WEALTHY GIRL SHOT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20071, 18 October 1939, Page 3

WEALTHY GIRL SHOT

EX-SWEETHEART CHARGE * DUBLIN INCIDENT DUBLIN. Sepl. 1. Propped up by pillows in a nursing home 10-day. Miss Vera Biggs, wealthy 21-year-old niece of a Dublin Government official, told a special bedside court how she was shot at the wheel ot her car when driving home the man to whom she was once engaged. She said that he once told her that if he could not have her no one else would. Her former sweetheart, 30-year-old Robert W. R. Montgomery, was remanded until Friday, accused of attempting to murder her. Miss Biggs, horse-racing enthusiast and. owner of a red sports car, was shot near her uncle’s home at midnight on August 14. She was wounded in the stomach. “Pointed Gan at Her” In evidence to-day she said that Montgomery had told her that "he would shoot me in the stomach so that I would have seven days’ pain and die." She took that as a joke. She added: “Once he went to hit me but missed and gave a girl friend of mine a black eye.” It had been stated at a previous hearing that their engagement was broken off because of Montgomery's drinking and ungovernable temper. They continued to meet, however, and to-day Miss Biggs said that on the night before she was shot he pointed a gun at her in the lounge of a Dublin hotel. The next evening they went to a cinema and afterwards to a roadhouse He insisted on seeing her home. Or. the way he asked her to stop, and he got out. Miss Biggs added: "When he came back I saw him point a revolver at Ime and I was shot. I put up my arms to ward off the shot. "He afterwards drove me to a doctor. “We had been talking about ordinary things. "I thought I heard him mention Mr. Preston (whom she had met earlier in the evening). I had known Mr. Preston for nine or 10 months, and we had become very friendly.” Miss Biggs, whose fattier is dead, was born in Southern Rhodesia. She came to Dublin in 1930. Prosecuting solicitor described her as “an attractive girl of considerable beauty who quickly became popular in a certain social circle in the city.”