THE MAD BRIDEGROOM

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7253, 27 August 1891, Page 3

THE MAD BRIDEGROOM

A Ghastly Storyl/BOH OUB LONDON COBEESPONDBNT. J London, July 17. The trial of Richard Coolidge Duncan, the young American who so mysteriously attempted to murder his bride at Bettws-y-Coed, in North Wales some little timo ago, haß revealed a ghastly story. Duncan is a dangerous madman, who courted and married his wife without the lady or her friends having the smallest suspicion of his appalling condition. It seems, indeed* very doubtful whether even at the time of the tragedy Mrs Duncan understood what was the matter. Yet Richard Duncan even in boyhood! had been eccentric, and an American specialist, Dr Kempster, who had seen the accused man at intervals for many yeara paßt, declared in the witness-box that he had long ago expressed, his opinion that Richard Duncan should be put under restraint. To the last, however, there waa a curious blending of cunning with that homicidal mania which seemed to the Bufferer to be merely a yearning to yield to " the voices " which urged him to destroy the life of someone. His letter to his brother, Dr Duncan, of the University of Baltimore, telling of "a friend" having fallen down some rocks in Wales was an instance of the writer's readiness to misrepresent the case even as to .the person actually injured, though at the time he waa writing he had practically admitted his guilt to the landlord of an hotel. It is now quite certain that the demented wretch had been seeking for some time past to take the life of his young bride. The evidence given some time ago by a boatman would have been sufficiently conclusive on this point, even if the lunatic himself had nob strongly corroborated thiß view. Duncan went to Llandudno with the object of rowing his wife to sea in a boat ; but such an undertaking was so dangerous a one. under the circumstances that the boatman refused to let hiß craft go to sea unless he had the management of it himself. The abandonment of the trip put off the evil day for a little while; but the hapless wife seems to have had no fear of trusting herself with the murderous madman in places distant from human aid. Never, in short, since a famous author depicted with thrilling effect the mad bridegroom's ferocious joy at having kept his dreadful secret so well that none suspected his true state, has a stranger story been told than that to which Mr Justice Lawrance and a Jury listened at the Carnarvonshire Assizes yesterday. It was no sudden manifestation of madness which, in a moment, impelled this young man to Beize a heavy stone and batter in the head of his newly-married wife. He had been planning her murder for days, perhaps even for weeks. Dunoan's tale Of hia having sustained a loss of 50,000d018, and having been driven to despair by his ruin,, turns out to be an invention on his part, with the object, strange as it may seem, of palliating hiß murderous attack on Mrs Duncan. That unfortunate lady, contrary to the expectation of moßt people, has now almost recovered from the more serious effects of ber injuries ; but she was unable to attend the Court. The medical evidence, however, was overwhelming . aa to the prisoner's insanity, which, it wbb suggested, had been either produoed orinoreased by a fall on his head. Richard Duncan ie clearly not responsible for his actions, and will probably spend the res. of his life in an asylum for criminal lunatics.