THE BERNAYS MURDER.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1085, 16 March 1883, Page 4

THE BERNAYS MURDER.

The trial of the brothers PoUzerfor the murder of M. William Bernaya, of Antwerp, which I egau at Brussels on November 27, lacks no circumstances of interest which a criminal romance can possess. M. William Bernuys was a distinguished member of the Belgian Bar. On January 7 he left his home at his usual early hour of 8 in the morning. He took his little son to school. He went to the railway station and took a ticket to Brussels. None of his friends ever saw liim alive again. They first sought him unaided, for fear of talk and scandal ; at last they had to resort to the police. The police did not even find a clue, which is certainly singular. Inquiries at the railway stations at Antwerp, Brussels, and the neighbouring towns should have led to some result. It was left to the criminal himself, acting in a manner most difficult to account for, to put the police on the track. When Beruays had been lost lor 11 days, on January 18 the police, ■received a letter that had been posted at Basel on January 16. The letter Was written in English, and was signed “ Henry Vaughan.” The writer said that M, Bernays had met him by appointment “at my house in Brussels, 159, Rue de la Loi.” la the course ■of conversation, so the letter said, M. •Barnays began to play with a pistol of Vaughan’s, which went off and shot •him dead. Vaughan had then.yielded to terror, and to a sense of the difficulty ot proving his own innocence and had fled. Guided by Vaughan’s letter the police went to i 59, Rue de la Loi. 'i he house of Vaughan was in a singular condition. There were on the first j floor a drawing-room, a dining room,; and another small room. For some 'sufficient reason Vaughan had not put_ any furniture into the house, which he had taken in December. On January 6 he furnished the small room or cabi- • net. Bernays, as we have seen, disappeared on January 7. The door of the cabinet was closed when the police arrived, but they opened it, and'fouud the decaying body of Bernays on a sofa. On the table of the study were articles which scarcely seem to lighten the darkness of the whole affair ’namely,fa map of Africa, five revolvers, and two boxes of bullets. The question is—how did an experienced • barrister come to leave Antwerp- for Brussels, to meet, in an uninhabited ■suite of rooms, a person furnished ' with a map of Africa and five revolvers 1 How was the Bernays decoyed ■away from Antwerp and into that - cabinet 1 These problems could not l- be solved. A reward of £IOOO was offered for Vaughan. He had apparently left no trace brt his handwriting, and it is hard indeed to understand why he - left that. 'The newspapers, published copies of his autograph, and at last a tradesman of Vervins declared he recognised the hand. It was.the -writing of one Leon Peltzer, a Belgian, and a man ■ unsuccessful in more than one com,’mercial enterprise. Peltzer’e brother’s . now rather unadvisedly entered the lists, and declared i that Leon was in ■ San Francisco But Leon was really i hiding on the Belgian frontier, lacking < either money or spirit to fly, though i-ifhe got ■no ■ money by slaying Bernays it is not easy to see what he got.* The other Peltzers kept up a constant, : and apparently a -superfluous and dangerous, correspondence with Leon. As their own movements were of •course watched, they -employed a i .friend to get their brother’s letters. 1 T hey represented that the affair was i one of gallantry. By some incompreihensible confusion about certain tele-' : grams, from Vienna and Cologne, Leon Peltzer was induced to come from Cologne to Antwerp. There he wasi ; arrested by the police, to whom the go-between, at last suspicious, had itold alike knew or guessed. And there the matter remained, which isi mow being tried.