VON VELTHEIM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13673, 14 February 1908, Page 5

VON VELTHEIM.

' TWENTY YEA.US IN GAOL. j A LIFE OF CHIME. ADVENTURES IN MANY LANDS. j ■ : By/Te!esjf»pb.— rrww Asiwcialiwt—Ccftyrijljt. , 'V' London*. February ■ 12. Ik the case of Von YeHhei'sj, charged with attempt tug to blackmail Mr. ' Solly Joel, the judge having summed up, the jury retired and returned. with a verdict of guilty. The judge spoke in terms of the strongest; ■■.condemnation, of. the* prisoner's life of crime, and sent him to penal -servitude-for twenty:. years.-*-

■■ (Becoived February 13, 11.55 p, m.) ■ ■' London February 13. _"■ In the Veltheim ease. the Jury was absent for only twenty minutes, returning a.unanimous verdict. Inspector Pentin gave an outline of prisoner's history.' .According to police accounts from various countries, his real name Was Kurtze, his father having been.a' forester. Prisoner had been a bad ■ character ■ from" childhood.:.:■ He was a sailor in the German navy in 1830, and deserted the same year, being suspected ,of stealing his " captain's gold watch and seal bearing a family crest. The captain's name was Von Vol theim. . Later on prisoner served aboard a British merchantman. He went in 1868 to Fremantle and ..Perth,"- where*, in -1687, he married a Miss Maria Yearsley. He then went to Capetown, and his wife went to England, and .became acquainted with a gentle* man whom prisoner, on rejoining his wife, attempted to blackmail. Prisoner was told that the matter would be placed in the hands of the police, but continued to write threatening letters to his wife's friend.

Veltheim next bigamously married and defrauded and deserted several women. He obtained £1500 from one, and underwent a supposed secret marriage with a young American lady at Saint Cloud, one of his friends on that occasion impersonating a priest.'-., ■'■ ' Later the prisoner, obtained from a German widow whom he previously knew* and now promised to marry, £2300 to invest on her behalf. She, finding he had squandered the amount, committed suicide. Prisoner served with the Gape mounted police, and, being requested to resign,; began to blackmail the Joels, one of whom (Wolfe Joel) he shot dead.

Later he raised a large sum of money on the pretence of being able to unearth Kruger's buried treasure, amounting to £5,000,000. ' Prisoner frequently interrupted the narrative, and ; shouted All lies." He told Mr. Justice Phillimore his, final speech that the plot story was true, but he must cover—, people concerned, although he had been found guilty.

No novelist has portrayed a,career as adventurous as Ims been Von Veltheiro's. The world has been his oyster, and five continents in turn. the stage upon which , he has played more strange parts than fall to the lot of 20 ordinary men. <■' The following: accountof his 'romantic life story is compiled from his evidence under cross-examination at his trial for the murder of Mr. Joel, -at Johannesburg, and from depositions in the divorce cases in -which he has figured \in England. Ho •was born, he said in his evidence, in some part of Germany in the year 1858, and entered, the German navy. Leaving it with the pretext of joining the army, he went abroad "instead, and travelled in-Russia in 1881 with a well-known English journalist. In 1885, he said, he fought as -a" volunteer against Sorvia in the Bulgarian army, under Prince Alexander, and was wounded at the battle of Tirnova, and again at the battle of Pirot. When, the war ended he went to Bucharest, and thence to London. In the spring 1886 he sailed from London to West Australia, going to the goldfields. Returning to Perth he met and married a Miss Years-* ley, deserted her in Sydney, and sailed to Zanzibar in .the hope of joining Stanley's Emin Pasha /relief expedition. He was too late, however, and went to Capetown. In 1895 he married a-Greek lady named MavroKordato, who obtained a divorce against him 1897. But in. the previous year' he had married again, his third wife being a German lady named .Sphiffer. All this time his deserted Australian 1 wife; was alive. The next two years contain the _ strangest chapters of this strange man's history. In September, 1897, ' the naked' body of a man fast: bound with ropes was found floating in theThames.off Wapping Stairs. It was formally identified as Von • Veltheim's by his third wife. -. But, as the " reader knows, Von Veb ■ theim. had already sailed for South Africa. At his trial Von Veltheim told of a "double" who exactly _ resembled him, and who by a strange coincidence bore the name which he himself used. The statement may, or may : not, affect .the Thames mystery, which has never, been, solved. , v At the time of the occurrence Von Veltheim was serving with the Bechuanaland police. ;, He went to Johannesburg in March,- 1898, and there shot Mr. Joel in the circumstances previously related. . Since 1899, when he attempted to re-enter the Transvaal, and was again expelled, .he has remained in comparative obscurity until his arrest a few weeks- ago, on the Paris boulevards.