HOPELESS INFATUATION LEADS TO MURDER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 654, 4 May 1929, Page 18

HOPELESS INFATUATION LEADS TO MURDER

Sensational Trial m Edinburgh .. . Elderly Builder Sentenced to 12 Years'' Imprisonment . . . Fond of Quoting Burns’s Verses

Mar> A.- as *s&.-2 gw Jty erf *c- pss e -r —r-e ** ~*e story a* me- as&sc arr o«* -'evea.ied 5 Hojpeiess a- <*— ."-ta s'ce- * r ejcc^ac e rra - a--- ed is t“e c- a—s r* a 'es sera- eg " The -an was se-n *.o Peter*ie»d G«c f o>r yean. e.* ast cnce De pet ---fler t-e estervat s- 1 -*".5 spec s si*. T n.cre *r: »or»e« c-*-e j»ry. At t*e c cse z 4 t-e tr a ! there was a good dead erf poo '5.

a fere man builder named Campbell walked into ills workshop in Rdinbcirgfc on the morning of November 9 he saw one of the employee*—a man called James Brown Marr —itajoding near one of the beiacJxe* swabbing his throat. There was a knife in his right hand. The -tarried foreman exclaimed. “My God, Jamie, what are you doing?” In stiaafM tones the wounded, man replied. -It is all over now'." The foreman glanced rossd and saw a short distance away the form of a girL He bent over her and noticed that h«*r throat was cut and a brief examination revealed the fact that she was dead. He recognised her. She was Mary Ann Mills, a girl worker. Campbell ran out for help. When fie returned it was to see that the man was lying at the girl s feet and that he had tried to clasp her as he fell. Marr recovered. Recently he was charged with murder, and Edinburgh was stirred out of its accustomed sleepiness to the realisation that one of the mas. sensational crimes of pass ion ot modem times had happened in one of its humble workshops. Close on years of age, the man Marr had felt irresistible attraction for a woman some years his Junior, a woman who had long been regarded as of exceptional loveliness and personal charm. The story of his pursuit of this woman was slowly but tmfail:ngly disclosed to the police, and some of it was told when the mao. having *0 far recovered as to take hia trial, stood with warders cm either side of him in the dock. Touch on the Shoulder

Marr had been acquainted with the girl for some years. He followed her everywhere. He made passionate love to her. He said over and over again. “If I do not have you, none else shall." And all the time he had a wife whose loyalty to him is unchallenged, and children who were such as any father could be proud of.

- pared to leave them and to migrate from the ciiy of hie birth if the girl would consent. The girl refused. Straight, moral, gaflinrhirig in her sense of duty, Miss Mills told him that hie pretences of affection were a pose, and that Ehe would have “nothing to do with him.” He grew' angry, refused to accept repeated rebuffs, and again declared that none but he should ever have her. .And all the while he was dreaming strange dreams that mzde Lis sisters and brothers think he was "'queer'’— a person demented probably by the unrequited passion. Often he would, in a spasm of agony, scream out. “Molly! Molly* Where are you?” Then he would awake and seem nor max. Sometimes be would wander abroad during the night and leave all thought of home behind . . . The girl complained of his constant attentions* She told her sister and . her brothers about it. She said that , he was always pestering her. “I have j got the life of a dog with him,” Ehe insisted several times. “He pesters ! me in the workshop; he follows me in the street: he always insists that ■ he will have me someday." Once he showed her a knife—the very knife which was the means of ending her life—and in low, penetrating tones exclaimed, “O grave, where is thy | victory? O death, where is thy sting?” Two of the girl’s brothers interfered. He struck one of them in the face and then ran away. His continued cry was “I will hold her in my arms—or she siLall be held in the cold embrace of death.” Then again and again the words, “O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" were on his lips. There is little doubt but that he intended either her acceptance of his suit —or death. All the evidence showed that the girl was good. Her character was above suspicion. She resented the attentions of this married man. She

Lurk r-g ~ tree -Sftadowr When she was going home he would fc-Bcw her at a distance for a while, end then would run ahead and creep pursued her with pitiless eag ernes?: as he had, long letters, in which he he ever laved.“ And he was fond of quoting Bobbie Burns's pathetic poem :c Mary especially the laces : vr. Marr. i~ar departed febade. Miss Mills grew more and more alarmed. She oomplai ned to her relatives and to her fellow employees. She said that she must leave the workshop—sne spoke of going to London where she would be free from the “persecutioii" of the man who was "*mad for love cf her." But she remained on and treated him with gentle aloofness, hoping against hope that he would relieve her of Ms passionate declarations. Had she only gone her life might have been snared. H s Wife's St cry Marr, this desperate, passionate pilgrim presented a me^anchoxy spectacle as he stood In the dock and listened to the details of the tragedy. The defence was that he was insane and that there were traces of insanity in his family. His wife bravely gave evidence. She paid that lately he had been strange in his manner. He was changeable and passionate. He had the obsession that “something was going to happen." There were times when he would wander around exclaiming. “I have the power,” and then he would make Etrange, frightening faces. But, she added, that throughout the watches of the night he would repeat the name “Molly” like one obsessed. "“I tried hrm every way/’ said the broken-hearted woman, “and that caused terrible rows.”’ There were occasions when he would weep like a child and as though his heart was breaking.

Medical men gave evidence. One of them, a brain specialist, stated that “this is a ease of a perfectly healthy young woman being molested by a lunatic.” But the opinion of others was that he had been driven mad by a hopeless love. The hearing of the case drifted over three days. Counsel for the defence, in a clever and convincing speech, told the jury -it would be wrong under the circumstances to send the accused

to a dreadful doom on the gallows." For three-quarters of an hour the Jury sat in private considering their verdict. The lights had been turned up when they returned. The prisoner appeared unconcerned. He was a man in a dream. One of those in court who watched him closely declared that he muttered the first name of the woman he had stabbed to death—“Mary/’ There were two possible verdicts. One meant—unless the Home Office intervened —death. The ether was a verdict of “culpable homicide/' which involved the possibility of penal servitude in Peterhead, once the most dreaded gaol in the British Empire.

They accept majority verdicts in Scotland; and it was by a majority that this slave of mad passion was found guilty of “culpable homicide/' The judge, in sending him into penal servitude for 12 years, alluded to “the heinous character of the crime." Marr received his sentence with a vacuous smile; but behind those pale blue eyes there was a surging passion which only death can destroy. There was a great deal of boohing as Marr was taken away. Scotland can not condone crimes of passion.