THE MELBOURNE MURDER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3768, 22 June 1907, Page 3

THE MELBOURNE MURDER.

A Clue. Additional Particulars. Muphournk, June 20. The police claim to have discovered a strong clue in reference to the murderer of Hauer, the diamond merchant. A jeweller has identified a photograph as that of a man who called upon him to make inquiries regarding Mr Bauer. The Melbourne correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph telegraphs under date Saturday, Bth June, as follows ; A mysterious murderjwas committed in Modern Chambers, Collins-street, this afternoon. Shortly after five o’clock Mr Woolf, a well-known diamond merchant, bad occasion to visit the office of Mr Barnet Bauer, another dealer in precious stones, at a room on the sixth floor. Receiving no response to his knocks at the closed poor of Mr Bauer’s office, Mr Woolf entered the room, and found his friend lying in a pool of blood on the floor, with his brains protruding from his skull. The unfortunate man was not dead. Strychnine was injected, into his body to revive him, after which he was conveyed to the Melbourne Hospital. There it was found that he was in a precarious condition, and more strychnine had to be injected. Mr Bauer died soon after admittance to the hospital, without having regained consciousness. NO SIGN OF A STRUGGEE Four inches above the right ear was a triangular cut. and under it a depressed fracture of the skull, back of the head, and depressed There were other cuts all round the fractures, whibh had evidently been caused by some sharp instrument. The doctors stated that the wounds could not have been selfinflicted. The detectives found that there was no evidence of a struggle in the injured man’s office- An open book was lying on his desk, and he had evidently been silting down reading it, with his back to the door, when he was struck from behind. He had been in the habit of carrying large numbers of precious stones about with him, and it is thought that these may have been the object for the attack. HOW THE MURDERER WORKED. Widespread uneasiness has been caused by the fact that a citizen has been murdered in the principal street of the city at five o’clock in the afternoon, when dozens of people were in the same building. Apparently the murderer crept to his victim’s door, which being open, disclosed Mr Bauer seated at a table reading, with his back to the entrance. He appears to have been struck down with some heavy instrument, and the assailant, with great feronty, appears to have beaten the back of the head to a pulp with successive blows. The examination made in the hospital showed half-a-dozen fractures of the skull, and although Mr Bauer was still alive, but unconscious, when discovered, his recovery was absolutely hopeless from the first. A MYSTERY. Having completed his awful task, the murderer apparently closed the door and disappeared. The occupant of the next office to Mr Bauer was working there all the afternoon, but heard ho cry or sound of the struggle. Twenty- ■ five feet away was the lift-well, in which two cages are constantly running. The liftman heard nothing, saw nothing, other than the ordinary passengers coming and going. The caretaker, who was about all the time, made a similar report. The only known fact was the murder itself. How it was compassed, by whom, when, and where he came from, and went to, are details shrouded in mystery. CARRIED ,£lO, 000 VALUE ABOUT WITH HIM. The murdered man was a member of the firm of Bauer Bros, and Schumer, who carry on business at Thursday Island, Melbourne and London. His firm own a schooner and twelve pearling luggers at Thursday Island. He spent the most of his time travelling round the States and New Zealand, buying and selling precious stones. He was a single man, and fifty-five years of age. It is known to man}' jewellery merchants of Melbourne that he usually carried a larger stock of gems than anyone else in the trade in the Commonwealth. As a rule, he had upon him every day somewhere about ,£IO,OOO worth of jewels and precious stones. This precious freight he carried in a small bag in his breast pocket. He placed it at night at the National Bank. Should the bag not prove to be locked in the iron safe in the office, or have been deposited in the bank, there is no doubt that it and its contents were the objects of the crime. On searching the body, six sovereigns, a penny and a cheque, besides numbers of private papers and a pocket-book, were found. Mr Woolf asserts positively that he saw the deceased and passed him in Little Collins-street at 5 p.m.—ten minutes before he found him dead. If this is a fact, the work of the detectives is narrowed down to a point which should bring them very close to an arrest, for the people who visited the top flat of modern chambers during those fateful ten minutes, must have been comparatively few, and the lift attendant could hardly fail to remember them.