SENSATIONAL TRIAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19974, 16 June 1928, Page 13

SENSATIONAL TRIAL.

PROSECUTION RUINS CASE, "NO MURDER COMMITTED." FOOLISH YOUNG MAN'S ESCAPE* The evidence of the prosecution alone recently ended one of the most tragic episodes in the crime annals of the New York police with the acquittal of Frank Travia, a prominent engineer, on the charge of murdering his fiancee. Travia was arrested after he had been seen dumping a large trunk into the Atlantic Basin, Brooklyn, in the early hours in the morning. Harbour police with grappling irons brought the trunk to the surface, opened it, and discovered a portion of the body of a young woman. Travia was accused of murder almost immediately, and a search of his rooms resulted in the discovery of the remainder of the dismembered body. The detectives decided that the woman had been killed by a blow on the head. A disjointed explanation was made by Travia. He told the police that he hacl given a "party" in his rooms, and that his fiancee had remained behind when the gathering bz-oke up. He had left her sitting there for reasons he was unable to explain. On his return he found his fiancee, her head on folded arms, at a table, dead. Terror-stricken, with the thought that he would not be able to account for her death, he "cut her up," and was in the act of disposing of the first part of the body when he was arrested. The case for the State was "bulletproof" until the police, wishing to strengthen their evidence against Travia, called in Dr. Charles Norris, a famous pathologist, to make a final examination of the remains and testify against the accused man. The doctor's report was not seen before he gave evidence, and when he appeared in the witness-box as one of the principal witnesses for the State he shattered the case for the prosecution with the quiet statement that no murder had been committed. "How did she die ?" asked the prosecuting attorney. "Suicide," was the doctor's terse answer. He added that the woman had died from suffocation due to gas poisoning—and theija had been no struggle. Travia walked out of the Court—out from under the darkening shadows of the electric chair—a free man.