AN INTERESTING CASE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 8756, 5 March 1907, Page 4

AN INTERESTING CASE.

A criminal trial which, lias excited - I lonsiderable interest; in? Cape Colony | ■esulted in the hanging of Robert I Vlartin Coupar for the murder of the I ihild of his sweetheart. The latter, f Uico Jane Wilcocks, was also tried ior the murder, but was found not mootings were hold after the verdict, and petitions for Coupar's j reprieve were presented* but the Governor twice refused to exercise the | prerogative of mercy. _ I Two members of the jury, which | had recommended . Coupar to mercy j (« on the ground of the circumstances which led him to commit the crime ”) awakened the Premier at three o’clock on the - morning appoin;ed for the execution, and urged upon him that they thought Coupar should not be hanged in view of that recommendation. The Attorney-General, who was present at this strange interview, which was held at Greet Schuur, the late Mr Cecil Rhodes’ residence, replied that they were unablelto stay execution of the sentence. The executed man tConpar was a j young Welshman, employed as a carpenter by Sir John Jackman’s, Ltd., ‘ upon the construction of new docks at Simon’s Town. The young woman Wilcocks was the daughter n{ a engine-driver on the Cape railways. They were sweethearts, both living at Simon’s Town and well known there. In July Coupar sent her to Johannesburg, where the baby which was to be the victim of the tragedy was born on August 17th. Miss Wilcoks returned from Johannesburg in September, and on the 7th met Coupar in Capetown. In that city Coupar bought a Gladstone bag and a red leather bootlace. The child—desribed as a singularly pretty girl—was strangled with a bootand pressed into the bag. Next day the father and mother and an innocent companion went back to Simon s Town together. Coupar walked to the seashore and threw the bag containing the body iato the sea, where it was found a week later. September 17th, cast upon the beach. Much of the circumstantial evidence by which Coupar was convicted was startling. For instance, four days after tlie c imo. and a week before the arrest of tbe couple, they went together to the house of tho girl’s father a man apparently of the highest rectitude, and this dramatic conversation occurred : “Do you know, father, that they hove the rumor down tho town that it was my baby that was found in tho Gladstone hag F” “ What, Alice!” exclaimed the father, “ have you had a baby ?” “ No, father, I have not.” The puzzled father turned to Coupar and asked him the same question. “Not to my knowledge,” he replied. Then Alice said she could not stand the rumor and must go away from the town. “V\ by fear it ?” the father said. " You have not had a baby.” Coupar then said: “If we can get a baby to take to the Court it will be all right.” The old man answered that that was nonsense, for a doctor would soon settle the matter. Sensational evidence was also given of how Coupar and the girl followed up his idea. They went to two married women in Simon’s Town in the dead of night and tried to purchase a baby. To one woman Coupar offered £2O down and £2O when the case was over. Both women refused.