MILL-GIRL KILLED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22723, 8 May 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

MILL-GIRL KILLED

SWEETHEART'S CRIME SENTENCE OF GUILTY v COURT ORDEAL FOR MOTHER LONDON, March 28 Speaking of a young man now in the condemned cell at Armley Gaol, Leeds, the heartbroken mother of a pretty Yorkshire mill-girl, who was stabbed to the heart, remarked:— "I feel sorry for him, but I cannot forgive him. My lass was one of the best in the world." The mother previously had the ordeal of giving evidence at Leeds Assizes, and heard Mr. Justice Singleton sentence to the scaffold her dead daughter's lover. The least c6ncerned when the curtain fell on this drama was the prisoner, William Edwards, aged 26, of Bradford. When asked if he had anything to say why sentence should not be passed on him. he remarked, in a calm voice:—-"All I have to say is I have been miserable all my life. I am not sorrv. I have had a very miserable life. Edwards was found guilty of murdering Myrtle Parker, aged 20, of Bierley Houso Avenue, Bradford, who was known among her mill-girl friends as "Merry Myrtle." Fatal Evening It was explained by Mr. Russell Vick, prosecuting, that Edwards had been keoping company with Miss Parker for about six months, and nearly every night in the week it was their custom to go out for a walk. When, on the evening of November 26, Edwards called at her house he seemed perfectly normal, and brought some chocolates. "Don't be late in coming back," exclaimed the mother, as her daughter and Edwards were about to leave the house. "I shall be back in about three quarters of an hour," replied the girl. "Perhaps," Edwards added. A moment or two later the couple had loft the house, and no one afterward saw the girl alive. Between seven and eight o'clock the next morning Edwards knocked at the door of Mr. Jesse Marshall, an old friend, in Addison Street, Bradford, and, when admitted, he literally fell into the house. He explained his condition by saving ho had been out all night. He refused to say more at the time, but went to sleep on a couch. Later in the morning, when Edwards, who had been sick, was again questioned by Mr. Marshall, he declared: "I might as well tell you. I have done my girl in." "Clean Breast of Things"

Mr. Marshall then suggested that Edwards should make a clean breast of things, and this Edwards agreed to do. On the way to the town hall they met police officers who were already engaged on the case. When Detective Calvert asked Edwards if he could assist in tracing tlie girl, he replied: "T am saying nowt." Later he said: "She has gone somewhere. If you take me in a car I will show you." It was not necessary, for in the meantime Miss Parker's body had been discovered on a lonely road skirting a disused railway cutting. A knife, identified as Edwards' property. was afterward found buried up to the haft in the garden of a neighbouring house. When charged with murder. Edwards declared that ho knew "nowt about it," but 011 both cuffs of his shirt blood was found, and also on his trousers near the left-hand pocket. Mrs. Nellie Parker, the dead girl's mother, was a pathetic figure in the witness-box, and the Judge allowed her to be seated. Kd wards and her daughter, she said, seemed quite a happy couple. Asked to identify a photograph of the dead girl, Airs. Parker pushed it aside and burst into tears. "I don't want to see it," she cried. Many Queer Incidents Nicholas Briggs Ogdcn, Edwards' brother-ii#law, in cross-examination by Mr. Arthur Morley, K.C., defending, told of many queer incidents concerning Edwards. Among the things witness had seen him do were:

To sit staring into a fire and never speaking when spoken to. 'l'llrow back his chair in a rage if anyone spoke to him. "Go mad," if anyone so much as stirred a cup of tea, and at times "Everything seemed to get on his nerves."

In the course of police evidence Detective Calvert mentioned that when Edwards was shown a photograph of the dead girl ho broke clown and cried. The jury, composed entirely of men, found Edwards guilty, and, as stated, he was sentenced to death.

He left the dock unassisted, and displayed remarkable composure.