AN ILL-OMENED SWORD

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3190, 14 June 1932, Page 3

AN ILL-OMENED SWORD

BAD LUCK DOGS OWNERS. THIRTY YEARS OF HISTORY. A strange sword, which was the weapon used to murder a European queen',, and which ever since has dogged every man who owned it with the cruellest luck, to-day lies in a London bank. The owner wants to get rid of it. It was made in 1902 by a Viennese who fashioned into it a Toledo 'nude poisoned at the tip. It was a court sword, and belonged to Major Kostich, of the Serbian Royal Life Guards.

Soon after he bought it he became one of the eight conspirators who plotted against their queen, Draga, wife of King Alexander Obranevitch of Serbia. She was murdered, stabbed with the poisoned sword. The bodies of the queen and her sovereign were thrown through the windows of the Royal Palace of Belgrade.

Major Kostich ran with news of the assassination to the Cafe Moscow, in Belgrade's principal thoroughfare, showed the weapon to the multitude and cried: "This is the sword that killed the infamous Draga." But his luck had gone. Kostich hoped to become War Minister. King Edward's condemnation of the murder forced him to retire.

He became haunted by the apparition of Draga and Alexander and, in despair gave the sword to Colonel Baryaklovitch, who in turn gave it to a young Serbian diplomat. This diplomat then lost through death his mother, his father and his favourite brother.

In 1916 he gave the sword to an American collector of historic objects, whose wife eloped with a musician! Deciding to rid himself of the sword of fate, he advertised it for sale. The Serbian diplomat who had owned it before regained the weapon and gave it to a British manufacturer. This man, while walking through his factory, became entangled in moving machinery and was gravely injured. When he left hospital he took the

sword and threw it through the window of the man who gave it to him.

The Serbian to whom the sword has been thus returned now learns that certain people in Serbia have placed aside £SOOO for the head of the owner of the sword and the return of the weapon. While he is convinced that he is safe in England, he is not particularly anxious to retain the sword, and is prepared to give it to any museum that will undertake to guard it and exhibit it.