NOTORIOUS BLACKMAIL CASE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 880, 28 July 1910, Page 5

NOTORIOUS BLACKMAIL CASE.

•« - VON VELTHEIM'S SENTENCE. By Telegraph—Press Association-Copyright. , (Rec. July 27, 10.15 p.m.) London, July 27. The sentence of 20 years' imprisonment passed on Franz Von Veltheim in 1908 for having - "demanded''money, with threats, from Mr. Solly Joel, tho South African mining magnate, . has been reduced by five years. ...>'

[Karl Friedrich Monty Ludwig Kurtze, calling himself Franz Von Veltheim, was in 1908 found guilty of sending a blackmailing letter to Solomon liarnato Joel, demanding, with menaces, without any reasonable or probable cause. The prisoner had had previous relations with tho Joels,, and in 1898 saw Mr. Woolf Joel and Mr. Strange, his manager, at tho office of Barnato Brothers, in Johannesburg. An altercation arose ' about money matters, and the result was the death of Mr. Woolf Joel from, throo bullet wounds. Veltheim was tried in the Transvaal Courts, and was acquitted on tho ground that he fired in selidefence. He was afterwards deported as an undesirable alien, who had 6ent threatening letters. The prisoner stated that Mr. Woolf Joel had offered him .£50,000 to remove Mr. Kruger, and that ho had refused. He alleged that Mr. Joel knew'that he (the prisoner) could get ,£1,000,000 from the Transvaal Government for the information. The judgo intimated plainly that ho did not believe tho prisoner's story.]