"DEAD" MAN RETURNS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LI, Issue 16895, 27 November 1925, Page 7

"DEAD" MAN RETURNS.

MINE MYSTERY SEQUEL. ALLEGED INSURANCE FRAUD. NEW YORK, Oct. 17.—William Turner, who “died on Jaimaiy 17, 1925,’ ’ according to the headstone, on his alleged grave at Alattewan, West Vir- ( ginia, landed unexpectedly from the United States Line steamer Resolute at Now York yesterday evening, and declared he was very much alive. Ho was immediately taken into custody on the ground that ho had aided and abetted his wife and sister to collect £17,000 insurance, on his "death.” Turner, who was a foreman in n coal mine, declares that his father-in-law set off dynamite in order to procure evidence of his legal death, and as a result of the, explosion which followed —believed at the time accidental —two men were killed, one of whom was buried as Turner. The body was mangled to such extent that identification seemed impossible, but the insurance companies, while paying the claims, expressed doubt as to the case. Turner says that after the bogus accident he was forced to leave home at the point of a gun by ,Toc .Tacks, jun., his brother-in-law, to meet Jacks, sen., his father-in-law, in New York, and by him forced to go to Hamburg and play dead so that tho insurance taken out only a few days before could be collected. For nine months lie lived. in semi-starvation in Germany, and the failure to receive money from friends at home influenced Turner to write and finally come back to face indictment for murder, to find a grave in a country cemetery hearing his own mirno and his relatives living luxuriously upon his insurance, denying he was alive. ‘‘ My husband,” Mrs. Turner said to the police, “is dead. This new Turner must he a fraud. Why, poor Bill’s body was so torn to pieces by the explosion that they would not let me see it.” Turner exonerated his wife, insisting that neither he nor she was in tho plot which brought death to two and wealth to others.' However, the wife, surrounded by five children, refused even to see him. She admitted she had received £SOOO insurance, and said Turner’s sister collected the balance. As to tlic identity of Turner there is r.o doubt. The sheriffs who met him at New York knew him personally, and together they chatted of old times it* Virginia. "You lost some weight in Germany, ’ said one sheriff. “Yes,” replied tho returning traveller. “1 lost about 201 b over there, ami,”, lie added, " I guess there’s folks hero who didn’t go hungry. A r ou can buy lots of grub for £i7,000.” "I came back,” hr said, "to sec what I could do to straighten things out. I ain’t done nothing wrong, but there’s plenty wrong going on.’ ’ In his story to the prosecutors ho explained that on the day of the alleged accident his brotherin law took him out and got him deaddrunk. In Virginia the insurance companies secured indictment, Turner, in order to clear up the mysteries, said he waived extradition and came hack voluntarily. "Tt’s better To bo alive in America,” ho said, "even in gaol than walking about, dead and hungry, in Germany.”