A ROMANTIC CAREER.

Waikato Independent, Volume VII, Issue 461, 16 January 1908, Page 5

A ROMANTIC CAREER.

Yon Yeltheim has had a most adventurous career. According to his own statements, he was born in some part of Germany in 1858, and was educated at Brunswick. He entered the German Navy, afterwards travelled in Russia with an English journalist. In 1885 he fought as a volunteer against Servia in the Bulgarian Array, and was wounded at the battle of Tiruova, and again at the battle of Pirot. When the war was over be came to London, but in the spring of 1886 he went to Western Australia, he married Miss Yearsley, deserted her in Sydney, and sailed to Zanzibar in hope of joining Stanley’s Emin Pasha relief expedition. He was too late, however, and he went on to Capetown, and then found his way to New Orleans, where he wrought as a dock laborer for some months. Pie \vas next in the Argentine, in 189], and four years later he came to England by way of Japan, Java, and India. In April, 1897, he sailed again for Capetown. In 1895 he married a Greek lady named Mavrogordato, who obtained a divorce in 1897. In the previous year, however, he had married in London a German lady named Schiffcr. A naked body found in the Thames in September, 1897, was formally identified as Von Veltheim’s by his third wife, but at that time he was in South Africa. In 1898 he went to the office at Johannesburg of Mr Woolf Joel, a partner in the banking house of Barnato Brothers. With Mr Joel was the manager, Mr Strange. All three men were armed with revolvers. Yeltheim asserted that the late MiBarney Barnato, Rand magnate, had offered him £16,000 to murder President Kruger. After Barnato’s suicide Woolf Joel refused to pay, on the ground that nothing had been done to execute the plot. At the interview in the office, Yeltheim demanded money, which was refused. There are various accounts of the shooting that followed. It is said that Yeltheim drew his revolver, whereupon Strange fired at him and missed. Von Yeltheim then fired three times at Mr Joel, inflicting fatal injuries.- The murderer then attempted to commit suicide. Another account says that what caused Strange to fire the first shot was an attempt by Yeltheim to seize Joel’s revolver.

Yon Yeltheim was tried at Johannesburg for murder, but after a trial lasting eight days was acquitted. Subsequently, however, he was expelled from the Transvaal. He has since declared Mr Solly Joel to have been responsible for his expulsion, and he is now charged with endeavoring to extort from him by means of threats a sum of £16,000.