THREAT COMES TRUE

Timaru Herald, Volume CL, Issue 22043, 16 August 1941, Page 6

THREAT COMES TRUE

MAN BURNED TO DEATH GRUESOME MURDERS RECALLED SYDNEY, July 31. Two years after he had been threatened with being killed and his body burned, if he informed on a murderer, Walter Taylor, a 40-year-old tramp, was found to-day lying dead in the ashes of his camp fire. The man he accused, fter he had been terrified by him, was Albert Andrew Moss, who is now imprisoned for life. Moss was charged with killing three travellers and burning their bodies. Taylor, who has long been drifting round the Dubbo-Narromine district, camped with Moss in 1939, and learned something of his gruesome crimes. He was later a Crown witness at the murder trial, and he told how Moss had terrified him by saying, “You will burn, too.” His infor lation to the police that Moss had boasted of burning many men was partly responsible for opening up an investigation into one of the most extraordinary murder cases the Commonwealth has known. Moss was sentenced to death at the Dubbo Supreme Court—the sentence later being commuted to imprisonment for the term of his natural life.

There was no foul play when Taylor last night met his death in the way Moss had predicted. Returning, apparently under the influence of liquor, to his camp on the bank of the river, only 200 yards from the main street of Dubbo, he fell asleep and rolled into his fire. In his condition he was apparently too helpless to extricate himself. When found he was dead and his clothes had been burned off.