POSED AS PRINCE

Evening Star, Issue 20585, 10 September 1930, Page 7

POSED AS PRINCE

CAMBRIDGE MAN INVOLVED There was an echo in Cambridge Police Court of the recent shooting tragedy in which a university tutor and a police officer were killed by Douglas Newton Potts, an undergraduate, who committed suicide immediately afterwards. In the court was Norman James Mountifield, of Fitzwilliam House, Cambridge, the undergraduate wdio, it was stated at the inquest, had posed as a Russian prince. He appeared to give evidence in a case in which Frederick Montague Manning, of the White Hart Inn, Tuddenham, near Mildeuhall, -was charged ■ with ’ pledging Mountitield’s credit without permission. Manning’s defence Was that, as the result of a conversation held in the room formerly occupied by Potts, ho was under the Impression that Mr Mountifield had given him the required permission. It was stated in evidence that Manning had obtained a leather, golf coat, a pair of golf shoes, and a tenuis racket from different Cambridge shops, in each of which he asked for. and ..was given credit in the name of Mr Mountifield. Manning is the son of the licensee of the White Hart Inn, where, it was stated, the dead undergraduate and his companions were often visitors. Mr Mountifield, in the witness-box, said ho knew the accused man slightly, through having been at his father’s house near Mildeuhall, but he denied that he had ever given him authority to pledge his credit. Cross-examined by Manning, Mr, Mountifield agreed that he saw Man-; ing in Potts’s room. He denied categorically that he had said his father, was the Tsar of Russia who was murdered in the revolution, _ and on tho question being put to him again he said: “I did not say the Tsar of Russia, I said the Grand Duke Michael.” ■ Manning’s father, giving evidence, said that Mountifield had posed as heir of the Tsar. “He has given my boy the idea that he has unlimited means, and has told him that he could have anything he liked at his expense.” Manning was bound over for three years to be of good behaviour in the sum of £SO, with his father as a surety in a like sum. The magistrate advised the father to put his son to work.