EXTRAORDINARY MURDER CASE. Convicted upon Circumstantial Evidence Alone.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 224, 15 October 1887, Page 7

EXTR AORDINARY MURDER CASE.

Convicted upon Circumstantial Evidence Alone.

In his lucid and temperate summing-up oi the, case against Israel Lipski, who on Julj 30th was found guilty of the murder ol Miriam Angel, a young married woman residing with her husband in Whitechapel, Mr Justice Stephens remarked that the case before the jury was most extraordinary, and that he had never in his own long experience known of one which presented so many remarkable features. The Whitechapel murder is indeed almost unprecedented in the peculiar nature of its barbarity and of the directness with which circumstantial evidence, and circumstantial evidence alone, has brought the crime home to the accused man. Lipski, who has been sentenced to death is described as a mild-looking, open-faced young fellow of twenty-two. The prisoner and his victim lived in the same house, Lipski occupying a top back room, where he carried on the trade of a manufacturer of walking-sticks, having a man and a boy as his assistants. On the morning of June 28th the husband of Miriam Angel rose at six, and went to work, leaving his wife in bed. At seven o'clock Lipski let into tho house the boy who worked for him, and then went out himself to make some purchases. Among these was an ounce of nitric acid or aquafortis, which he procured fiom an oilman in the neighbourhood. About nine o'clock Lipski asked his landlady to fetch him. some coffee : it was duly brought, but Lipski was not in his room, and on the landlady calling upstairs to him the boy replied that his master was not there. The theory of the prosecution was that just about this time Lipski had entered the room where Miriam Angel was in bed. About eleven in the forenoon the people of the house began to be uneasy about Mid Angel, who usually came down between eight and nine. Soon aftenvards the handle of her door was tried, and it was found to be locked on the inside. The door was burst open, and the unfortunate woman was found lying dead on the bed. A medical man, who was at once sent for, deposed that, when he was called, Miriam Angel had been dead about three hours. There was no "rigor mortis.*' She was without clothes, and her hair was dishevelled ; there were stains of nitric acid on her mouth, her face, her breasts, and her hands, which were covered by the burning fluid. The right eye was discoloured, and over the right temple was a patch of extravasated blood, where the muscle had been reduced to pulp by the infliction of — the doctor held — at fewest four violent blows. Stepping over the corpse md looking down between the bed and the wall in search of the bottle of poison, which he naturally thought must bo somewhere about, the medical gentleman espied Israel Lipski lying in his shirtsleeves on his back partially under the bed. He was unconscious, but on the doctor hitting him a smart slap on the face he opened his eyes wide. The police took him towards a window, and it was then seen that his lips were stained with nitiicaeid. He was asked in English and German what he had taken, but he made no reply. He was removed to the hospital but as from the first he had been an object of suspicion the police never left him until he was formally charged with the murder, and a constable in plain clothes sat by his bedside day and night until he was convalescent. Meanwhile a -port-mortem examination of the remains of Miriam Angel had been made. It was found that the back of the throat was charred, and that a considerable quantity of the nitric acid had gone down through the larnyx and the trachea into the stomach, indicating that it had been poured down the. throat while the victim was in a state of insensibility. As regards Lipski the medical evidence was to the effect that he had taken scarcely enough aquafortis to produce unconsciousness, but that the state of syncope was the result of mental perturbation. In fine, the hypothesis of the prosecution amounted to this — that there was a small window commanding a view of Mrs Angel's room ; that the murderer, whoever he was, had seen Mrs Angel in bed from that window ; that he came downstairs and entered her room for an immoral purpose ; that, foiled in his design, he dealt his victim the blows which had produced insensibility ; and that he then poisoned her, and ultimately, frenzied by horror, remorse, and shame, endeavoured to commit suicide himself. The assistant to the oilman swore that, to the best of his belief, the man who purchased from him the aquafortis was Israel Lipski, who explained that he wauted the stuff for the purpose of staining canes, and that tho oilman's assistant warned him that the acid was poisonous. One of the most damaging features of the evidence against Lipski was the falsehood he told about having had a sovereign in his pocket on the morning of the murder, when it was conclusively proved that when arrested he only had a few shillings in his pocket, and that he had that very morning tried to borrow five shillings from his landlady. The prisoner's statement, made through an interpreter, was to the effect that at seven in the morning of the 28th, a man, who had worked for him, came to him and asked for employment, and that he told this person to wait until he had bought a vice for use at his labour. He added that the tool shop where he meant to buy the vice was etill closed ; that as he was going along he met another German workman whom he knew at the corner of Blackchureh Lane ; he then returned to the tool shop, which by this time was open, but he could not agree with the shopkeeper as to the price of the vice, and came away without it. On his way home he again met the man whom he had seen at the top of Blackchureh lane, and who alsoasked himf or work. Lipski told this man that he was going to havehis breakfast, but bade him come a little later on to the workshop, when he promised to engage him. He returned to Batty-street and asked the landlady to make him some coffee, and while it was being made he despatched the first man who had called on him at seven for some brandy. Down to this point Lipski's statement is plain sailing enough ; but now comes the extraordinary and incredible portion^ of the narrative. He stated that, coming upstairs to the first floor, the man who had been sent for the brandy, and the man from Blackchuich Lane, were opening a box in Mrs Angel's bedroom ; that they seized him by the neck, threw him to the ground, forced open his mouth, poured poison down his throat, saying mockingly, "There is your brandy. " Then they asked him whether he had any money, and he replied that he had nothing but the sovereign which he had given the first man to buy brandy with. "Where," they proceeded to ask him,, "was his gold watch ?" He replied that it was in pawn, and, Jndeed, a pawn-ticket for a watch was found in his coat pocket. They threatened him that if he did not give them the wajbch.,l he /would soon /be as dead as the' woman' on the bed (meaning' Miriam Angel), and according to his showing they crammed a piece of wood between his teeth

tose,rve as agag, knelt on fyis chest, and at, last (threw ( threw Him under the bed, wbore.lie lay imqonscious. . -It is but fair to $ie wretched; man now in the condemned cell atl^ew-f fate to mention that 3\ir Calvert, the; onorary physician at the London Hospital, found on , examining Lipski that j there was an abrasion in the inside j of the mouth, indicating that some foreign substance had been thrust in ; but , Dr. Redmayne, who used the ] stomachpump on Lipski, said that the abrasion might have been caused by the instrument in question. All that Che defence could urge wat that, although Miriam Angel had undeniably been killed by nitric acid, there was not sufficient evidence to show that Lipski was the man who bought the pennyworth of corrosive fluid on the morning of the murder, and there was an entire absence of motive so far as Lipski v> as concerned for the commission of so horrible a crime. The jury, however, took the view shadowod forth in the summing-up by Mr Justice Stephen — that the murderer of Miriam Angel entered her room under the influence of unlawful passion ; that, baulked in his design, his passion turned to homicidal fury ; and that in a reaction of shame and terror he had taken a dose of the same poison that he had given to his victim. If this theory was probable, continued the judge, the murder was much more likely to have been the work of one man than of two. So the jury thought ; and they found that the one man was Israel Lipski, and that he was guilty of the cruel murder of Miriam Angel.