CONFESSIONS OF A PASTOR

Taranaki Daily News, 16 November 1927, Page 9

CONFESSIONS OF A PASTOR

THOMAS REVERTS TO FIRST STORY WAS HE ABDUCTED AND BOUND? By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received Nov. 15, 11.40 p.m. Melbourne, Nov. 15. The trial of Evan Thomas at Warmgal on a charge of offensive behaviour caused another sensation when Thomas paid he alleged confession was not true. He added that three men did actually abduct him and he made a false confession to save the name of the Pentecostal Church.

A previous cable message stated: The police are -investigating a remarkable story told by Pastor Evan Thomas, the Welsh evangelist and faith healer, who belongs to the Pentecostal Church at Richmond, and who states that three men accosted him in the main street in Warragul and asked him if he were the faith-healer. On receiving an affirmative reply, they told him a woman was seriousl yill at Nilma and requested him to go to see her. Thomas joined them in the car. Just after passing Nilma he declares he received a heavy blow on the head and remembered no more till he recovered consciousness in a paddock. Another version of the story says that a passing niotorist party found Thomas in the paddock, stripped, blindfolded and covered with tar. His hands were bound with barbed wire which had cut into the flesh.

Thomas later confessed that the story was a fabrication.