AN INTERESTING CASE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3759, 9 March 1907, Page 4

AN INTERESTING CASE.

, A criminal trial which has excited considerable interest in Cape Colony resulted in the hanging of Robert Martin Conpar for the murder of the child of his sweetheart. The latter, Alice Jane Wilcocks, was also tried for the murder, but was found not guilty. Numerous meetings were held after the verdict, and petitions for Coupar’s reprieve were presented, but the Governor twice refused to exercise the prerogative of mercy. Two members of the jury, which had recommended Coupar to mercy (“ on the ground of the circumstances which led him to commit the crime ”) awakened the Premier at three o’clock on the morning appointed for the execution, and urged upon him that they thought Coupar should not be hanged in view of that recommendation. The Attorney - General, who was present at this strange interview, which was held at Groot Schuur, the late Mr Cecil Rhodes’ residence, replied that they were unable to stay the execution of the sentence. The executed man Coupar was a young Welshman employed as a carpenter by Sir John Jackman’s, Ltd., upon the construction of new docks at Simon’s Town. The young woman Wilcocks was the daughter of an enginedriver on the Cape railways. They were sweethearts, both living at Simon’s Town and well known there. In July Coupar sent her to Johannesburg, where the baby which was to be the victim of the tragedy was born on August yth. Miss Wilcocks returned from Johannesburg in September, and on the yth met Coupar in Capetown.

In that city Coupar bought a Gladstone bag and a red leather bootlace. The child—described as a singularly pretty girl—was strangled with a bootlace and pressed into the bag. Next day the father and mother and an innocent companion went back to Simon’s Town together. Coupar walked to the seashore and threw the bag containing the body into the sea, where it was found a week later, September 18th, cast upon the beach.

Much of the circumstantial evidence by which Coupar was convicted was somewhat startling. For instance, four days after the crime, and a week before the arrest of the couple, they went together to the house of the girl’s father, a man apparently ot the highest rectitude, and this dramatic conversation occurred — ‘‘ Do you know, father, that they have the rumour down the town that it was my baby that was found in the Gladstone bag ? ” ‘ ‘ What, Alice ! ’ ’ exclaimed the father, “ have you had a baby ?' ’ “No father, I have not. ’’ The puzzled father turned to Coupar and asked him the same question. “ Not to my knowledge,” he replied. Then Alice said she could not stand Hie rumour and must go a wav from the town. Why fear it ? ” the father said “ Vou have not had a baby.”. Coupar then said : “If we can get a baby to take to the Court it will be alright. ’ ’ The old man answered that that was all nonsense, for a doctor would soon settle the matter. Sensational evidence was also given of how Coupar and the girl followed up his idea. They went to two married women in Simon’s Town in the dead of night and tried to purchase a baby. To one woman Coupar offered £2O down and £2O when the case was over. Both women refused.