“We Sinned Once.”

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 75, 20 July 1914, Page 5

“We Sinned Once.”

McBEAN-McALSSTER CRIME

HOW THEY PAID THE PENALTY.

[By Electric Telegraph—Copyright] [United Press Association.] Sydney, July 18.

Norman Mcßean’s letter, confessing to the murder of the girl Gertie MeAlister, stated: “The girl paid a terrible price. I will pay mine. I do not want an innocent person blamed. 1 offered McAlister a private marriage, but she desired open reparation. The first shot killed her.” CORONER’S VERDICT AND RIDER. A PAINFUL CONFESSION. (Received 8.00 a.ni.) Sydney, July 20. The Coroner found that Mcßean murdered Gertie McAlister, and added a rider stating that there was ample evidence to show he was not in his normal mental condition at the time the deed was committed. The confession added that he and the girl had sinned once. He brooded over it and everything seemed black. He was mad, as he had always led a clean life before. He considered his father from the start or he should have gone into the open and married her. “I knew it would nearly kill my father,” he wrote. “I sinned j then brooded j then this. We have both paid for our sin, causing misery and suffering to others.”

Both families are of the highest respectability.