YACHTSMAN MURDERED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20986, 24 September 1931, Page 9

YACHTSMAN MURDERED.

ALLEGED KIDNAPPING. WIDOW'S SENSATIONAL STORY. NEW YORK, Sept. 16. A party of boatmen about 10 days ago, early in the morning, found the yacht Penguin drifting in Long Island Sound with Barbara Gollinge, aged five, alone oq board. She was crying when rescued and said her parents had been carried off id the night. The child's mother appeared on thg beach an hour later. She told such a far» tastic story of murder and kidnapping that the authorities refused to believe it. Mr. and Mrs. Collinge were reported to be wealthy. The husband was 58 years old and his widow is 32. The story related by Mrs. Collinge was to the effect that she was in her cabin late at night, when she heard a noise on deck. She hurried out to find her husband had been seized by two pirates, one a youth of 18, the other a man of about 50, who bound him and disappeared in the darkness in a canoe. Soon the pair returned and*'said they had killed Mr. Collinge. Then they took her on board the canoe. The older pirate, she said, then assaulted her in the canoe and set her ashore. Mrs. Collinge, who is a college graduate, admitted that her story sounded absurd, but she asserted that it was true. On two succeeding days she went on board the yacht with officials and re-enacted the kidnapping scenes as she had described them. District-Attorney Blue told the woman that she was telling untruths, and the police, after careful inquiry, did not believe that the husband had been killed. This morning, however, Mr. Collinge's body, bound hand and foot, with knots evidently tied by an experienced boatman, was found in the surf at Oyster Bay, definitely establishing the fact that murder had been committed.