THE DUNEDIN TRAGEDY. THE SUSPECTED MURDERER. HIS ARREST AND ANTECEDENTS.

Evening Post, Volume XIX, Issue 64, 19 March 1880, Page 2

THE DUNEDIN TRAGEDY. THE SUSPECTED MURDERER. HIS ARREST AND ANTECEDENTS.

Full particulars of the arrest and antecedents of the man Robert Bntler, alias Edward James Donnelly, who has been arrested on suspicion of being the perpetrator of the Dunedin double murder, are given in the Otago Daily Times. Butler, welearn, was discharged from gaol on the 18th of February, after serving a sentence of four years on a charge of burglary. Since the commission of the deed, the police have strongly snspeoted him of being the criminal, and from the first have laid their plans to catch him. ' Having heard that he had gone out of Dunedin northwards, the two constables stationed at WaitaM and Waikouaiti respectively were ordered from headquarters to go out in search of him. On Sunday afternoon these constables (Colbourne and Townsend by name) overtook him on the road, about five miles from Waikouaiti. They at once ordered him te stand, when he sprang behind a flax bush, at the side, of the road, and drew a loaded six-chambered revolver, which he presented at them. The constables, however, rushed upon him and secured him, giving him no chance to use his weapon. He was taken to the Waikouaiti lock-up, Butler, whatever may turn out regarding his goiltor innocence of the crime at present imputed to him, is unquestionably a notorious and desperate criminal. His ago is 28; he is a smart, clever, intelligent-looking man, of good address and carriage; and he has a really good education (said to have been received chiefly in Pentridge Gaol, Victoria). If not a Victorian native, he has been in that colony since he was an infant. From the time he was 10 years of age he has been " in trouble " almost constantly. In Victoria he served sentences in the total amounting to 12 years, his principal crime being robbery under arms. The first knowledge we have of him in Qtago. is that for 4 period qf some months in the early part of I«7^ he held^ the

position of teaclM|in Mia Roman Catholic school at Cromwi|| a position his educational attainments 7 enabled him to fill wonderfully well. He also established a night school in the town, which was numerously attended. For a time in Cromwell he ! seemed to be settling down to a respectable life. His antecedents were not known, and he earned for himself the character ef a decent, deserving, respectable young man. But the criminal instinct could not be repressed. Although the charge was, we believe, never brought against him in a court of law, there was assumption bo strong as to almost juatify its being termed proof that at the residence of the Rev. Father Kehoe, the Roman Catholic clergyman Btationed at Cromwell, he stole a large sum of money — .£SO or .£6O, we believe. This theft he is believed to have effected by his favorite mode of entrance^ — the window. Through Butler's suggestions, suspicion became fastened on a young lad who attended his school; but it was transferred into what was believed afterwards to be the right path by the fact that Butler made heavy investments' in clothes and jewelery. Almost immediately following this, he made a sudden exit from Cromwell society, and made his way to Dunedin. Here he waa detected in a number of burglaries — the prinoipal being at the Queen's Theatre and the residence of Bishop Moran. An interesting little circumstance I recorded of him by the police is that, after teaching in a Sunday school one Sunday morning, he broke into two houses the same night and made away with £150 worth of jewellery. He made a very eloquent appeal to the judge for mercy, when brought up in October, 1876, and charged with the various robberies sheeted home to him, but was sentenced to 4 years' penal servitude.