A BRUTAL CRIME.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18951, 27 August 1923, Page 8

A BRUTAL CRIME.

A murder of unsurpassable atrocity, I committed in one of the forests of Mecklenburg, is a reminder that subterranean civil war is raging in Germany.! The victim in this case was not, however, an “enemy,” but a traitor, or at any rate suspected of being so by those who doomed him (says the Berlin correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph). Many mysterious deaths of recent months have been attributed •to the judgments of the Vehmic courts, by which the secret reactionary terrorist societies avenge treachery, and get rid of those of their members whose fidelity is doubted, but here, for the first time, the evidence points clearly to the activity of one of these sinister tribunals. . The murder was committed a ■ couple of miles north of the little Mecklenburg town of Parchim, the birthplace of the great strategist Moltke. Its victim, a young man named Walter Cadow, who was promoted to a lieutenancy during the war, had recently been learning farming with one of the big Mecklenburg estate owners, who both finance the monarchical terrorists and provide their rank and fire with hiding-places in periods of "demobilisation.” On the night of May 31 Cadow, who was suspected of being a Communist spy, was lured into a tavern at Parchim and plied with drink by twenty or thirty terrorists assembled from neighbouring estates. When the closing hour came he was lifted into a oart in an advanced state of intoxication, and, under the escort of eight of the conspirators, was driven through the uninhabited region north of Parchim to a wood which had been selected for his execution. On the way he recovered his senses sufficiently to become uneasy and attempted to escape, but was overawed with revolvers. On reaching the appointed spot, which is far from any human habitation, the murderers made their victim get out of the oart and at once fell upon him with sticks and life-preservers. The wounds on the body indicate that Cadow tried to ward off the .blows with his arms, but he was soon senseless on tire ground. To satisfy themselves that he was unable to cause them any immediate trouble the murderers seem to have stamped on his face with their heavy boots. Assured that he was unconscious and helpless, they dragged his body into the woods, where they finished him off by cutting his throat with a hunting knife and putting a couple of revolver bullets into his head.

On the following day two of the murderers returned to the spot, buried the body 3ft deep in a thicket, and disguised the grave with leaves and bracken. This was the story told by the Vorwaerts’ informants. It was passed on to the police, who had no difficulty in finding the place where the corpse was buried. The information supplied to them also enabled them to arrest seven of the men immediately concerned in the crime. These admit that they killed Cadow, but say it was originally their intention merely to give him a flogging, and that the murder was the result of a sudden after thought, inspired by the wish to escape punishment for this minor offence. The two leading local officials of the Anti-Semitic Folk party, which has three seats in the Reichstag, were also taken into custody, but were subsequently released, though Vorwaerts assorts that they defrayed the costs of the carousal preparatory to the murder. Arrests have likewise been made in Berlin, and fathers are said to bo impending.