PROVED INNOCENT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIV, Issue 20983, 11 March 1938, Page 7

PROVED INNOCENT

ALLEGED MURDER CHARGE WEAPON FIRED BY SUN LONDON, March 1. After spending 20 years in a German prison after being convicted of a murder for which scientists have proved the sun to have been responsible, Wladvslaw Pawlowski, a Pole, has been released. Pawlowski in 1917 lived in the village of Weiherowo, then in German territory, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life for the murder of a farmer, Benedict Schamm. Accused admitted that he had argued with Schamm on the night he was killed, and threatened him with a gun, and the judge held that Pawlowski went back to the house and shot Schamm as he slept, with Schamm's gun. Recently warders found Pawlowski tearing at the bars of his cell, waving a newspaper and sobbing, “I have solved it.” The newspaper contained a fire protection company’s warning against the direct action of the sun’s rays on explosives when intensified by broken glass. The theory was tested on Schamm’s cottage, which was deserted in 1917 as it was believed to be haunted. A scientist placed Schamm's gun so that the rays could pour in on to a powder-box through a tiny flaw in tire window pane. The police waited and saw the gun go off, the charge perforating a dummy’s head.