front of the car and struck a man sleeping there several times. When I loft them both men were breathing heavily and there was blood everywhere." I searched the bunks of both men and obtained a tenner, a fiver and ten shillings in notes, a pair of sleeve links and gold studs from one and a fiver and some silver from the other.”

Detective Garvey gave evidence that Kopit, who signed a statement to the foregoing effect, told him he had used the trousers and coat of one of his victims owing to his own being bespattered with blood. He threw the tire lever out of the arriage window and alighted at Wooloowin station. Upon arrival at Sydney he purchased a woman’s outfit at pawnshops and stayed overnight at the Doncaster Hotel, Kensington. He walked the streets of Sydney attired as a woman and finally 'left by train for Melbourne.

Kopit, who is 23 and a farm labourer, told the police that the first man lie struck attempted to pull the emergency signal cord, when Kopit felled him with successive blows with the fire lever, which he admitted stealing from a stationary car outside Gympie station. The lever was duly identified by the owner to-day. Similarly the aillines railway pass was identified by J. Thrope, who stated that it was stolen while he was lodging at a Cairns hotel. Detectives had not completed their evidence when the court adjourned. There are 40 witnesses to be examined.