PHANTOM £10,000.

Mataura Ensign, 18 October 1913, Page 7

PHANTOM £IO,OOO.

WOMAN FOUND SHOT. Learning at the eleventh hour that she was not to receive a legacy of £IO,OOO she had been led to expect, Mrs Annie Maria Pearce, aged 71, was found dead with a bullet wound in In-r head at Ludlow, Shropshire. The. wife of a former ostler, Airs Pearce in February last told her friends she had received a letter slating tint an uncle had died in Pittsburg, in the 'nited States, and left her £'lo.ooo. She seemed delighted with her good fortune, altered her style of living, end is said to have borrowed money to keep up a hotter position. She got £2O from one relit tie ;i'v| promised to repay £IOO when she ivn iivd the legacy. She also took a house in Souiliporl, the Lancashire seaside resort.

Several 'letters, the authenticity of which Mrs Pearco did not seom to doubt, l'oaohed her last month announcing that the money would be paid soon. Later she told her solicitor she had received information that a representative of tho firm acting in the case in Pittsburg was to he at the Hank of England in London at 10.30 tho next Friday morning. She desired the solicitor to go to London with her. Asked to produce documentary evidence of tho bequest, she said tho* papers were at homo locked up. On the day in question Mrs Pearce's husband hoard a shot. Going upstairs he found his wife lying dead, a revolver at her side. It is now known that she said she had received another letter statins that a later will of her uncle in America bad been found and that her name was not mentioned. Tho same day she bought a revolver. Mrs Pearce had intended returning to Ludlow with her legacy after her visit to London, and local preparations had been made, to celebrate her return. Sh<> is described as a rather excitable out a rational woman. It is not known whether tho letters were a criKri hoax or the imaginings of an aftecunl mind. Her husband is not even certain that she had an uncle in Pittsburg.