A PECULIAR POSITION.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 8133, 1 December 1904, Page 4

A PECULIAR POSITION.

"MURDER" OF A DEAD MAN.

Is it possible to be guilty of the murder of a man already dead? An extraordinary question of criminal law will shortly come before the Russian courts in Central Asia. Mikhail Persuikin, the no'er-do-well son of a Samarcand trader of miaerly habits, was expelled from home by his irate father. For a month he a series of forgeries. For a month he disappeared, but finally, driven desperate by want, resolved to murder his father, steal the money which the old man hoarded in hia mattress, and escape to Russia. At night he returned to tne town, forced open his father's bedroom window, and creeping to the bedside he stabbed the old man again and again through the clothes. Persuikin, flinging the body on the floor, ripped up the mattress, but found not a single coin. Being una~.e to escape without money, he gave himself up to the police, saying: "I am PeTsnikin, the torfcr. Last night I murdered mv father, o his amazement he got the reply : "How could you murder your father? He died of dropsy yesterday morning." The precioite mattress, it appeared, had been removed by the authorities on the miser s death.