Page 2 Advertisements Column 5

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15551, 7 March 1914, Page 2 (Supplement)

DRUMMER'S CONFESSION. GIRL THROWN IN RIVER. "I cannot keep it any longer. I threw a girl into the water last September, and it has been on my mind ever since." This dramatic statement is alleged to have been made at Bristol recently by Robert Sheppard, a drummer in the Gloucestershire Regiment. He proceeded to Telate that he was a native of Purton, but his parents moved to London. He ran away and joined the army. He left Salisbury on September 6 and went to Bristol, where one night he met a girl and went for a walk along the bank of the River Avon. "We quarrelled," his alleged statement continues, " because she would not come home with me, and I pushed her over the side into the water. The tide was in at the time. This would be about 11.30 or 11.45. I saw her in the water. She did not shout, as I hit her first on the point of the jaw, and I think I stunned her. She was about 20, short and dark, and dressed in dark clothes." Sheppard was brought before the magis- 'S trates and remanded. The police have « no record of any person being found sli drowned or assaulted on that date, but iJ prisoner stuck to his story, i M ■ JS