MURDERER’S RETURN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19829, 2 May 1927, Page 10

MURDERER’S RETURN

AFTER THIRTY-NINE YEARS AN INTERESTING STOEY. A footstore, half-starved, wizened little man with grey hair and wrinkled face walked up to the main entrance of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum recently and begged to be allowed to enter. He declared that he escaped from the institution 39 years ago, and after roving all over the world liad come back to set his conscience at rest and die in peace. The attendant summoned an official, who was incredulous when the story was told, and a telephone message was sent to the police at Working- • ham, 4A miles away, asking them to remove a lunatic! The man was brought to Workingham and charged with being a lunatic wandering abroad. The story he told of his friendless flight from justice, the ever-haunting fear that he might fall into the hands of the police, and the constant dread, as old age approached, that he might die alone and unknown, beats any scenario ever written for the film millionaires. Murdered His Wife. He declared that he was James Kelly, ' who in July 1883 was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for the murder of his wife. At that time he was 23 years of age and an upholsterer. He was under the delusion that his wife had been associating with other men and in a fit of passion he stabbed her. : At this trial he was defended by the 1 famous criminal lawyer, Air Montague I Williams, who made a passionate ap- j peal to the jury to find Kelly insane. ' This plea did not succeed but the jury 1 added a recommendation to mercy. Shortly before the day fixed for his execution he was reprieved and sent I to Broadmoor “during Her Majesty’s I pleasure. ” At the asylum he harboured a grievance that he was being unjustly I treated, and plotted to escape. In his , spare time he made a key to fit his cell, and on January 23, 1888, nearly five ' years after he arrived at the criminal i lunatic asylum, he walked out and dis- ' appeared. There was a widespread hue and cry, 1 but no trace could be found of Kelly, who, however, was hiding close to the j asylum.

Later he made his way to the east | coast. At one port he was working in , a ship when a policeman recognised him ' and went on board to arrest him. 1 Kelly, however, saw the constable and again disappeared. Travelled The World. A few weeks later, he says, he worked his passage in a Channel boat to France and earned a precarious livelihood in the Alontmartre quarter of Paris. He returned to England and then went to Rotterdam. Later he became a seaman, and as such travelled all over the world. Some weeks ago he worked his passage from New Orleans to Liverpool, whence he tramped to London. Since then he has walked the streets, getting a few pence by doing odd jobs. “I have no friends and am all alone in the world,” he said. “I have wandered all these years feeling that I am a fugitive who might be pounced on by any policeman I passed. I am getting feeble now from the constant fear, and I dreaded the idea of dying alone.” "When Kelly appeared before the magistrates he appealed to be allowed to end his days in Broadmoor. Later j in the day an order from the Home Office arrived, and Kelly was removed to the asylum, where he is in a ward near Ronald True.