CHARGED WITH MURDER

Otago Witness, Issue 3509, 14 June 1921, Page 37

CHARGED WITH MURDER

PICTURE MAN’S UGLY PREDICAMENT. SYDNEY, June 1. A man named Morton Parker Pimental, who is the managing director of an Australian concern known as the Federated Feature Films Company, is in gaol charged with murder as the result of a coroner’s inquiry into the death of Gertrude Riley. The girl was employed by a tailoring firm in a big building in Swanston street, Melbourne. She was working late, by herself. A fire broke out suddenly in the building, and she was trapped, and perished. Certain circumstances connected with the fire set the detectives dVit, on an inquiry, and the evidence submitted to the coroner showed that they had more or less established the following facts: —The lire broke out on the third floor—the Film Company’s floor, —and was not a normal fire, inasmuch that it, spread over the whole flat in an incredibly short space of time. There were 17000 ft of film stored there, and the oniv way to account for the rapid spread was to suppose that the film had taken fire. Pimental was seen to leave the place only a few minutes before the lire broke out. Then the affairs of the Film Company were examined. It was found to be in

Queer street. It had been three months in existence, and Pimental was managingdirector at £IO9O a year. There was a secretary at £SOO a year, and various other employees. The company’s income in the brief space was only £3oo', and all that went in wages and salaries. Then Pimental found a man named Cox, who put £250 into the concern, on condition that he was given a job Ha was sent out on various missions, to buy theatres and tramways. The day he was sent out to buy theatres the company’s balance was £157, and it owed three times as much. - Then the company s insurances were increased beyond the insurable value of the company’s property. The coroner, in the course of a long! scathing statement, said: The fire occurred almost immediately after Pimental left the fiat, and I find it as a. fact that Pimental set fire to the building. Then the question of motives arises. It appears to me that he had chosen the psychological moment for a lire as regards this company. He was going to Sydney. The studios had been closed. His bank account was at aero. There was not sufficient money in the safe to pay the wages due, and the directors were hawking goods about to obtain a little cash to carry on. The only thing they could expect to get was a little money from the insurance company. I may be doing him an injustice. Pimental: You are. The Coroner: His interjection now brings me to consider the man himself. We have rarely had as a witness in this court a man who lias displayed such acuteness, alertness, and assurance as this man. His attitude may be that of conscious innocence, but I do not put that construction upon it. I think it is the most plausible 'imitation of it I have never met. A verdict of murder against Pimental was then returned.