PROVED INNOCENT

Opotiki News, Volume I, Issue 18, 1 April 1938, Page 4

PROVED INNOCENT

ALLEGRI) MURDER CHARGE WEAPON FIRED RY SUN After spending 20 a German orisou after being convicted of a murder l’of which scientists have* proved the sun to have been responsible, Wladvslaw Pawlowski, a Pole, has been released. x Pawlowski in 1917 Jived in the village of IVeilierowo, then in German territory, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life for the murder of a farmer, Benedict Schamm.

Accused admitted that he had argued with Schamm on the night he was killed, and threatened him with a gun, and the judge held that Pawlowski went back to the house and shot Schamm as lie slept, with Schamm’s gun. Recently warders found Pawlowski tearing at the bars of his-cell , waving a newspaper and sobbing, “1 have solved it.”

The newspaper contained a. fire protection company’s warning against tile direct action of the sun's rays explosives when intensified by broken glass. / _ , The theory was tested' on.Scliamnps cottage,-which was deserted in 1917 / *' as it was believed toi be haunted. ’A scientist placed Schamm’s gun so that the rays could pour in on to a powder-box through a tiny flaw in the window pane. The police waited and saw the gun go off, the charge perforating a dummy’s head.