EX-MURDERER WHO MADE GOOD.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2596, 21 June 1923, Page 4

EX-MURDERER WHO MADE GOOD.

SUICIDE ENDS YEARS OF REFORMATION.

Condemned to death for murder, which in Belgium means, penal servitude for life.

Released after serving nearly thirty years in prison.

Ten years of honest toil. Dismissal, disappearance and suicide.

Such is the life story of Leon Peltzer, whose body has just been washed up by the sea at Ostend.

It was in 1884 that Leon Pclt/.er and his brother Armnnd were found giultv of the murder of a lawyer named Bernays. Armand Peltzer was the lover of M. Bernavs’ wife, and there came a time when he decided that the inconvenient husband must be removed. The lawyer and Armand Peltzer were negotiating the purchase of a house, and one Jay when they were visiting the property the two brothers murdered Bernays. Knowing her relations with Armand Peltzer, the police questioned Mme Bernays, but she was able to prove that she had no connection with or knowledge of the crime. Then the print of a boot in blood was found. The boot was identified as being that of the brothers Peltzer. They were arrested, fried, and found guilty. The sentence of death was, as usual, commuted to penal servitude for life. Three years later Armand Peltzer died in prison without confessing his share in the murder. Bui Leon, who had confessed, in hope of receiving better treatment from his gaolers, lived on to complete twenty-eight years. During that time he gained the friendship of the chaplain of the prison, with whom he kept up a correspondence after his release in 1912.

A free man once more, Leon Peltzer went to Ceylon, where he obtained employment with a Belgian firm on a plantation. But after two years his health broke down and he returned to Belgium. He was given employment in Brussels by the same firm for whom he had worked in Ceylon, and for some- years he proved himself an energetic and faithful servant. But at the beginning of 1922, perhaps because of his long years of imprisonment?, "he began to take advantage of his position.

In May, 1922, his employer had had enough and dismissed the exconvict, who then went to Ostend. Hearing, however, that Peltzer was threatening suicide, the employer sought him out, brought him back to Brussels, and on his promising to mend his ways, gave him his old position. But the man could not settle down now, and in a few days he disappeared. Nothing was heard of him until about three weeks later, when he called on his old friend the prison chaplin. He told the chaplin that he was at the end of his tether. He could not obtain employment, and was going to commit suicide. All the persuasion of his friend could not induce Peltzer to change his mind, and, after leaving with the chaplain what money he possessed for distribution to the poor, he took his leave. That was the last tim« he was seen alive. A fortnight later his dead body was found on the beach at Ostend.