RAVINE MURDERS.

Wairarapa Age, 19 May 1936, Page 5

RAVINE MURDERS.

PUBLICATION OF CONFESSION BY RUXTON. WRITTEN IN OCTOBER LAST. LONDON, May 17. Dr. Ruxton, who was executed on May 12 for the murder of his wife and his maid, left a letter to be opened after his death. The letter sates: “I killed Mrs. Ruxton in a fit of temper because I thought she had been with a <nan. I was mad at the time. Mary Rogerson, the maid, was present, and I had to kill her. B. Ruxton.”

The “News of the World,” in publishing this remarkable confession in fascimile in Ruxton’s bold handwriting, explains that Ruxton on the night of October 12, was taken to a police station. He received a friend in his cell on October 14 and gave him a sealed envelope, saying that it must not be opened until after his death, but if he w&s acquitted, as he thought he must be, it was to be returned to him. The friend locked the envelope in a safe. Ruxton during his trial spoke to his friend and told him that in the impossible event of a verdict of guilty the envelope was to be handed unopened to the editor of the “News of the World.” The friend complied half an hour after the execution. The “News of the World” adds that even to his own solicitor Ruxton protested his innocence to the last, yet he knew from October 14 that the confession was in the envelope.

(Dr. Buck Ruxton, aged 36, of Dal-ton-Square, Lancaster, pleaded not guilty to the charge of murdering his wife, Isabella Ruxton, aged 35, last September. At the police court he was also charged with the murder of Miss Mary Jane Rogeren, a nursemaid. He was not called on to plead to this charge at the Assizes. The prosecution alleged that dismembered and mutilated human remains found in a ravine at Moffat, Dumfriesshire, were those of the women. Ruxton was found guilty of the murder of his wife at the Manchester Assizes in March last).