STRANGER THAN FICTION

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12643, 31 December 1926, Page 7

STRANGER THAN FICTION

. FACTS OUTDO NOVELIST ■ . WOMAN’S FOUR MURDERER HUSBANDS | ADVENTURE UNDER A TRAiN One* again real Hfe has ■ provided an epiaock stranger than fiction. . Hunted by detectives for the murder of an old woman on the outskirts of Constantinople a man took refuge in a house which- proved to be that of the executioner. He was so shocked by the discovery that he gave himself up. Time after time .real life stages , a drama or a oomedy which, translated into' fiction, ' would be . deemed farfetched. .... A fiction story about - a woman who married four men, each of whom subsequently committed a murder, would be laughed at as ridiculous and incredible. Yet this is actually the fate that has dogged the matrimonial adventures of a Californian widow, • Mrs Eva Neff-Damon-Mellarkey-Bel-linger-VVilliams. , Her first husband, Charles Neff, whom she married in 1900, killed a man in a drunken-brawl, and spent eight years behind prison walls. Her second mate was a double murderer and suicide: Hoe Damon, whom sho married in 1913, killed George. Bruer and Eddie Sanburger, neighbours, and turned the gun on himself. She was working as a cook in the hop garden near Marysville when she met her third husband, Jim Mellarkey. Not until after the marriage did she learn that Mellarkey had served 17 years in prison for killing a man in en argument over 2s. He died in 1923. Again a widow, she was wooed and won by Jack Bellinger, who, in a fit of jealousy, killed a camp mate. '•HERE’S YOUR MUSIC” Only a few weeks ago an adventure befel a London man, Mr Percy Robert Press, which might well have formed the opening of a sensational mystery novel. He was standing near Ludgate Circus when a man approached him from behind, pushed a parcel into his hands, and, exclaiming: ‘‘Here you are, Mr Watts —here’s the music,” vanished into the crowd. When he opened tho parcel, Mr Press found not music, but a sixchambered revolver. That was all. There was no cine to tho mystery man’s identity, no clue to the ownership of the revolver except the number 31-7013 stamped on the haft. Six years ago Henry E. Dudeney, the. author, wrote a short story around the exciting experience of a railway engineer. He had invented a radi'4l axle-frame for six-wheeled ooaches. A dispute with another engineer over a detail of the mechanism led him to suspend himself in a hammock beneath the train in order to watch the apparatus in motion. During the iourney he discovered to

his horror that' thb sunporting cords were being cut through by friction, and be was in danger of being burled to his death. Suddenly the engine gave a scream, and he knew that the brakes were being applied. A signal was against •them. When the speed was at its lowest he cut the cord with his knife and fell into the permanent way; much disabled but not seriously injured. Upon the publication of the story, letters came from many correspondents declaring that the incident could never have happened. But some time later a reader in the Argentine, wrote asking to be put into touch with the author, and declaring , that he had undergone an exactly -similar experience without acaident. “DEAD” WOMAN IN NEW ZEALAND No novelist ever conceived a story stranger than that of Mrs Susannah Bevan, who was recently sentenced at the Old Bailey to six, mouths’ imprisonment in tKe< second'division for obtaining £2BBI by false pretences from the Prudential Assurance Company.- - : Four years ago Mrs Bevan was staying at' Ilfracombe. One afternoon she left her apartments and did not return, but in a sheltered cove there was found her clothing. ' It was thought that she had gone for a swim, and got into difficulties, and had been drowned. Later the Probate Court gave leave to presume' death, and the insurance money was paid to her next-of-kin. i There the matter rested without any hint of the drama behind it until the startling revelation that the ‘‘dead” , woman was very much alive and living in New Zealand. Then cattle the disclosure that she had ‘‘staged” her disappearance to benefit her eon. Hero the story is lifted from the realms of the ordinary and becomes epic in climax. Far away from the son for whom she had sacrificed herself, Mrs Bevan picked up a paper opo day and read that he had been killed in a motoring accident. It was a grim irony of fate that the car he was in had been bought with an advance on his expectation. In a roundabout way hie mother’s sacrifice had brought about his death.