CHEATED JUSTICE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16495, 30 July 1924, Page 3

CHEATED JUSTICE.

MAN TAKES POISON WHILE POLICE QUESTION.

SYDNEY, July 18.—Death intervened in startling manner when two detectives were making an arrest at Glebe Point oil Thursday, the man they had come to take Into custody dying from the effects of poison while they were asking him some preliminary,, questions. Tho story has its beginning in the visit of a young woman to the Detective office uarly in the week. She stated that her husband —she had been married, only a month—had disappeared, and she thought something had happened to him, as they had had no estrangement. Detectives made inquiries, and were amazed to find that'the man tlie young woman thought was her husband, with whom she had gone through a form of. marriage, was married twice, and was even then living with his wife and two cliildreiv —one 16 years of age and the other 13.

They arranged to visit him at his home in time to catch him before lie rose. Something went wrong with the arrangements, however, and the police did not reach the place until 9 a.in. They were met at the door by the man’s first wife, and when they fold, her they were police, and would like to interview her husband, she tried to block them. But they forced their way inside, and found the mail they wanted in the front bedroom, from the window of which, they afterwards learned, he had watched them approach. Detective-Sergeant Kennedy had just addressed a few questions when the man staggered, and fell back unconscious. A doctor was called immediately, but could do no more than make the formal pronouncement of death. A bottle containing cyanide of potassium, found in the man’s hip pocket, explained the cause. Several warrants, it is understood, had been issued for the arrest of the man who cheated justice by taking his own life. His first wife, who was at first inclined to blame tlie police, for her husband’s death, was startled to hear of his second marriage while she was still alive; and his second wife was broken-hearted. The 'women eventually consoled each other.