CRIMES IN AUSTRALIA..

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4607, 30 May 1872, Page 3

CRIMES IN AUSTRALIA..

THE PARAMATTA MURDERS. In passing sentence of death on tho prisoners found guilty of the atrocious Paramatta | murders, his Honor, Mr. Justice Hargrave, whoso voice was broken by emotion, said : George Robert Nichols, — You have just been found guilty of one of the most coldblooded and atrocious murders ever perpetrated in any civilised country. The evidence has proved your guilt (and that of the unhappy young man by your side) beyond possibility of any doubts, either in the minds of myself or of the jury, of any one in Court, or of any one who may hereafter read the narrative of this trial. I warn you that the sentence of death, which. I must presently pronounce upon you, will and must be carried out, without your having the slightest hope of any remission or reprieve. I look in vain at the evidence to discover any one circumstance upon which the most merciful imagination of any human being can lay hold by way of excuse or palliation for your awful crime, or for the delay of your ignominious execution on tho scaffold. On the contrary, all the circumstances surrounding your crime are of such unexampled cruelty, show such hardened wickedness, and have spread such universal horror over the whole colony, that I do not believe a single human being could be found on reading the evidence against you to petition for any mercy on your wretched life. It is only two short years since, on the 10th May, 1870, I myself sentenced you and your present comrade in this murder to two years' imprisonment with hard labour in Darlingkurst Gaol ; you, Nichols, under the alias of Davidson Cameron Mitchell, having pleaded guilty to two charges o£ obtaining by false pretences the wearing apparel of two poor widow women— Mrs. Minares and Mrs. Woodward — and also to a charge of forgery and uttering ; and you, Froude, alias Lister, having pleaded guilty to no less than five separate charges of obtaining goods by false pretences and forgery and uttering between the 9fch and 28th March, 1870. And now you have been found guilty of a murder surrounded with circumstances proving beyond a doubt that you have sought to maintain yourself not by honest industry, but by the systematic murder of your fellow creatures. The evidence in this particular case pro res that after | you had allured your inte -ded victim — an unfortunate stranger in Sydney, lodging here, but in search o( employment as a clerk or bookkeeper — into a boat, hired by you ' and Liater at the foot of King street, Lißter carrying- part of his luggage back to an hotel, there leaving it for tho night ; and that in this boat you and Lister deliberately rowed your victim on that evening of the 13th March to the place of his intended murder. During this last journey hemust have conversed with you, aa a friend taking him to his future home, when you were speeding j onwards in tho gloom of evening till you had taken him far beyond all human aid into an unfrequented part of Sydney Harbour ; and then, even while hope was cheering his poor deluded heart with the fancied approach to his future home (which you had falsely placed before him), you dashed your remorseless life-preserver with repeated blows upon his head, one wound breaking into his brains. But you forgot that Almighty God 'was watching your every act j and He has said that " He will make inquisition for blood ; and that He will remember the Btranger and the friendless." The very cord with which you fastened the heavy stone to his body has been identified, and with the other evi- | dence furnishes an awful fulfilment of God's words, "That the wicked shall be snared in the work of his own hands." You, indeed, thought discovery of the crime was impossible, when you had swung the ' yet warm, and perhaps still breathr ing, body over the boat's side, ; an<l beard it plunge into the depths of that lonely .river channel ; but even while you were possessing yourself in Sydney of the " Christian .Year," and other religious books, and wellfilled,box of clothen of your poor viotimj his shattered corpse was rising to the surface of the water, in spite of aft yourounniug, land*, was being wafted to the shallows of the river shore, where the limbs met the horrified gaze of the fisherman, Denis Nolan, who put; the keen-eyed police upon your track, bringing you almost instantly' to human juatifce^ I beseec.h you to betake yourself at once to the ministers of religion of whatever denomination, you are. Receive their spiritual advice, and implicitly follow their j instructions, ■ from ■•'■• the: moment ;you reach,, the cell of r the .condemned,! so^ , that 'you, may "be brought' at 'once , to iinplor6 v the forgiveness" of - Almighty. 'Go<l, whose clearest law you have so grievously broken, and before whose eternal judgment seat jit is th4t yo,u must rneefe ypujr utoofferfding'vijtim ' faqe'to face, when tha dark', water'a, of ojean and river shall give up their uncoffined millions to.the voice of God. limplor^^oa to 'devote ■ttie i lasffew"dayßth*at jce,n^|in 'fdrj you upon' earth ■, to humble, contrite, prayers for- God's forgiveness- of -'ryour" guilty .soul, not only t for this oiriine cj ( s tnii^d^,} but for every other guilty of. I heartily i pray that i youri .penitential 'sorrdw'may'yejb .reabh'Goa'/thrbWj'eyeh at the last ntosfofe',#ys<ltfei.ssbjfy ttie 'door tof^repentance, 'closes iipon you by; your [execution? "-' " • * 'i'<^?" "V* • vi-u <* .» i

I the li&jSDjsßVjdR 1 "si&o&MiijiiN. . A telegram fronr'Toowoboiba'tcff the Brisbwie Oowrkr f dated May 15, states that

Oollins confessed, before the Police Magistrate, that he waylaid Zietnan at GundeGunda Creek, on the afternoon o£ the 21st' November, and, presenting a pistol at him, demanded his money, and ordered him to strip, pieman gave him his valise, watch and chaiu, coat, ami vest. He (Ziemin)lfcheii said :— "Collins, this is the worst day's work you have overdone ; it 'will be a dear day for yon." Finding that he was known, Collins follpvp ed Zieman, and struck him r at the' back of the'Kead' with the piafol'; they both struggled together in the water, and Collins battered his head in with his pistol. Finding he was dead, Collins rifled the body and left it, but went back again at midnight, wearing McGovern's boots, and disposed of the body and the articles belonging to the murdered man in the places where they were found. He denies shooting Zieman, and said the pistol was not loaded. He believed Zieman had the £800 . offered for Becketts brand. The remains of Zieman were buried in the Jewish burying ground, with full Masonic honours. All the shops wore closed during the funeral, and a large number of persons attended, When found guilty at his trial, on being asked by the Clerk of Arraigns if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not he passed upon him, Collins put his foot on the seat, and attempted to jump over the dock, evidently with the object of escaping. He was at once seized by the police,.but he struggled so violently that it took six policemen to hold him in the dock while sentence of death was passed upon him.