IRISH MELODRAMA.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

IRISH MELODRAMA.

FORMER SOLDIER PAYS PRICE ON GALLOWS. ARMOY MURDERS.

William Smylie, the young farm servant who brutally murdered the two sisters, Margaret and Sarah Macauley, at Annoy, Co. Antrim, in May last, paid the penalty of his crime, the dread sentence of execution being carried out in the Belfast Prison. One of the most important links in the chain of circumstantial evidence which brought about the prisoner's conviction was the discovery by the police of three £10, notes concealed in the toe of one of his boots. It might truthfully be said that he was not at first suspected of having committed the foul deed, but when the arm of the law finally rested upon his shoulders certain of his actions displayed to the trained minds of the detectives a presumption of guilt, which became stronger as the case developed. ' While in the police barracks Smylie was ordered to change his clothing. He was given a pair of socks, which, as He remarked at the time, were rather coarse, and this led to the examination of his boot by a constable who found the three notes crumpled up inside. Such was the motive for the crime. A reconstruction of the crime shows that when the crime was perpetrated there was no one on the farm but Smylie, and the elder sister Margaret, and that when Sarah came upon the scene she also was shot down in order that the murderer might hide his identity. , Direct evidence to connect . Smylie with the shooting might possibly have been given by an aged servant, Kate Murdoch, who heard a shot while she was working amongst the potatoes at the rear of the farmhouse, but on this occasion she attributed the shot to one of the Misses Macauley's brothers, who was accustomed to shooting rooks. Kate Murdoch heard only one shot, and it would appear that Margaret had already met her fate, and that Sarah was now the victim. On going into the house after finishing her work she found the- two women stretched on the floor, both with their heads badly mutilated, and -blood bespattered all over the kitchen. The two brothers of the murdered women, one of whom is Mr. Andrew Macauley, a Justice of the Peace, were working in a field when the tragedy occurred. Smylie himself denied till the last that he was guilty of the crime. He had pledged his innocence as he did before sentence was passed, yet, strangely enough, he was resigned to his fate. He heard the Lord Chief Justice pronounce the death penalty with hardly a quiver on his lips, and before being taken p> the condemned cell he calmly asked one of the warders for a cigarette, saying, "This is good-bye, Enniskillen." In his cell Smylie was peaceful. He gave no trouble, but hoped for the success of a petition for a reprieve which was presented to the Home Office on behalf of his young wife, who is living with Tier mother, and two little children at Mullaghduff. The petition, which was refused, set out that Smylie was a loving father and husband, and served faithfully and

honourably in the late war. He was attached to the 12th Royal Irish Rifles, and for nine months was a prisoner of war in Germany. He was gassed, shellshocked, and wounded in the head, and was even buried alive until rescued by his comrades. There was the further statement in the petition that Smylie had been peculiar in his manner, and showed signs of a low mentality. Then followed the signatures which, it should be stated, were remarkably few. .