REMARKABLE CRIMES

Otago Witness, Issue 3886, 4 September 1928, Page 16

REMARKABLE CRIMES

THE BUTLER MURDERS. By “An Old Journalist,’/ in the Australasian. “I remember,” writes Mr . H, B. Irving, son of the famous actor, Sir Henry Irving, “my father, telling me that, sitting up late one night with Tennyson, the poet remarked that he had not kept • such late hours since a recent visit of Jowett. My father asked Tennyson what was the subject of conversation that had so engrossed them. ‘ Murders,’ replied Tennyson.” Beyond a doubt Robert Butler was guilty? of three murders, the murder of a husband and wife in Dunedin, New Zealand, and the murder for robbery of a ' man in Brisbane. But the Dunedin murders were not proved against him; the jury at his first trial found him not guilty; for the murder m Brisbane he was hanged. The Brisbane murder was an ordinary case of “ robbery under arms.” The Dunedin case is exceptional because of the lack of motive. The story of the Dunedin crime is told at length in “A Book of Remarkable Criminals,” by H B. Irving, the actor, who made a tour of Australia and New Zealand some years ago. Robert Butler was a native of Kilkenny, Ireland, but left his native country for 'Victoria in his early'years. He began his career in his new home with a conviction for vagrancy, and spent 13’ years in Victoria prisons, highway robbery and burglary being among his offences. It was in 1876 that he went to Dunedin. While he was in Pentridge gaol he taught himself shorthand and learnt to play the organ, and by .some means he acquired some education. From Dunedin he made his way to the country town of Cromwell, where he opened a “ Commercial and Preparatory Academy,” intimating that he would teach ‘‘ reading, elocution, writing, arithmetic, Euclid, algebra, logic, and debate, French, and Latin, music, astronomy, and geology,” besides various other accomplishments. But whatever pupils he obtained were soon left lamenting, and he made a hasty departure under strong suspicion of theft from a Catholic clergyman and others. He was in Dunedin only a fortnight when he was arrested and condemned to serve a sentence of four years for burglary He stole cornets from a theatre orchestra, and money from the palace of the Roman Catholic Archbishop. After serving this ’ sentence he was released on February 18, 1880. ■ Butler had been onlv three weeks out of prison when the house of a Dunedin solicitor, Mr Stamper, was burned dowm. the fire was regarded as the result of accident, but when Butler was arrested for murder a week or so later he was found to be in posession of a pair of field-glasses which he had stolen from Mr Stamper’s house. Butler admitted that he had stolen the glasses. He had broken into the house, but the Stampers followed the practice of locking all the doors of rooms on the further side when

they went to bed and he could not get beyond the room he had entered. Thereupon he set fire to the house. It is certain that this crime would never have been discovered but for the finding of the field-glasses on Butler, and there seems no doubt that the Stampers, husband and wife (the only occupants of the house), would have fallen victims to Butler’s murderous intent but for their precaution of locking the doors of each of their rooms. The fact that on the next night he committed two murders, absolutely without motive so far as the victims were concerned, is strongly suggestive- ■ The victims of the murder which was committed on the night after the burning down of Mr Stamper’s house were Mr and Mrs J. M. Dewar. Their dwelling was a cottage in a quiet street in a poor quarter of the town. Dewar was a working butcher, a young man. Early on a Sunday morning a neighbour of the Dewars, rising early, noticed smoke coming from Dewar’s house. He awoke his son, who was a member of the fire brigade, and this man, hurrying to the house, found the door open. In the passage he stumbled over the body, sMll alive, of Mrs Dewar. In the bedroom Dewar was lying dead , on the bed. He had been killed with his own axe. The babv was by his side, suffocated by smoke. A candle was burning under the bed. The fire was extinguished by the fire brigade member. Mrs Dewar died without becoming conscious. The' police were nonplussed. The young man Dewar and his wife were quiet, respectable people, and neither had an enemy. Remember that Butler was not at that time suspected of burning down Mr Stamper’s house. Such a ghastly crime as this double murder, occurring in so small and quiet a town as Dunedin, aroused great interest. The news spread early on the Sunday forenoon, and, as two or three days elapsed before Butler was arrested, it can be imagined how the town was stirred. The arrest of Butler was due to a clue which reached the police on the Sunday afternoon. Two members of the detective force, Henderson and Walker, were on their way to the wharves, in the hope that the murderer might be seeking to escape by sea, when a young woman who ■ knew Henderson claimed his attention for a moment. While Butler had been serving his sentence for burglary, he had done “ hard labour ” on Bell Hill, which was being cut down to reclaim portion of the harbour. The girl, who was the daughter of a gaol warder, was a nursegirl in the family of a doctor, whose house was close to the hill. Passing -where the prisoners worked, she had been spoken to by Butler, who, when he, was discharged from gaol, had endea-

