RHINE BANK MURDER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 853, 23 December 1929, Page 9

RHINE BANK MURDER

NEW ZEALANDER’S SLAYER RELEASED CRIME OF 1919 RECALLED LONDON, Sunday. The “Daily Mail” says that since the British Army left the Rhineland last week the Germans have released 16 men and women who were sentenced by British military courts, including Franz Swaboda, who murdered the New Zealand soldier, Private Cyril Francis Cromar, at Cologne in February, 1919. Swaboda was leader of a gang that terrorised German women who were accompanying British soldiers. After shooting Cromar he escaped to unoccupied Germany, but returned to Cologne in 1925, and was arrested. His death sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. The majority of those liberated are girls x\ho were sentenced for disobeying deportation orders. Private Cromar, who was a Dunedin man, was shot dead on February 7, 1919. Six years afterwards almost to a day, Swaboda, who had escaped after the crime to the unoccupied territory, was arrested by the German civil police when he returned to Cologne to visit his parents. When Private Cromar, who was only 21 years of age, was killed, he had with liim Private W. O. Clark, also of Dunedin. When the fatal shot was fired, Swaboda and the other German youths fled. In due course Private Clark returned to Dunedin, and he was there when the news of Swaboda’s arrest came from Germany. The War Office paid the cost of Clark’s return to Germany as a witness. Largely on his evidence, Swaboda was convicted, and was sentenced to death. Later the sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life.