“CONFESSED TO EVERYTHING.”

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 912, 1 November 1910, Page 4

“CONFESSED TO EVERYTHING.”

DUNGOG MURDER REVIVED

A crime which stirred Australia about twelve months ago, and which is known as the Duntrog murder, has practically faded out of the public mind. The return to Sydney of the German-Austra-lian steamer Apolda, however, brings the affair back into publicity- It will be remembered that on November 19th last, Constable Webster, a Dungog policeman, discovered the body of a man named Frank Coleman, known as John Foreman, floating in a waterhole in a lonely part of the township. The corpse had no clothes on it, excepting a blue shirt, but was wrapped round in a rug, a quilt, and a tent-fly of bags, the whole being bound round with saddle straps. After the body was recovered, the waterhole was dragged, and two pieces of heavy iroubark timber were brought up. Coleman’s body had evidently been strapped to these, but had worked loose and come to the surface. The unfortunate man’s head was literally a mass of fractures, cuts, and bruises, and the medical testimony was that the body was that of a man about 55 years of age, and had been in the water about four or five weeks.

A man named Wilhelm Gerlach, who also known as “German Bill,” “Napoleon,” and “Max,” was suspected of the crime, and on November i a man answering to his description called at the Government Savings Bank in Moore Street, Sydney, and by forging the dead man’s signature collected the money that was lying there to Coleman’s credit. That day he shipped as a fireman aboard the Apolda, which sailed out of Sydney that night bound for Suez, Port Said, Antwerp, and Hamburg. The captain of the Apolda, which arrived back in Sydney recently, said that Gerlach shipped as a stoker, and stayed on the ship as far as Suez. There he was arrested.

“He was a good stoker,” remarked the skipper, “and did his work splendidly all the time he was in the ship. When we anchored off Suez the German Consul there came off, and said that Gerlach was wanted for a crime in Australia. He was taken ashore by a guard of Egyptian police, sent by train to Alexandria, and thence by one of the passenger boats to Germany. “When they came to arrest him he said to me, ‘What is the matter? What are they taking me away for? Where am I going ?’ “I replied that I did not know, and that it was no fault of mine. I also told him that the police in Australia had been the means that had led up to his arrest. He went quietly, making no fuss at all, and I heard nothing more of him until I returned to Sydney. “Now I hear that he has confessed to everything. They told me that at the German Consulate this morning.”

GEREACH’S CONFESSION IN GERMANY.

The taking of evidence on commission by Herr Wilhelm Munzenthaler, the Acting German Consul-General in Sydney, in connection with the Dungog murder, was commenced yesterday, and continued to-day (says the Sydney Sun, of the 21st insr). The evidence is being taken in conformity with German law, and when it is completed it will be forwarded to Germany, there to be placed before a jury at Hamburg. It is at Hamburg that Gerlach, who is accused of the murder is imprisoned.

Herr Munzenthaler stated this afternoon that the evidence he had taken was exactly similar to that given to Mr Pagten, S.M., at the Central Police Court some months ago. “ I have heard four witnesses so far,” he said, “ Dr. Bowker (who examined the remains), Constable Webster, Devvis Daniels, and Joseph Jupp (who found the body). This afternoon I will examine two more witnesses, and to-morrow the last.” He added that the accused man, whose real name had been found to be Franz Wilhelm Reiuholz, had confessed that he killed Coleman (or Foreman), but he said that he acted in self-delence, “ Nobody was present,” Herr Munzenthaler concluded, “and it will be for the jury to determine whether they believe or disbelieve his story—in other words, whether their verdict will be murder or manslaughter.” The murdered man, Frank Coleman, says the Wanganui Herald, was formerly a resident of Wanganui.