NOTORIOUS BIGAMIST SENTENCED TO DEATH

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5281, 18 December 1946, Page 2

NOTORIOUS BIGAMIST SENTENCED TO DEATH

HOUSEKEEPER TO KlNlG OF GREECE FOUNiD SHOT. t ■ 1 A man who posed as a friend of the 'King of Greece, and ordered West End stores to send his woman friend a £350 fur coat and a ring worth £175, has been found guilty of slaying her in the former house of the King in Ghester Square, Westminster. Small, hespectacled, and insignificant, Arthur Robert Boyce, .at 45 a £6-a-week painter, shot his rnistress, Miss Elizabeth McLindon, 41-year-old* housekeeper to the Greek King. At the Old Bailey, when he was sentenced to death, Boyce smiled and said, "Thank you." The weelc hefore Miss McLindon's death on June 8, Boyce was living in Chester Squart, and, although a married man, was proposing marriage to her. She had purchased her trousseau for £80 on a "cheque" given hy Boyce. Then a ring, valued at £ 175 , was brought to the house hy a firm of ! jewellers. They did not part with the ring, as the first cheque Boyce gave them was returned by the* bank with the wording "Figufes illegible." The second was marked ^'R.D." Notorious Career. Boyce's extraordinary career has often come under the notice of the j police. He was sentenced at Winchester i Assizes to 18 months for ibigamy, I was courting Miss , McLjndon, and was j known to he earrying on another, affair j with a young woman in South-West j London. ^ j Miss McLindon was last seen alive on .Victory Day, June 8. On Jiune 14 Seotland Yard officers brolce into her rooms in the Greek King's house and found her dead in a chair before a table and a telephone. From this moment Boyce, with his incomparable cairn, began to match j his cunning against Det.-Inspector | Ball, of Seotland Yard. j The polic.e found a spent cartridge j iase by the body — the only elue. The , .32 Browning pistol was never found, j mt a similar pistol had ibeen reported j stolen hy one of Boyce's former i "roomers," Sigpalman John 0. RowS !ands, of 'Carnarvon, N. Wales. ! The cartridge case bore marks of I i faulty firing pin. Signalman Rowlands tinkered with firerarms, and the 32 Browning he once possessed had i similar fault. One of his old cartridge cases was bund, and the two cases were sub,'ected to a gun test. Under microscopic examination hey were found to have heen fired rom the identical weapon. j Boyce had covered his tracks by j vriting a registered letter to Miss j dcLindon, 'phoning to Chester Square i md to her sister in Liverpool. But all the time he lcnew she was iead,