MURDERED GIRL’S PYRE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 744, 17 August 1929, Page 30

MURDERED GIRL’S PYRE

BODY BURNED WITH PETROL “THIRD DEGREE” REVELATIONS Extraordinary revelations have followed the discovery of the half-burned body of a pretty young girLwite, said to have been, before her marriage, a Loudon girl, on a lonely road near Greenburg, New Y’ork State. A tin of petrol lay beneath the body and the flames had done their work so well that it was only by traces of clothing that Mrs. Peacox’s identity was established. Her husband, Earl Francis Peacox, a young electrician, was detained, and had a night of the third degree. He was kept without sleep, and the horrors of the girl’s death were painted with skill. Even her remains, including a burnt finger, were held before him. Finally he broke down and confessed, writes a New York correspondent, saying that he had quarrelled with his wife and had killed her on the day of the anniversary of their wedding. First he stunned and then strangled her, afterwards carrying the body to the spot where it was found. He drenched it with petrol and set Are to it. He had imagined that the fire would destroy all possible chances of identification, and he had prepared a statement showing that the girl-wife had returned to her home in London. Now Eugene Bussey, a university student, has been detailed “as a material witness." He has stated that Mrs. Peacox, disappointed with her marriage, “flung herself at his head,” and that he could not resist her advances, which made the husband insanely jealous. “I have committed moral wrong against my boyhood friend,” he is quoted as saying, “and l shall now work to help him in any way possible.”