CALLOUS CONFESSION

Evening Star, Issue 17279, 18 February 1920, Page 3

CALLOUS CONFESSION

“STRANGLED” HIS SWEETHEART. Callously admitting that he murdered his sweetheart and then went home to bed, William Wright, a Lincolnshire exsoldier, was committed for trial on the capital charge at Caister. t Wright had been keeping company with Annie Kilbeck, who lived in a well-furn-ished cottage near the horse market, and gained a living by acting as sewing maid and domestic help. The woman was found murdered in her house. When Wright was arrested the constable questioned him about his last visit to the girL “Was she alive when you left her?” pointedly asked the officer. He was astonished when the man coolly replied ; “ No. We had a few words about a brooch she was wearing, and I strangled her with my hands. I left her for dead, put out the lamp, and went home. I had had a lot of drink.” This statement led to the man bein'detained and charged with murder. He thereupon made a confession, which he signed, in which he said that when at the dead woman’s house the previous night he asked where she got a brooch nEhich she "’as wearing. She replied that it was given to her by her dead mother. Ha said that he _ did not believe that, and he thought it was given to her by a “ fancy man.” When she protested that it was not, he said “If you don’t tell me who gave you, t I’ll finish you. She would not tell me,” he concluded, “so I strangled her.” Brought up at the little courthouse, Wright strolled into the court with his hands in his pockets. After calmly looking round the court, he seated himself comfortably in the dock, and throughout the protracted proceedings betrayed no interest. He was the calmest, least-con-cerned person in the building. To an interested court a witness named Campey told how the night before the murder he was in the Talbot Hotel when prisoner entered. They had drinks together, and prisoner, looking curiously at him, said: “ Sweep; black cap; three weeks; rope; hanged by the neck; finish.” It was an odd phrase, and prisoner repealed it with a sort of mournful relish. Wright, who offered ’no defence, was L committed for trial.