Charged With Murder

Hokitika Guardian, 13 June 1921, Page 4

Charged With Murder

PICTURE MAN’S PREDICAMENT.

SYDNEY, June 1

A man named Morton Parker Pimentel, who is the managing director of an Australian concern known as the Federated Feature Films Company, is in gaol charged with murder, as the result of a coroner’s enquiry into the death of Gertrude Riley. The girl .was employed by a tailoring firm in a big building in Swanston street, Melbourne. She was working late, by herself. A fire broke out suddenly in the building, and she was trapped, and perished.

Certain circumstances connected with the fire set the detectives out on an enquiry, and the evidence submitted to the Coroner showed that they had more or less established the following facts: The fire broke out on the third floor—the film company’s floor —and was not a normal fire, insomuch that it spread over the whole flat in an incredibly short space of time. There were 17,(XX) feet of film stored there, and the only way to account for the rapid spread was to suppose that the film had taken fire. Pimentel was seen to leave the place only a few minutes before the fire broke out.

Then the affairs of the film company were examined. It was found to be in Queer street. It had been three months in existence, and Pimentel was managing director at £IOOO a year. There was a secretary at £SOO a year, and various other employees. The company’s income in the brief space was only £3OO, and all that went in wages and salaries. Then Pimentel found a. man named Cox, who put £250 into the concern on condition that he was given a job. He was sent out on various missions, to buy theatres and tramways. The day he was sent out to buy theatres, the company's balance was £157, and it owed three times as much. Then the company’s insurances were increased, bevond the insurable value of the com-

pniiy’B projierty. 'l'lie Coroner, in tlie course of a long, scathing statement, said: The fire occurred almost immediately after Pimentel left the flat,'and I find it as a fact that Pimentel set fire to the building. Then the question of motives arises, ft appears to me that he had chosen the psychological moment for n> fire as regards this company. He was going to Sydney. The studios had been closed. His bank account was at <sero. There was not sufficient money in the safe to pay the wages duo, and the directors

■“— ■ i ,vcre hawking goods about to obtain a' little cash to carry on. The only tiling they could expect to get was a little money from the insurance company. I may be doing him an injustice. Pimentel: You are. The Coroner: His interjection now brings me to consider the man himself. We have rarely had as a witness in the Court a man who has displayed such acuteness, alertness, and assurance as this man His attitude may be that of conscious innocence, but 1 do not put that construction upon it. I think it the most plausible imitation of it I have ever met. A verdict of murder against Pimentel was then returned.