CIRCUMSTANTIAL CASES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9271, 5 August 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

CIRCUMSTANTIAL CASES.

'SNOCENT MEN EXECUTED,

PECULIAR CRIMINAL RECORD.

iLMos'r every mysterious case of crime has

to be solved by what is known as circumstantial evidence. Especially is this true of murder. A crime which no eye save that of the criminal and his victim has seen committed ; how may that be solved when the victim is dead? Only by inference from surrounding and attendant circumstances. But, as experience proves, accusing circumstances often surround and envelop an innocent man. There is the story of the two brothers who travelled to a seaport town together. An argument, vociferously conducted, ensued after dinner. Later they retired to a double-bedded room. One of tho brothers, seized with a violent tit of nose bleeding, rose at three o'clock in the morning anil wandered to a cliff. He was seized by smugglers whom he unwittingly detected in buying puncheons of spirits. I hey were too amiable to murder him, and merely put him on board a vessel which was bound for the West Indie?. Meanwhile his brother, who, after his port wine and altercation, had gone calmly to sleep, awoke in the morning to find his brother's pillow covered with blood and his brother missing. He hastily rang the boll and summoned the landlord. But all his protestations of innocence were fruitless, and he was soon in the hands of the law. Stains of blood were traced from the bedroom to the edge of a cliff, where murks of a sculllo were found. The brother was tiied, convicted, and banged. Left for dead on the gallows, his lite was almost miraculously saved by a wandering shepherd, who, attracted by a low moan, cut down the pendent, halfchoked man, resuscitate ! him, and assisted bis escape on board a vessel bound lor the Barbadoes. The first man ho met in Roe-buck-street, Bridgetown, was the brother for whose murder he had been wholly convicted and half-hanged. The case of Jonathan Bradford is another favourite, lie kept an inn on the London Road to Oxford. Ono night a gentleman of fortune named Hayes stopped here and took supper with two other wayfarers. Very indiscreetly he mentioned that he had then about him a large sum of money. After retiring, one of the two travellers was awakened by a groan in the room next to his. Ho raised himself and listened. No; ho was not mistaken. Another groan followed, and still another. Ho woke his friend. Together they made their way into the adjoining room, where they found Hayes weltering in his gore. And standing over the bed was a man with a dark lantern in one hand and a knife in the other. But what was their consternation to recognise in this man, caught redhanded almost in the very act of murder, tho owner of the inn, Jonathan Bradford himself. In vain Bradford protested his innocence. At the trial the jury speedily brought in a verdict of guilty. The night before the execution ho acknowledged that he had gone up to Hayes' room to do the very deed which he found but just done by another when he reached it. Eighteen months after the execution the public was startled to learn that Hayes' valet had made a deathbed confession acknowledging that he was the real murderer, that his object had been robbery, but that before he could rifle the portmanteau ho had been frightened by approaching footsteps, and had just had time to escape to hi" own room before Bradford entered.

Fere Francois Caudrot was the cure of a rural parish in France. Between his house and the church was a small twc-roomed house known a? the hospice, where it had been his custom to provide food and shelter for any wayfarer who might apply for charity. During a terrible snowstorm lie lodged here a young woman on her way to her friends in a distant part of France. On the tilth or sixth morning the housekeeper, going to call her, found her murdered in her bed. It was evident that a double crime had been committed. Search was made. Close to her bed was found a knife that belonged to the priest. From the priest's study window to the hospice a man's footprints could be distinctly traced, going and coming. A pair of shoes which were found dirty in the priest's study, and were known to be his, tilted exactly into these prints. Moreover, a handkerchief of his, which had evidently been used as a gag, was found in the victim's bed. He Was sentenced to the guillotine, but Charles .X. commuted the sentence to that of train nx j'orct* at the galleys. He was removed to Brest, and tie and his crime were forgotten Lv the outside world. Many years parsed away, and he was still serving his sentence. Then a convict at the gallows of Toulon, who had been sentenced to ten years, was cut down by accident. On his deathbed he confessed that -5 years before he was the murderer, lie hud entered the cure's bedroom by his window, taken his shoes, his handkerchief, and L'orsican knife he had found in the study, taken especial pains to make his footprints as plain as possible, and otherwise had manured to throw suspicion on the priest. The poor priest's body had been so weakened, and Ins nervous system so completely shattered, that he felt he could not resume his functions. An allowance of 500 francs a year was made him by the Government, and he retired to a small town, where he died peacefully in Islns. Another French example of the success of fabricated evidence is furnished by the ■story of thq old woman who kept a small chop near the Seine. She lived in a small room back of the shop. She was generally reputed to have hoarded much money, in ■ the fourth storey of the building slept her shop boy, who kept the key of the place. One morning the old woman was tound dead in her bed. She had been stabbed repeatedly. A bloody knife lay on the floor in the shop. This was recognised as the property of the hired boy. More than this, m one of the dead woman's hands was clasped a lock of hair, in the other a necktie. The necktie was undoubtedly the boy's, and the hair looked like his. it was found, moreover, that the front door had not been broken open, buo quietly unlocked. Confronted with thy evidence, the boy confessed the crime and was pub to death. Not long after a boy employed in a neighbouring shop fell ill and died, but not before confessing thab he had killed the old woman for her money. He had been in the habit of dressing the hair of the other lad, and had not only possessed himself of locks of his hair, but also of his knife and Lis cravat.

in British annals of crime the two most famous instances of circumstantial evidence are the cases of Eliza Forming, in London, and of .Madeline Smith, in Glasgow. Eliza Funning was a young girl of - J'J, employed as a cook in the family of a Air. Turner. The household consisted of Turner and his wife, two apprentices named Gadsden and King, Sarah Peer, the housemaid, and Eliza herself. One day Mr. Turner's father came to dinner, and yeast dumplings were served up for dessert. The three Turners had hardly tasted of the dish when they were seized with agonising pains, Gadsden and Eliza had also partaken, and they suffered the ■ame symptoms. The maid and tho other apprentice did not touch the dumplings. Tho physician hastily summoned declared the symptoms to be those of arsenical poison. Suspicion fell on Eliza, and she was arrested. Eliza declared that the poison must be in the milk and not in the dumplings. Now the milk had been fetched by Sarah Peer. This looked as if she were seeking to divert suspicion from herself to her fellow-servant. The analysis proved completely that the poison was in the dumplings and not in the milk. Then Eliza declared the poison was in the yeast. Hut that, too, was proved to be entirely pure. It will naturally be asked what motive she could have for so fiendish a deed. 'I he evidence showed that her mistress reproved her severely for some levity ot conduct on her part, threatening to discharge her. Rut this passed over, and no other ground of ill-will against the family was suggested. Tho motive surely seems inadequate enough. Nevertheless she was found . guilty, and suffered for ' l upon the ■caffold. Bub the public, by voice and deed, expressed dissent. Her pull was borne to the grave by six young women robed in white.