THE LEYTON HORROR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7667, 28 March 1903, Page 4

THE LEYTON HORROR.

♦_ . A MOCKING MURDERER. y LAUGHS AT THE DEATH SENTENCE. [Fbom Ora Correspondent.] LONDON, Feb. 13. The trial of Edgar Edwards, alias Owen, Glanville, etc., at the Old Btiley, for the brutal murder, at Wyndham Road, Camberwell, on Dec. 1, of William and Beatrice Darby and their infant child, occupied th© judge and jury th© whole of yesterday and an hour or so this morning. As everyone anticipated-, the verdict of the jury was "•Guilty," and the sentence "Death^" and for once in a way the- prisoner was not made the subject of a recommendation to mercy. A more brutal and callous murder than that by 'Edwards has not been committed for many years. 'For., t'he sake of a few paltry articles of furniture, a* few, odds and ends of personal property, and the good-' will of a little grocery 'business hardly worth keeping going, this monster in human shape beat out the brains of two ad-ulta with a sashweight, purchased for the deed, strangled their little baby, and, having dismembered his victims, packed them in boxes, carted them from Camberwell to Leyton, and there, in the little back garden of a cheap suburban villa Ih© had rented, interred his victims. But for a ferocious assault, also with a sashweight, on a neighbour, the ohances are that- Edwards' s horrible crime would have remained undiscovered, -probably, -until too late to connect Edwards with it. Happily for society at large, suspicions were aroused in time, t'he victims disinterred before they 'became unrecognisable, and ho complete a. chain of circumstantial | evidence cast round Edwards that his own counsel's real efforts were made to save his client's neck by setting up a plea for insanity. But, though witnesses were called to show that an aunt of t!he prisoner and one of his grandfathers had 'been in asylums, and that- his father was a dipsomaniac, and Edwards himself "played up to " the madness theory in the dock, t'he evidence of the medical'men who have had the prisoner under observation since his arrest was quite sufficient to convince the jury that the murderer was not mad, either according to tha legal definition of madness or according to the common interpretation of the word. He knew what he was doing, knew full well the consequences of his ,act, and took eveiyy precaution to prevent its discovery. The Judge, in summing up, said : " I fliave no doubt there is some, touch of insanity in the prisoner," bxit he gave the jury no ; hint to give Edwards tiie 'ben-e-fit of the now common rider, and, indeed, told them as plainly as a judge may do that, in 'his opinion, Edwards should hang. When first arraigned, the prisoner at once commenced to play his part in the de-ftne-e. "When ask-ed the iisual question : "Are you guilty or not guilty?" Edwards stood in t«he fr.rmt of the dock gazing in a stupid kind of way at 3ns questioner, but made no_ reply. The question was repeated. This time, instead of answering, the prisoner leaned ov-cr the front of the dock, and held a whispered conversation with his solicitor. Straightening his back again, he made some remark which was inaudible. Once more the question was repeated, but Edwards looked stolidly straight in front of him without opening his, mouth. For t'he fourth time the question was asked. There was another whispered .conference between solicitor and client. Then 'Edwards surprised the Court by saying : " You've no business to nsk me such a question ; I never heard such rot." j" Yon must answer," said the Clerk of Arraigns. "Are you guilt}'- or not?" The prisoner k-ept silence. Under the law which prevailed until 1741, if a prisoner, when asked to -pi-.';:--, " .--tcod umite," he was subjected to torn:::' by the pressure of heavy weights on : b ; s body, but in 1827 an Act was passed directing that, if a prisoner refufed to plead, a pica, of "not f/uilty" should be" entered, and that plea wns accordingly recorded by direction of the Judge. Later, when the prosecuting counsel was reciting the facts, -Edwards called upon him to '/ Hurry up. old chappie; get- it throua'h," and all day, save when he forgot hiniiwlf so far as to Income interested in the evidence, behaved in a fashion evidently intended to bo Kuggest-ive of madness. His brutal callousness was sta-rt-lingly .shown in tlie manner in which, lie received the ftf-ntc-nce merited 'by nis hideous crime. When the jury withdrew at noon tn-day to censidor their verdict, Edwards, who fully realised 'by this time hia siUiation, eeemod a broken man. His face was ghastly palo, and the audacious look habitual to it had nlmost disappeared. But w-h-en lie was brought into the dock again twenty minutes lattr to hear t'he verdict, and sentence, -lie appeared to have called up nil the brazen hardihood of his .nature. Standing' bolt upright, with chalk white face disfigured' by -a ghastly gnin, he waited for j tb-f> announcement of t'he verdict. "Guilty!" At the sound the prisoner I started,' and seem-ed to gulp down a. lump in his throat- Th-sn ; h-o assumed a jaunty style and jwpared to take his sentence in what he probably considered, a "fame" fashion. " Had he anything to say?" To this question the prisoner answered with brutal levity : "Oh ! rigflt you are ; get on with it as quick as you like. Send 'em along." Then another opportunity for his jocularity presented itself. The usher of the Old Bailey tons a peculiar manner of intoninsr when swearing witnesses and goinjg through other • formulae. It caughfc the prisoner's fancv*at once, and he cried : " All right. oldT'hrtppi-e, you ought to -have been on the stage !" Even when the Judsre put on the black cap, Edwards was able to keep up the mask of mocking impudence. He grinned as tha Judge placed the square of black velvet on Ttis head. His Lordship said : " Edgar Eviwar-ds, the jurv have found the only verdict it was possible to find. After a long career of crime, in which you have received sentences amounting in all to something like fifteen years' penal servitude, you have been found guilty of one of the most horrible crimes it is possible to imagine." At this point the prisoner burst in rudely, "I say. just pass sentence as quickly as possible." The Judge, in a voice still more solemn, pronounced tfoe concluding sentence. Edwards, with a gr-in and- a sneer, nodded his •head in rhythm with the flow of the words, and muttered, " Oh res, oh yes, yes, yes !" Whon ' " .may the Lord have mercy on your soul" was reached^ the -wretched ■man put the climax on/his display by emitting a loud "Ha, ha!"