MESSITER MURDER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 25, 30 January 1930, Page 10

MESSITER MURDER

TRIAL OF PODMORE

SENSATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

(Received 30th January, 2 p.m.) LONDON, 29th January.

During the trial of William Podmore on the charge of murdering Vivian Messiter in 1928, there was a sensational development. The police unexpectedly found Messiter's watch and keys in a cistern of a public lavatory at Southampton.

The chief interest in. the trial is the evidence of Cummings and Goulden, who alleged conversations with Podmore when both were in prison. Cummings discussed the possibility of finding the watch and keys, upon which Podmore said: "Yes, if they could find them I should be guilty of murder." The conricts were dramatically. ;c%>ss-examined by Podmore's counsel.

Towards the ei»d of 1928 Vivian Messiter, aged 55, the Southampton manager of an American oil company, disappeared. His body was found on 10th January last in a garage at Southampton with bullet wounds in the head and back. The post mortem revealed that death had taken place two months previously. He was last seen on 30th October, 1928. The mystery of the murder remained unsolved.

On 17th December it was announced that William Podmore, a witness at the inquest, whose statement to the police suggested that he was" the last man to see- Messiter alive, had been arrested by Scotland Yard officers as he was leaving Wandsworth Prison and taken to Southampton, where he was charged with the murder.