THE TRAIN MURDERS

Evening Star, Issue 22326, 30 April 1936, Page 9

THE TRAIN MURDERS

CHARGES AGAINST KOPIT CONFESSION TO POLICE Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright BRISBANE, April 29.' On charges of murdering Speering and Costello, and of attempting to kill Thomas Boys on a train on April _2, Herbert Kopit appeared in the City Court to-day, when Detective-inspector A. Jessen and Detective Garvey told the story of Kopit’s arrest in the Victoria Coffee Palace, Melbourne, when he was masquerading as a woman. Jessen said Kopit made a variety of excuses for dressing like a woman and assuming wrong names, but finally, when the truth of his statements was challenged, Kopit said: “ Well, as you will got me sooner of later, I may as well tell the truth. I come from Pialba, Queensland, and believe me, I am wanted for killing two men on a train up there.” Kopit explained that he joined the train at Gympie using a first-class all-lines ticket which he stole from a commercial traveller at Cairns. “ I occupied a sleeping berth until 5 a.m., then got up and began to ‘ barber ’ a man in another berth. When Conductor Boys came along and saw me I struck him down with a tyre lever I brought with me. He tried to get up and I gave him a couple more.” Kopit added that when he discovered the conductor was unconscious he noticed a man in a sleeping berth, whom he intended to “ barber,” sitting *up looking at him. Kopit rushed him and struck him three times on the forehead with the tyre lever. “ I then ran to a sleeping berth in the front of the car and struck a man sleeping there several times. ■When I left them both men were breathing heavily and there was blood everywhere. I searched the bunks of both men and obtained a tenner, a fiver, and 10s notes, a pair of sleeve links and gold studs from one, and some silver from the other.” Detective Garvey gave evidence that Kopit, who signed a statement to the foregoing effect, told him that he had used the trousers and_ coat of one of his victims owing to his own being bespattered with blood. He threw the tyre lever out of the carriage window and alighted at Wooloowin station. Upon arrival at Sydney ho purchased a woman’s outfit at a pawnshop, stayed overnight at Doncaster Hotel, Kensington, walked the streets of Sydney attired as a woman, and finally left by train for Melbourne. The detectives had not completed their evidence when the court adjourned. There are 40 witnesses to he examined. TYRE LEVER IDENTIFIED. BRISBANE, April 29. (Received April 30, at 1.30 a.m.) Kopit, who is 23 and a farm labourer, told the police that the first man he struck attempted to pull the emergency signal cord when Kopit felled him with successive blows with a tyre lever which he admitted stealing from a stationary car outside Gympie station.

The lever was duly identified by the owner to-day. Similarly the all-lines railway pass was identified by J. Thorpe, who stated that it was stolen while he was lodging at the Cairns Hotel.