The Self-confessed Murderer.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 269, 19 May 1896, Page 2

The Self-confessed Murderer.

(Per Press Association.) Wellington, May 38. The police here ridicule the confession of Hareford in Sydney, and declare that from the pbotogragh of the prisoner thero he is identical with Samuel Trad- . geon, the horse stealer who broke oat of prise n at Grey town in 1894. Farther, 7 their records show that Tradgeoh was on February 26th, 1889, when only 13 : years and 8 months old, charged with ' larceny here and sent to Burnham Industrial School until he attained the age of 15 years. (Hawkins was murdered on 31st May, 1889). This opinion as to the fallacy of the confession is confirmed by a letter which Eliza Tradgeon, mother of Samuel Trudgeon, has written to the editor of the Times to-night : — " Allow me to contradict the statement in your paper this morning with regard to Samuel Trndgeon. He was never employed by Hawkins, and his age is only 21 years (yesterday, 17th, being his j birthday), so that at the time of Hawkin's death he would be only 14 years of age, and besides he was in the Bornham Industrial School at the time. I think it is high time such bogus asset*, tions should be discontinued, for it can* not do any good for either side." -i-.^V;