REMARKABLE CASES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 298, 11 August 1932, Page 7

REMARKABLE CASES

canadian crimes STORIES OF UNSOLVED MURDER MY STERIES REVIVED. POLICE NONPLUSSED. A bet on the Derby has an irrestible attraction for most English men and women. Forty years ago, however, a man's desire to back the Derby winner brought him to the scaffold after one of the most sensatiohal mtirder trials of modern times* Reginald Birehall carne of good clerical stoek, and, though disgracing himself at schpol, went up to Lincoln College,. Oxford, w'ith every prospect of a creditable career. On leaving Oxford without obtaining his degree he bocame a touring theatrieal manager, then tried his hand at horse-racing and hookmaking and fipally eloped with the beautiful daugh,ter of a railway official. His finances, however, were so shaky, and his methods^of ohtaining further funds so questionsahle, that the riew-ly-married pair de'emed it prudent to escape t'o Canada, where, in Ontarip, they imposed upon local tradesmeii under the assumed names, Lord and Lady Somerset. , It was during a visit to England in 1889 that Birehall received a tip for the Derby, to he run the folloyvdn0 spring. Having no money tp enable him to turn this information to advantage, he conceived the idea of drawing one or two youhg men into a parthership scheme for farming in Canada, whereby they would unwittingly supply the necessary capital for his Derby gamble. Birehall came to an agreement with two young men. of good family, named Benwell and Pelly, who had answered his advertis;ement. Pelly actually advanced £170 as a first instalment of £.500, but the more cautious Benwell ■ refused to pay more than his own passage money to Canada until he should have seen Birchall's "farm." The three men and Mrs. Birehall broke the journey at Buffalo, whence Birehall proceeded to . take his two dupes out separately on sight-seeing excursions. Two days later, Benwell's body was discovered in a swamp, and suspicion developed into almost certainty when Pelly related to the poliee how on two oecasions Birehall had endeavoured to lure him to the ' edge of Niagara Falls. The trial was sensational, but short; the result was never in doubt. On the/ scaffold Birehall gave a remarkable exhibition of nerve. As. he neared the spot, he asked the hangman to- shake hands with him, and smiled when £h'e rope was plaieed around his neck. There is grim irony in this story, for the horse upon which Birehall had plapned to pdace the money to he qbtained by defrauding and murdering his dupes actually won the Derby in 1890. This is one of the series of Canadian crimes related by Mr. W. Stewart Wallace in "Murders and Mysteries." Canada certainly provides her quota to the annals of crime. There is, fqr instance, the remarkable ease of Clara Ford, the mulatto woman who habitually carried a revolver and soma- j times masqueraded in male attire. This | woman confessed to the murder of a youth named Westwood and actually P'leaded guilty in eourt yet, being allowed to withdraw her plea, was triumphantly acquitted — a result that was due as much to the prejudice against the police created by her own evidence as to the eloquence of h'er counsel. Baffling Case. Even more amazing was the disappearance of Amhrose Small, a Toronto theatrieal manager, who was never heard of again after depositing a cheque for a million dollars in the

bank in 1919. There can be little doubt that he was murdered, but sinee his body was never found and the man eharged with kidnapping him was acquitted, it is to be presumed that , the mystery will remain unsolved. Of all the unsolved mysteries in this volume, however, the most baffling is that surrounding the murder of Ethel Kinrade, one of the three beautiful daughters of a schoolmaster in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1909. One afternoon, after the midday meal, the two elder daughters were left alone in the house while their mother sought police protection against tramps. Some time later, a neighbour was startled by the sudden appearance of Florence Kinrade, who rushed in screaming that her sister had been shot. Examination of the body revealed that the girl had been hit in the head and no fewer°than seven times in the body. Florence told a rambling, incoherent story of a man who had demanded money from her and had presumably shot her sister while she was upstaii's fetching it. The autopsy, however, . . . convinced the doctors that at least fffteen minutes had elapsed between the time when the shots were fired into the head, and the time when the remaining shots were fired into the body. The wounds in the head had bled profusely, and since none of them had been in a vital spot, it wa's estimated that the flow of blood must have continued for at least a quarter of an hour; but the body wounds had caused the heart to stop beating, and then, of course, bleeding had virtually ceased. These conclusions cast grave doubt on the story told by Florence, upon whom the attention of the police not unnaturally became focussed. Inquiries reveailng that when an actress in Virginia she had habitually carried a revolver as a protection against negroes at night, she was subjected to searching cross-examination at the inquest. It was prop'osed to arrest her, but the Attorney-General refused his eonsent ra the ground that the evidence was insuffi'cient to warrant a prosecution. So the mystery remains unsolved. Florence, in whose innocence Mr. Wallace firmly believes, married a clergyman, hut was widowed early, and retumed to the stage in order to support her two young children.