THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20496, 22 February 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE.

RHINE LOVE TRAGEDY.

SOLDIER'S LIFE SENTENCE

A petition for pardon is shortly to fce made to the British Army Council on behalf of Private Richard Wright, cf Harrogate, Yorkshire, who is serving a life sentence of imprisonment for the murder on the Rhine five years ago of Maria Stasiak, his German sweetheart, and Lance-Cerporal Whitwham. of the Cameron Highlanders, by shooting them in a frenzy in the girl's home at Mulheim after a quarrel.

The petition—organised by the Old Comrades' Association of the West Yorkshire Regiment, in. which .Wright served for 13 years—contrasts the imprisoned soldier's case with that of the German named Swaboda, who, under the general amnesty granted, to German, offenders on the Rhine evacuation by British troops, has been released from a life sentence for shooting dead a New Zealand soldier at. Cologne.

Private Wright, * soldier of hitherto exemplary character, was serving with the British Army of Occupation, and the crime was committed in a", fit of passion when he found that the girl, whom he had courted for nearly three years, had thrown him over" for Whit-wham. At the general court-martial at Cologne it was stated that Wright was suffering from pathological drunkenness " at th« ti!r>°. He had been frequently <-haff<>d bv hir. friends for allowing another man to take away his girl. This had preyed on his mind.

Wright was sentenced to death. The Army Council, however, commuted the sentence to one of penal servitude for life, and for five years Wright has been in Maidstone, where he is now a hospital orderly. Efforts to secure his release are to be made, in view of the fact that all German offenders sentenced by Allied courts on the Rhine have been released.

Private Wright's brother, Mr. Robert Wright, stated recently that his brother's deed could not have been premeditated. " For," he added, " he had applied for his discharge from the Army, in view of his broken love affair, and his application ' came t.hrouch ' two days after the tragedy." _ Major-General Fry, the colonel.in-chief of the West Yorkshire Regiment, made a personal application to the Army Council for a reconsideration of Private Wright's case, but it wa3 then stated that the Army Council were unable to grant a remission of sentence " at present."