MURDERER'S CLAIM

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 33, 8 August 1934, Page 7

MURDERER'S CLAIM

APEEVIOUS CEIME

DECLARES MAN INNOCENT

(From "The Post's" Representative,) LONDON, Juno 21.

Walter Prince, alias Jones, a 32-ycar-old labourer, was found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of Harriet Shaw, aged 21, at Eotf ord, Notting-; ham. Prince insisted on giving evidence, j He took the oath in a loud voice, and said:— "I wish to make a statement before I kick off, and you can take it down if yon want to. "In .1928 I should have been strung up for the wilful murder of Mr. Charles Armstrong, of Eusholme, Manchester. A man by the name of George is now doing penal servitude for life for something I did.

"He was tried in 1928, sentenced to death, and reprieved, made a further trial, and got it. '

"That's me, Walter' Prince, alias Walter Jones. I originated from Southport, and I quite realise anything what I say. It was in 1928. I will go for the two of them, and not sorry for the Jast one."

The murder of Charles Armstrong, a 72-year-old shopkeeper, at Eusholme, took place on May 4, 1929 (not 1928, as Prince stated). A man named George Fratson confessed to tho crime and said he was drunk when he committed it.

He was sentenced to death, bufc before sentence was passed ho declared, "I am not the murderer of Armstrong." Ho appealed, stating that he made a false confession because ho was tired of life.

A strong point was made of the fact that if a certain mark was a fingerprint it was not that of Fratson.

The appeal was unsuccessful, but a fortnight later, after special investigations by the Finger-print Department of Scotland Yard, the Home Secretary (Mr. J. B. Clynes) ordered a reprieve, and subsequently he directed the Court of Criminal Appeal to hear the case for a second time, when it was: again, dismissed. ; ■ The second hearing of an appeal against a murder conviction was unprecedented in legal history.