BLACKMAILER SENTENCED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 378, 15 February 1908, Page 3

BLACKMAILER SENTENCED.

London, February 13,

The trial of Frank von Veldtheim on a charge 6f attempting to blackmail Mr Solly Joel has concluded. '

The prisoner was found guilty, and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. The jury was absent twenty minutes considering the verdict, and after it had been announced, Inspector Pentin gave von Veldtheim’s history, according to the police accounts, in various countries.

The' real name of the accused was, it appeared, Kurlz, and his father was a forester. The prisoner had been a bad character from childhood. He was a sailor in the German Navy in 1880; but deserted in the same year, having been suspected of stealing his captain’s gold watch and a seal bearing the family crest and the captain’s-}; name, "Von Veldtheim.” j Later on the prisoner served on board, a British merchantman. In i;886 he went to Fremantle, Wjes i Australia, where, in 1887, he marrried a Miss Maria Yearsley.

The prisoner’s next move was to Capetown, and meantime his wife went to England and became acquainted with a gentleman whom the prisoner, wheni he rejoined his wife, tried to blackmail. He was told the matter would be placed in the hands of the police, but continued to write threatening letters. Von Veltheim’s next exploit was a matrimonial one. He bigamously married and deserted several women, from one of whom he obtained ,£ISOO. In one case he went through what was supposed to be a secret marriage with a ’young American lady at St. Cloud, near Paris, one of his friends on that occasion personating a priest.

Later the prisoner obtained from a Germaii widow, whom he had previously known and then promised to marry, to invest in her behalf. The lady, finding that .the money had beeu squandered, committed suicide. Von Veldtheim served in the Cape Mounted Police until he was requested to resign. Then he commenced to blackmail the Joels, Wolf and Solly, for the murder of the former of whom he was acquitted, but was expelled from the Transvaal for his blackmailing tactics. Von Veldtheim raised half a million kroner under a pretence that he was able to unearth the late President Kruger’s buried treasure, which, he alleged, amounted to five millions in value.

The prisoner frequently interrupted the narrative, shouting out that it was “all lies”; and he told Mr Justice Phillimbre, in a final speech from the dock, that his story of the plot to murder the late Mr Kruger was true. He, however, felt that he must cover certain people, and he did so now, although he,had been found guilty.