voured to follow up the acquaintance. It was this about which she sought to speak to Henderson. Detective Bain, she said, had promised her that Butler would be sent out of town, and thus cease to annoy her. “ But,” she declared to Henderson, “ Butler is still in tow n and spoke to me Only yesterday (the Saturday) while I was hanging clothes on the line.” On the instant it flashed through Henderson’s mind that here was the clue to the Dewar murder. Why did the thought of Butler not suggest itself to the police from the first, it may be asked? The answ’er is that Detective Bain had bought tools for Butler to go to honest work, and obtained a promise from him that he would go to work at a spot some distance out of town. Henderson at once made it his business to seek his chief. Butler was found to have turned his attention to the honest labour Detective Bain had procured for him for only two or three hours. Inquiry elicited the fact that he had looked in at an hotel for a few minutes early on that Sunday morning. Police in the country near by found him within a day or two and arrested him. He had left Dunedin early on the Sunday and walked through the bush and scrub to a hamlet 12 or 15 miles away. When arrested he was wearing a white shirt which was spotted with blood. This shirt, when he was on trial, played a notable part in his defence. To Inspector Mallard on the evening of his arrest he said he supposed he would be convicted, but desired that the press should not publish his career. “ Give me fair play,” he asked.

Butler’s trial in the Dunedin Supreme Court was presided over by Mr Justice (afterwards Sir Joshua) Williams. The Crown prosecutor was Mr B. C. Haggitt. Butler defended himself. The Crown case was weak. Its principal points were the prisoner’s suspicious behaviour on the Sunday morning in hurriedly leaving the town; the blood marks found on the shirt he was wearing at the time of his arrest; the blood marks also on some articles of clothing which Butler had discarded in the scrub as he left the town on the Sunday morning. There is no doubt that he left as hurriedly as he did because he saw that Dewar’s house did not burn as he expected it would. He perceived then that the murder would be discovered.

The trial was thrilling. I was present in court all day while Butler made his address to the jury. It lasted about six hours in all. A fellow prisoner of Butler in gaol described him to the police as a strange compound of vanity and envy, blind to his own faults and envious of the material advantages enjoyed by others. In his address he certainly exhibited his vanity. He began early in the forenoon and continued till 4 o’clock in the afternoon. In the forenoon he was far from impressive. He was tedious, rambling and disconnected. The comment of those who heard him speak as they left the court at the lunch adjournment was that he had made a weak effort.

A general belief prevailed in New Zealand after the trial that Butler distinguished himself in his address to the jury by an eloquent appeal. Unquestionably after lunch he made a thrilling presentment of his defence. It thrilled everybody in court, not because ofTts eloquence, but because of its logic. The scene was one to dwell in the memory of the hearers. The day was bright sunlight out of doors, but the court room was gloomy, and in the dull surroundings was the accused picking the Crown case to pieces in a most convincing way. He was aware as he spoke that he was creating a favourable impression, and he spurred himself on to greater efforts. No hearer could help feeling that here was a man successfully and skilfully unravelling the tangle of evidence that the Crown had woven round hi . One implication of the Crown was that the motive of the murderer was to steal Dewar’s wages paid to him on the Saturday. Butler quickly flung this aside. Would a thief seeking money choose the home of a working butcher in which to find it? - But the thrilling portionof his speech was that in which he dealt with the bloodstains on his clothes, and particularly those stains to be seen on the shirt he was wearing when arrested. These stains were few and small, most of them the size of a pin’s head; some on the right armpit, some on the left sleeve. Butler asked the judge’s permission to don the shirt in the dock. With triumphant glances towards the Crown prosecutor and the police inspector, he pointed out the positions of the spots. Spots, he contended, could not have spurted to such positions from a murdered body, killed, as the evidence showed, by blows from an axe. And again, he demonstrated somewhat laboriously that the murderer would have needed to remove his coat and waistcoat to expose his shirt to the spurting; and- -what murderer in his senses and fearing interruption would adopt such a course? He argued that some enemy of the Dewars must have committed the crime. In any ease he was innocent. He admitted hurrying from the town on the Sunday morning. He did so because he imagined that his burning down of Stamper’s house had been discovered. He did not attempt to account for his movements on the Saturday night of the murder—merely that he spent it wandering about the streets half drunk. As he saw the impression his speech was making , on judge, jury, and hearers, he proceeded j to urge the unsoundness of the “ murder I will out” theory. The jury might fasten the crime on him because no

