DEATH CELL DRAMA

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 17 January 1935, Page 2

DEATH CELL DRAMA

CINEMA CRIME EXPIATED. “NOT AFRAID TO DIE.” A hundred people—most of them women with shopping bags—stood outside Pcntonvillo Prison at 9 a.m. on November 14. As the bell tolled the hour nineteen-year-old John Frederick Stockweli expiated his murder of the cinema manager, Mr. Dudley Hoard. Stockweli was resigned to his fate. He told his brother a few hours before lie was hanged that he was not afraid to die. At this farewell meeting the doomed man confessed his guilt. Stockweli did not expect to see his brother again. He had promised him, just as he promised lii,s aunt, to send a permit to see him for the last time. Stockweli deliberately broke both pledges. He wanted to spare the two who cared for him the ordeal of the last farewell.

It was long past the ordinary visiting hours when Horace Stockwell, an out-of-work lead glazier, arrived at Pentonville. He had waited untd the last minute for the promised permit to arrive. He had to wait half an hour in the prison waiting room until the governor gave the necessary permission.

John Stockwell seemed surprised when he was brought into the reception room outside the condemned cell. Brother faced brother through the thick glass screen. One smiled. The other looked sad. But it was the boy who was to die a felon’s death who smiled.

“Hello, Horace. You got in, then. How did you manage it?” He paused. “I wanted to save you from this!” That was his greeting. The doomed man asked for the latest r.ews about the English Soccer team chosen to meet the Italian footballers “Another Arsenal man picked,” said Horace. “Good” cried Stockwell. “The Arsenal will make. Eny.tind win. You see if I’m not right. If it rains to-morrow afternoon at Highbury veil, England will walk away with the match. My tip’s England!” That was the strain of talk between the two brothers so soon to be parted. It was the lad standing in the shadow of the scaffold who chose the topics they discussed. Only once during that last meeting did the smile vanish from the face of the murderer—when he spoke of the crime that had brought him to the gallows. “I am soi’ry for what I have done.’ ho said. ... I did not intend to do it. 1 am not afraid to die!” John Frederick Stockwell, youngest murderer to he hanged since eighteen-ycar-old Alfred Jacoby his life for the murder of Lady "White twelve years ago, was as good as liis word. Ho walked to the, scaffold without- a tremor. Late that night Horace Stockwell received a letter from his dead brother It had been written in the condemned cell shortly before his execution. “I am just sending you these few lines bidding you good-bye ...” he wrote. “Sorry I did not send an order for you, as I did not feel much like visits, but nevertheless I am rather pleased that you came in. . . I knew that my chance of a reprieve had failed on Monday morning, so I will again say farewell. . • Ho not think too badly of me as I had no intention of causing such a ghastly tragedy, and even now I can hardly realise it, and I am still at a loss for the reason. . . Well, brother, this is all for now; goodJ>ye and all the best for your future. Your ever affectionate brother. Jack.”