MURDERED ON A HILL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8101, 29 August 1904, Page 2

MURDERED ON A HILL.

ME OF A COBNISH GIRL. « Mire Jessie Ricknr:.!. a pretty girl of seventeen', was found murdered on a Hill near the quiet little town, of St Columb, in Cornwall, one Sunday in June, and it was quickly discovered that a young man named Charles Berryman, in whose company she is said to ha-ve been last «en alive, was missing. Miss Kickavd w?.e the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, living afc Trenowth farm, near St Columb. She left homo at half-~ past six on June 11, stating that she was going to see a friend, named Miss Berryman, of Mawgan, who had been teaching her music, and that she would meet her iti Sfc Columb at ten o'clock in. order tho£ they might return to Trenowth together. But it would eeein that she did not go to the house of the Berrymans, whom she had known from childhood. Instead, she is said to have met Charles Bcrryman, Miss Berryraan's brother, a. quiet young man of twenty, who had lately been learning carpentering at Torquay, and "who returned home to St Columb a little later. The two cycled a short distance together to the foot of the hill known as Caetle-nu-Dinas. There they alighted; left their bicycles by the side of a hedge, and walked up the hill, at the- top of which are some- old Roman earthworks and trenches. Two young men called Tabb saw them there, laughing and talking, and noticed the bicycles by the hedge. A little later a passing cyclist heard four or five shots in quick succession, but, suspecting nothing wrong, rode on. On the following morning the two Tabbs who lived at a. neighbouring farm, were again passing Castls-au-Dinas, when they saw the two bicycles still beside the hedge. Thinking this strange, they climbed the hill, and were startled to find in a trench the dead body of a girl. Five revolver bultet wounds in the face had rendered her features almoGt unrecognisable. There was another bullet in her elbow, this having been fired .«o close that the blouse- was burnt and b'ackened. About the same time Mr Rickard went over to the Berrymans to call for hia daughter. As she had occasionally stayed with them all night he was not alarmed until he found, on reaching the house, that she had not been there. He also learned that young Berryman had not been seen sines 'about seven o'clock on the previous evening. The sad oertainty was soon established that the girl who lay dead on the Fill was Miss Rickard. Beside th© bullet wotinds there were no other marks of violence on the body. A tin of cigarettes was found in her pocket, -.vbich she probably bought to give to someone. -; Berryman had announced his intention of going to America at the end of the mouth, but is reported to hare told a friend en Saturday, June 11, that te only bad 7d in his pocket. Berryman is a aative of St Colnmb, where bis late father was a solicitor's clerk wd postmaster for many yeara. A week after the finding af the girl's body, that of Berryman was found in an adjacent pool.