Sailor Confesses Murder

Southland Times, Issue 10917, 18 April 1907, Page 2

Sailor Confesses Murder

AND THEN DENIES IT. i Per ■United Press Association. Dy Electric Telegraph.—Copyright SYDNEY, April 17. Received 17, 11.42 p.m. ' A sailor named Newsome, has been sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for obtaining goods by false pretences on the strength of an imaginary legacy. While awaiting trial, he created a sensation by handing to the police a document implicating himself in the shooting of the captain and mate of the ship Leicester Castle on the voyage’from San Francisco to Queenstown in 1002. in the confession he, stated that he shot the captain and second mate and then, with two shipmates, who assisted in the pilot, escaped on a raft to Pitcairn island. They afterwards made their way to England, whore they found that the caplain had survived ami the male died: Newsome to-day declared that the confession was bogus, and was made when ho was suffering from delirium. Ho learned the facts while lie was a seaman aboard the Leicester Castle on the voyage after that whereon the shooting described actually occurred;