A STRANGE MURDER CASE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13391, 21 January 1907, Page 8

A STRANGE MURDER CASE.

EXTRA!IRDINARY DISCREPANT"I Ks.

CURIOUS PROBLEM. [FROM Ol'B OWN corhesi'o.vubvt.J London. December 15. It is generally felt that Mr. Herbert Gladstone, as Home. Secretary, will have a difficult decision to make in the Pre*ton murder case, which has developed in a very surprising manner. The. main facts are as follows:—A man named Callaghan is lying in the prison at Manchester under sentence of death for the murder of a Preston dry-salter last May. He was tried at the recent Manchester Assj Z e-s, and with him in the dock stood another man called Beard wood. Both were accused of the same crime, but the jury who convicted Callaghan disagreed as to Bcardwood, and a new trial was ordered, which reached its conclusion at Liverpool on Saturday. Beard wood was then pronounced not guilty. Tublic opinion in iPreston is intensely hostile to him. and expressed itself in fierce rioting on Sunday, but nothing can alter the fact that a jury has declared him innocent.

At the second trial, however, a highly dramatic surprise was sprung upon the Court in the appearance of a convict named Bennett, who -wore that when lie was taking exercise last month in the prison yard at Preston Beard wood spoke to him. and told him that he had committed the murder, and that. Callaghan had nothing to do with it. The jury, by their verdict, showed that they did,, not accept this evidence a- true, yet the mere fact that such a -lory was told, has compelled the Home Secretary to make further investigations into the case of Callaghan. Consequently, the condemned man ha- hern respited for a week, and the whole circumstances of the crime are exciting a wider interest, than ever.

It appears that the victim was an eccentric drysalter. who slept, at. his place of hu-i----i:i-. content with a litter of paper- to lie on and odd pieces of matting for bedclothes. His habits were well known, and ii i- probable enough thai, such miserly eccentricity gave rise to the* belief that he was well off. and hoarded sums of money about the premises. This man was found by his nephew at eight (/clock one morning lying murdered on the floor of his office, with his head cruelly battered in by a heavy spanner; and the medical evidence -bowed that he had probably been dead about five or six hours, ['here wa- no doubt about, the motive. The safe, had been broken open, and about £5 taken. Clearly, the thieves were also the murderers.

No arrests were made, but at last the police arrested a man called Callaghan on the evidence of his paramour, whom he had threatened to murder; some time after a second man. named Beard wood. was also arrested. The- two were said to have been together on the night of the murder, and to have been seen together by different persons in the early morning after the crime had been committed. It was brought to light at the first trial that Callaghan went to bis paramour's house at two in the morning, and while there burned his cap and muffler, which had bloodstains upon them, washed oilier bloodstain? out of his clothes, and showed the. woman two sovereigns. To that evidence he owed hi- conviction. Heardwood's defence was that he never was in Callaghan's company at a!', on the evening before- the murder, but thai on leaving his tripo-drcssing -hop. about eight o'clock nt night, he went straight to the house where he was living, and never moved out until eight or nine on the following morning. The woman with whom ire was then cohabiting confirmed hi- story, as did al-o her daughter, who said she stent in the same room, and rose as usual at live- in the morning to go to work at the mill. One of the extraordinary feature? of the case was that Boardwood married this woman in September, though it was admitted that she was cohabiting with another man during duly, when Bcardwood was in gaol for another offence. The prosecution, naturally suspicious on this point, suggested that the marriage was due to Be-ardwood's desire to protect himself against her .evidence, but this the pair stoutly , denied. Several witnesses swore that, they saw Beardwood during the time when, according to his story, he was within doors: one said that he saw smoke coming from Beardwood's chimney at an unusually early hour, and smelt an odour a- of rags or clothes burning: another declared that he heard Beardwood and hi- wife quarrelling, and that the woman called him a murderer. Nor did she deny using the expression; it was a "usual word" of her-, she -aid. when they hi re quarrelling, but she strongly denied having mentioned the victim's name. Other wit-ni-sc\- again gave evidence that- Bcardwood had changed his clothe- from old cine- to new on the* day of the murder, but, rebutting evidence on this important point was offered by the defence. The testimony of the convict Bennett was largely discounted by the far; that, he said nothing to anybody of Beard wood's confession of guilt to him for 19 days after the conversation took place, and that the two prisoners must have been at least syd- apart, and . probably more, in the prison yard when they .-poke to one another.

Commenting upon the affair, the paper from winch I have condensed the account of the facts say-: "The who! 1 case, which is full <:f irreconcilable discrepancies, throws a lurid li-zht on the mode of life of the criminal and degraded classes: it al-o illustrates tin extraordinary difficulty of obtaining trustworthy evidence from people belonging to these classes."