ORDEAL IN CAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22344, 15 February 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

ORDEAL IN CAR

DAUGHTER OF MARQUESS BRUTAL ATTACK ALLEGED INCIDENT DURING FOG Because the evidence of identification was regarded by the sheriff as insufficient, a fair-haired young labourer was acquitted recently at Falkirk, Scotland, on a charge of attacking Lady Anne Hope, 21-year-old daughter of the Marquess of Linlithgow, in her car. In a hearing that lasted four hours, dramatic evidence was given by Lady Anne of how a strange man tried to strangle her as she was driving in a fog. The acquitted man was John Shields Sneddon, of Grangemouth. Lord and Lady Linlithgow and Lady Joan Hope, their other daughter, were in court, and the dozen odd seats allotted to the public were packed with members of famous county families.

They heard Lady Anno describe how tho strange man, of whom she had asked the way in the lato afternoon of October 24, had got into her car, ostensibly to direct her; how, from the back seat, he had leaned over and gripped her throat with his hands. Giving her age as 21, Lady Anne explained that when driving a four-seater saloon car she mistook her way. Near Grangemouth she saw a man on the footway, and drew up to ask him if she was on tho Edinburgh road. He said that she was not, and remarked that it was rather a difficult road.- He got into the back of the car and told her the direction to take. After they had driven some distance she said

to the man, "Isn't it somewhere near here that you want to be dropped?" and he replied "No." Shortly afterwards he said "Stop here. This will do." Lady Anne continued, "I stopped the car, and instead of getting out he put both his hands round my throat from behind. I threw myself down on the front seat and tried to loosen his grip, but I could .not do so. The next best thing I could do was to try to open the door. I tried to do so and yelled. He saw me groping for the handle of the door, and gave me a punch on the right cheek inflicting a black eye. I cried, 'Stop this. You are throttling me. I will give you my money.' l thereupon threw my handbag to him, but he did not take anything. 1 eventually got the door open, getting my head out, and shouted for help. "He must have got frightened, for he loosened his grip and I got out of the car. As I got to the road he slipped into the driving seat somehow and drove off. I had to go to the office of the cemetery before I could telephone the police." Lady Anne said that the man who stopped her was dressed in blue dungarees and had a tweed cap. Asked if she could identify the man she said, "Yes, he is sitting in the dock."

Mr. Thomas Cassells, for the defence: Do you suggest that, without any invitation from you, this man entered your car? —Yes, I do. \ Did you not take exception to that conduct? —Yes, but I was frightened and would have driven anywhere ho told me. "Lost My Head"

When Lady Anne was asked why she did not stop at a crossing and shout for help she replied, "I suppose I lost my head." "Why did you not ask your way of the people you saw at the crossing?" she was asked. "I was so frightened," she answered, "that I would have driven through a wall if he had told me and had it been possible." Asked about an identification parade, when six men were assembled m the police yard, she remarked that there was one man without a cap, and she asked that a cap might be placed on his head. On inspecting the men again, she said, "I am afraid it is no good; he is not thore." "At the second identification assembly," she added, "I saw this man .with his eyes downcast. That was the "position I saw him in at the driving mirror of the car, and it was then 1 recognised him." Police evidence was given that when Sneddon was told he would be reported for assault, he replied that he had nothing to do with it, and that he was at homo at the time it happened. No evidence was called for the defence, and Sheriff Robertson pointed out that Lady Anne Hope had frankly admitted that when she was called to an identification parade at Falkirk; after having thought that one man was like the man who committed the assault and requesting that he be given a cap, she said, "It is no use. I am afraid he is not here." "She pointed to him to-day as the man who committed the assault, added the sheriff, "but that identification is not sufficient to outweigh the failure to identify him at Falkirk."