MURDER OF CONSTABLE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3787, 3 May 1928, Page 1

MURDER OF CONSTABLE.

BOTH ACCUSED GUILTY. DEATH SENTENCE PASSED. London, April 28. The jury in the trial at the Old Bailey of William Kennedy and Frederick George Browne on the charge of murdering Police Constable Gutteridge, returned a verdict of guilty, and both men were sentenced to death.

The jury was absent for three hours. Both men received the sentence unmoved. Browne, in a long statement made after the verdict was given, said his conscience was quite clear. If he had got off he would have been sentenced to penal servitude or something else, which would have been worse than death. Kennedy said lie' was not afraid of death, because he knew that in the hereafter he would be united with his wife, who had experienced a terrible ordeal. Mrs. Kennedy, sobbing loudly, hurried from the Court.

TRIUMPH FOR SCOTLAND YARD. The results of the trial will probably be regarded in the future as one of the best achievements of Scotland Yard. It certainly represents the most complete piedfc of work ever undertaken. Downright orders that the murderers must be found led to an unremitting search, which did not slacken a single day. While the public imagined that the affair was being forgotten detectives combed out car-stealing gangs, and took over 2000 statements from persons whom they required to account for their whereabouts on the night of the murder. At last a man was arrested in a drunken brawl in Brixton, asd gave indirectly the first clue.' He was employed in Browne’s garage. Discoveries there proved that Browne was probably concerned. The man was released on the charge of brawling, and was charged with stealing a car not connected with the murder, in order to have him released while the inquiries into the murder were being completed. The Old Bailey has seldom staged a more dramatic scene than the closing stages of the trial, such as have never been seen in a British Criminal Court. The public followed with eager- interest the long chapter of slow-moving events which proved a triumph for Scot-, land Yard.

The dead body of Constable feutteridge was found on a lonely road'in Essex on September 27. A pencil was clutched in one of the murdered man’s hands and . his note-book was near the body. There were four bullet wounds in the head and neck. Two of these had been fired from a distance and the other two with the muzzle of the weapon pressed close against each eye.

A mail-van driver proceeding along the lonely Essex road at dawn discovered the body lying beside a hedge. He knew Gutteridge well, and as they generally met thereabouts he shouted: “Is that you Bill?” When he received no. reply he alighted and found that Gutteridge was dead. His uniform was covered with frost. The fact that two bullet marks were found on a tree trunk, qnd two bullets beneath the dead man’s head, suggested that the murderers first fired at the constable as he was-standing up in the road, then dragged his body to the roadside and again fired into it. The Scotland Yard authorities expressed the belief that Gutteridge was the victim of motor raiders. Local residents, including Lady Deeies and the proprietor of a neighboring tea gardens, related ' that they heard a motor pass at 4 p.m. Gutteridge was found 330 yards from his home. When his wife was informed of the murder she was just preparing his breakfast.

’ Later on the day of the discovery a car was found abandoned in a Brixton lane. It seemed to contain a clue to the murder of Gutteridge in the form of bullets similar to those which killed the victim. It was ascertained that the icar was stolen at 3 a.m. from the garage of Dr. Lovell, at Billeriiay 15 miles from the scene of the mur. der. William Kennedy, aged 40, was arrested in Liverpool on January 27th. A man and a woman left a house at midnight and walked a few yards. They were then spoken to by Detective Mathieson, who immediately took hold of the man. A struggle ensued. The man pointed a revolver at the detective. After the struggle the revolver was wrenched from his grasp. Twenty armed policemen, in motor-cars, surrounded the house. The man was taken to London- and the wo-

man was released. A few days before the police intercepted a telephone message, and as a reresult Browne was arrested at a garage in Clapham.