MYSTERY OF GARAGE MURDER.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18513, 10 March 1930, Page 2

MYSTERY OF GARAGE MURDER.

PCDMORE SENTENCED TO DEATH (U ill led Press Association—By Electric 1 eiegraph—Copyright.) LONDON, March 8. (Received March 9, 5.5 p.m.) The trial has concluded at the Winchester Assizes of William Henry Podmore. aged twenty-nine, an engineer, known as “the man with the scar,” charged with the murder of Mr Vivian Messiter. Podmore was found guilty, and sentenced to death. “Did you kill Messiter?” was a question put to Pcdmore. “I did not,” answered Podmore, who was in the witness box for four hours, of which one and a half hours consisted of a searching cross-examina-tion by one of England’s most skilful counsel, Sir Thomas Inskip. The evidence alleged incriminating talk about the Southampton murder by Podmore when in gaol for car stealPodmore flatly denied the alleged conversations. (Messiter met his death in a garage in Grove Street, Southampton, on October 30 last year, but the crime was not discovered till January, when he had been missing about three months. Podmore was arrested at the gates of Wandsworth Prison on his release after serving a sentence for theft. Sensational evidence was given at the hearing by fellow convicts, who alleged that Pcdmore had confessed to them details of the crime.)