MURDER OF WIDOW

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 April 1924, Page 7

MURDER OF WIDOW

SECRET “LOVER’S” DECEPTION. A murder plot, carefully /prearranged, and ingeniously executed, lias been revealed by the police investigations into the death of Mis Elizabeth Reaney, who was killed with a coal hammer in her house in Sunderland Road, Manningham, Bradford. This lonely, unprotected widow, credulous to the point of fool-hardi-ness seems to have fallen the vicvictim of one of th'e most cunning conspiracies engineered (in England for many years. It has been found that her secret lover, to marry whom she had sold her home and arranged for the removal of her furniture to his .supposed house in Derbyshire, was an adept at deception, and that he treated her with heartless duplicity. Who this man is no one knows, because he went to elaborate plans to hide his identity. Mrs Reaney first met him through a matrimonial advertisement inserted by the man in a Leeds newspaper in October 1921. It ran: — “Gentleman with . means wishes to correspond with a widow, or a single lady of means, with a view to matrimony. ’’ When the polite searched Mrs Reaney’s house they found a large number of love letters posted to her from Leeds, Harrogate and Bradford, in which the question of matrimony was freely discussed. Most of the letters bore no address but some, which came from Leeds, are known to have come from an accommodation address. Mrs Reaney had told a few of her friends, and relatives that she had sold her house, because she was to marry a Derbyshire man, who was a stockbroker and a sleeping partner in a firm of auctioneers. Not once did she mention his name, nor even describe his appearance. She explained .that her lips were sealed because her lover and his sister were each to receive a large sum, which would yield an income of about £2OOO a year under the will of an aunt who had made the express condition that, before receiving the money both beneficiaries were to be secretly married for three months. Mrs Reaney waf> warned in the strongest possible terms that the man’s story was wholly incredible, and that it, seemed he only wanted her money. She took no notice of this advice, . the -sole effect of which was to increase her reticence. A diabolical sense of humour characterised nearly all her lover’s dealings with her. His crowning cynical witticism was to tell the woman that the address of the house io which he would take her as his bride was “Hymen House, Castleton Road, Buxton.” This address the woman gave in all innocence to the furniture remover, with the instruction to take her effects there. It is, of course, fictitious. Mrs Reaney, an attractive, fairly well educated woman, who belongs to a Manningham family, was married in her youth to a cycle agent, named David Lewis Reaney. Their marriage turned out unhappily, and 24 years ago the man deserted her. and went to Australia. For a short time she had frequent letters from him. and then the correspondence ceased. Eight or nine years passed, and, hearing no word from her husband, she presumed him to be dead, and went through a form of marriage with a. Sheffield contractor, named ■ Albert Edward Gosling. Air Gosling died in June 1920. Soon afterwards Mrs Reaney heard that her real husband, whom she had thought to be dead long ago, had died about the same time. When the story of the crime opens, Mrs Reaney, who was 60 years of age, was living by herfeelf in her seven-roomed villa- in Sunderland Road. She seenied to have sought matrimony to escape the lonliness of her life, and was eagerly looking forward to a change in her circumstances. Although the matrimonial correspondence had been going on for some time and the letters which the police found indicated that’ the man had been visiting her at her house, it was only recently that she breathed a word to anyone about’ her prospective marriage. It is believed that whoever committed the murder robbed the woman of at least £6OO. A certain amount of money was left in the house but nearly all she received 'for her house is missing. It is possible that there was a considerable sum in the house, for Mrs Reaney had some private means and was a woman of saving disposition. “ Sh( never seems to have banked hei < money,. and not long ago she camf

into a moderate sum which was left to her by her first husband.

Careful examination of the premises has convinced the police- that the criminal remained in. the house for sohie time after ’the : <murder. Hb tidied up the bedroom in which liis victims body lay, and pulled up the blinds before he. slipped away in the early' hours of the morning.