Tried for Murder.

Manawatu Herald, 11 March 1902, Page 2

Tried for Murder.

A STRANGE CASE; The Johannesburg correspondent of the Natal Witness records the conclusion of a. murder trial which in normal times would have caused a wide sensation. Themistocles George Laminides, a Greek, was charged with the murder of Maritz Meyers, a. wellknown Standerton storekeeper. The crime was said to have been committed at Standerton on the 4th November last. It was a difficult case, resting on circumstantial evidence. The prosecution alleged that the accused, then caterer for an officers’ club at Btanderton, slipped away during a busy quarter of an hour whilst the officers were dining, committed the crime with an officer’s revolver that had been left at the club, and then returned for duty. The defence relied on an alibi, consisting in the plea that the accused did not leave the club at all. The Court, after several days’ trial, convicted the accused and sentenced him to death, but the Greek residents of Johannesburg are petitioning the High Commissioner for a reprieve. “ The chief counsel for the defence in the case,” the Natal Witness’ correspondent says, “ was Mr Hutchison, who has been in the Transvaal about 18 months. He came here from New Zealand. He is an able legal man, and already has a great reputation. In voice and manner he is much like Mr Stanger, K.C., of Nottingham, who as some readers will remember, put up at the last election for Newark.”