MURDER CHARGE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 292, 4 August 1932, Page 5

MURDER CHARGE

(Press Assn.-

CASE AGAINST WELL KNOWN AIRMAN OPENS

-By Telegraph — Copyright)

MIAMI, Wednesday. The trial of Captain W. Lancaster, th'e well-known. British airman and companion of Mrs Keith Miller in many of her flying ventures, started to-day. Captain Lancaster is charged with the murder of Haydn Clarke, an American airman whom Mrs Miller had promised to marry. The case is being heard in the Dade County Circuit Court before Judge II. F. Atkinson. A motion declared that Dr. Dodge : was hcad of the commission that conducted the autopsy over Clarke's exhumed body several weeks after death and was convinced that the youth was a narcotic addict and that he had committed suicide. A crowd of curious j spectators, including many women, jammed the corridors before the Court opened. Threats agam-- jdaydn Clarke made by Captain Lancaster when the latter heard of the growing attachment betwe 3n Clarke and Mrs Keith Miller, were mentioned in the prosecutor's opening statement. Captain Lancaster, the State Attorney, Mr. M. Vernon Hamilton, said, upon hearing of the attachment between Clarke and Mrs Miller, threatened to get rid of him. The Attorney said he would show that Lancaster made threats on other occasions as information of the relations between them reached him, while in the West on a business trip. On the day that he returned, Clarke was shot dead by a gun which Lancaster had bought. Mrs Miller accompanisd Lancaster to the court and reiterated her conviction that he was innocent. She is appearing as the principal witness for the defence.