other suspect was thought of. “ But how many a murdered man lies among the gum trees of the Victorian diggings, for instance. Who were their murderers? God knows, perhaps, but nobody else, and nobody ever will.” His closing words were: “ I stand in a terrible position. So do you. See that in your way of disposing of men you deliver yourself of your responsibilities.” Mr Justice Williams in his summing up pressed the point that there was nothing save the bloodstains to connect the accused with the crime. It was a summing up distinctly favourable to the accused. After a deliberation of three hours the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Within a few days Butler was placed on trial for the burning down of Stamper’s house and the theft of the field glasses. He pleaded guilty. Mr Justice Williams sentenced him to imprisonment for 18 years. The severity of this sentence was not, the judge said, designed to mark the strong suspicion under which Butler laboured of being a murderer as well as a burglar. The general feeling of the public was that I it was so designed. Mr Irving, in his book, makes what 1 consider to be an unfounded assertion. “ Throughout his trial,” he says, “ Butler was being advised by three distinguished members of the New Zealand bar, now judges of the Supreme Court, who, though not appearing for him in court, gave him the full benefit of their assistance outside it.” The three counsels of Dunedin, who have since been raised to the Bench, are Mr (later Sir) Robert Stout, who retired from the'Chief Justiceship a few years ago; Mr (later Sir) J. E. Denniston, and Mr (later Sir) Frederick Chapman, son of Mr Justice Chapman. These are the men indicated by Mr Irving. Indeed, I am under the impression that in English magazine articles about the case, published before the book, Mr Irving mentioned the names specifically. The rumour that counsel’s assistance had been rendered to Butler was widely spread in Dunedin at the time, but that such members of the bar as are indicated by Mr Irving would have assisted Butler seems on the face of things most unlikely. Butler served his term of imprisonment in Lyttelton goal. He was placed in charge of the choir and the library. In 1896 he was released, and went to South America, but it was riot long before he I made his way to Melbourne, The Melbourne police kept their eyes on him.; He took to crime aliribst immediately. He broke into a barber’s shop, stealing,*

■wig, some razors, and a small sum of money. Also he was charged with highway robbery. An elderly man was “ stuck up ” in Richmond, at the point of a revolver, and a gold watch taken from him. Mr Justice Holroyd tried Butler, who pleaded guilty to the barber’s shop robbery, but not guilty to the “ sticking up ” In the case of highway robbery he addressed the jury for an hour and a-half. He declared that his victim, an old man, ’must have been mistaken in his identification. He was acquitted.

Before being sentenced for the shop robbery Butler handed to the judge a writter statement which Mr Justice Holdoyd described as a narrative that ‘‘might have been taken fiom a sensational newspaper written for nursemaids,” and from which he could not find that Butler had ever done one good thing in the whole of his life. His Honor certainly wasted no sympathy on the scoundrel, who was then 50 years of age, and had spent 35 years in prison. He sentenced Butler to imprisonment for 15 years with .hard labour. “ An iniquitous and brutal sentence,” exclaimed the prisoner The judge, previously declaring that he could hardly express the scorn he felt for such a man as Butler, subsequently reduced the period of the sentence to 10 years. The final month of Butler’s life was passed in Brisbane, whither he went on release from Pentridge in 1904. It is worthy of mention that he had confessed to the Melbourne police that he had stolen the watch from the victim of his " sticking up ” exploit. His last appearance in the dock was in Brisbane. At Toowong, close to that city, on March 23, 1905, he presented a revolver at Mr W Munday and demanded his valuables. Mp Munday resisted. Butler shot him. and he died a few hours later. Under the alias of James Wharton, Butler was hanged. In Dunedin this criminal passed for a time under the name of Donnelly, and I believe that in his early career in Victoria he used that name. It is not tear what was his rea] name. He was far removed from the class of criminal deserving any such title as “ clever.” His anxiety was, as he confided to the police in Dunedin, to commit some astounding prime that would alarm the community and baffle the police—cause the public tojjoirit a finger of scorn at them. H-nv he failed is plain from his record. He was never out. of the hands of the police. He was never ’* clever ’ enough to baffle them. Mi Justice Hqlrovd. in Melbourne, most fittingly described - him as one who wag utterly reckless of - what evil 1/

might do, and regretted that “ he could not be put away somewhere for the rest of his life.” [The New Zealand Butler is not to be confounded with the Frank Butler .vho, in 1896, in Sydney, was convicted and hanged for the Blue Mountains murder, as it was termed. This man, by advertising in the newspapers, enticed men to 'go mates ” with him in mining, and when they had dug holes in lonely spots shot them trom behind, and buried them in the graves they themselves had dug. He was believed to-have murdered three men in this way.]

A pair of life-size red deer, modelled in composite red granite, will shortly be placed at the entrance of the tea kiosh in Ellerslie racecourse gardens. The work has been carried out in Auckland. A Southland Times reporter was shows - a number of blue cod that for size and weight are said to be a record catch round the Southland coasts. Four of the fish were chosen at random and put on the scales. Cleaned and dressed they averaged 4£lb, the average weight of ordinary blue cod being about 2Jlb apiece. These fish were caught at Waikawa by Mr Fred Herman, and the fish merchant who showed them to the reporter said that in his experience a catch of such an extraordinay average was unique.