A FOUL CRIME.

Evening Star, Issue 11678, 10 February 1902, Page 1

A FOUL CRIME.

A whole family has been sentenced at Cork to long terms of penal servitude for a most brutal attack on a farmer which resulted in his death. They were indicted for murder, but were convicted of the minor offence of manslaughter. The father, toother, daughter, and three sons were all involved in this family crime, mid one of them, the eldest son, was, we regret to say, a sailor who had served with distinction with the Naval Brigade in South Africa and who had been invalided home. It is indeed- deplorable that a gallant “handy man ” should turn his hand to such fiendish work. There bad been ill-feeling between this ferocious family and their victim for a long rime over some trumpery dispute about a boundary fence. They therefore deliberately sallied forth against their enemy armed to tbe teeth with “spades, hay forks, and other agricultural implements. ’ John Grotty is not stated to have had any assistance, ’and if that is so his assailants outnumbered him by six to one. He apparently fought for bis life, but was killed in the affray. What circumstances there can have been to reduce tbe crime to manslaughter we cannot imagine. In any case the crime was one of the most brutal and cowardly ever committed, and tbe fact that two women took part in it is one of its most disgusting features.