SHOCKING TRAGEDY IN SOUTH WALES.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 745, 8 November 1876, Page 3

SHOCKING TRAGEDY IN SOUTH WALES.

(From the Borne News .)

A terrible crime was committed in Carmarthenshire on August 19th, by a butler, who shot his master and his daughter, and then committed suicide. It appears that Mr John Johns, aged seventy-five, of Dolan Cothy, a small village between Lampeter and Llandovery, had given notice to his butler, Henry Tremble, an Irishman, to leave his service. At a little after 10 o’clock on the above morning Tremble, who was to quit the house during the day, and had given up bis key, went into the library and deliberately shot Mr Johns in the breast. No one was with Mr Johns at the time but the assassin, and no one heard the report. He then shut the door, went towards the kitchen, and saw Mrs Cookman, a married daughter of deceased, giving instructions to the cook. He levelled his gun, fired, and struck her in the thigh. In the general consternation some of the servants went to look for Mr Johns, and the unfortunate gentleman was found in the library weltering in his blood, and he died soon afterwards. The murderer then left the house, and went to his home in the village, where he shot himself with a pistol in the presence of his wife. Mr Johns, who was seventy-five years of age, had been intimately connected as magistrate with the administration of the affairs of the county of Carmarthen for some years past. Tremble wished to obtain the lease of the Dolan Colby Arms, a tavern near to Mr Johns’ residence, and the refusal of that gentleman to grant it to him supplies some motive, though a very inadequate one, xor the crime, as he took the rejection of his final appeal very much to heart, believing that as an old servant he had a prior claim. He betrayed no revengeful or angry spirit after the first few days subsequent to the refusal, and did his work as usual up to the time of the murder. Mrs Cookman lies in a critical condition, and the news of her father’s death has been as yet kept from her. Mr Johns’ maternal grandfather, Mr Powell, was murdered near the same place about 100 years ago- Bight men with blackened faces entered his residence, and after sacking the house strangled him. One man escaped, and another gave evidence against his six associates, who were convicted and hanged at Hereford. The jury in the inquest on Mr Johns has returned a verdict of wilful murder against Henry Tremble, and the jury in Tremble’s "case a verdict of felo do ee,