THE ARRAN MURDER.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 438, 18 January 1890, Page 6

THE ARRAN MURDER.

TRIAL AND CONVICTION of LAURIEHE PROTESTS HIS INNOCENCE. (FROM OUR SPECIAL COKEKSI’ONDENT.) London, November 16. The trial of John Laurie for the brutal j murder of his comrade and travelling com- I panion, Edward Rose, on Goatfell, Arran, in July last, concluded on Saturday night in the conviction of the accused, who was, of course, sentenced to death. He heard j the judge’s dread words with surprising calmness, and then turning to the part of the Court where the public sat said, “ Ladies and gentlemen, I am innocent.” ' Laurie, the “Daily News” reminds us in a summary of the case, was the eccentric criminal who moved about the scene of his crime,, and who amused himself bv writing letters to the papers, in which he defied the police to find the secret of his hiding place. One day last September, however, he was recognised and caught, after an ineffectual and , a not very wellmeant effort, to commit suicide, and on Friday and Saturday lie was on his trial. He committed a very cruel murder, and the excitement it occasioned was heightened by the fear of his escape. It was on July 15 that lie took the lde of his travelling companion, and he was at large for nearly two months. The murder was not immediately suspected. Laurie s victim, Mr Rose, had gone to Scotland for his holiday, and though he tailed to return to his fatiier’s house at Balham by the appointed day, it was some time before the family felt that they were obliged to believe the worst, and instituted a strict search for his remains. Rose was 32 years of age, and clerk to a builder. He enjoyed good health and jjood spirits, and if he had a fault, it was the fault that leans to virtue’s side—of a ready cordiality towards strangers. He knew nothing of Laurie when he started from London on his Northern tour ; but iie picked him up soon after crossing the Border, and by the time he had reached Brodick, in the Isle of Arran, they seemed the fastest friends, and were occupying the same room. He had been warned against Laurie by a fellow traveller, who thought he saw mischief in the man's face, but it was of no avail. Laurie, who was a working engineer employed in Glasgow, passed as a Mr Annandale, and, for aught his companion knew, was another man travelling for his pleasure. On the 15th July the two set out to climb Goatfell, one. of the lofty hills or mountains of the island. They were seen together by many persons, and they did actually reach the summit of the mountain ; but only one of them, Laurie, returned to the cottage from which they set out. He was met afnine at night dragging his limbs towards the cottage, and with every appearance of a man who had undergone great fatigue. Laurie said that his companion had gone on alone, and of course left it to be understood that he would return in the course of the evening. The bedroom was outside the house, and the landlady kept no watch on the goings out or comings in. The next morning Laurie decamped, taking with him most their joint luggage, and without paying his bill. Both beds in the double-bedded room were disarranged, as though they had been slept in, and both washstands had been used. The conclusion at the moment was that Rose had come in later in the evening, and had made off with his companion. As a matter of fact, Rose, or all that was left of him, had passed the night under a heap of stones on the mountain piled above a corpse. “ Annandale” disappeared, and for a moment there was no suspicion that Rose had not sneaked off along with him. The latter, however, was soon missed by his friends in London, and in a few days his agonised brother started for Arran. The brother set off on July 26, he began a strict search of the mountain on July 28—a search in which, at one time, he employed as many as two hundred men. On August 4, exactly a week after, one of the men raised a great shout to let all the searchers know that their task was done. He had peered between a jutting crag and a tufts boulder at its feet, and amid piled stones and turfs of turf which half filled the crevice, he detected a human arm. The place had been passed by the other searchers, but none of them had scrutinised it closely enough for this. The body beneath the stones was that of the missing man. It was perfectly unrecognisable except by the clothes. The head was a mere skull, and it was not intact; it had been beaten in, probably by a large stone. With the exception of a fractured shoulder, this was the only injury. The supposition of death by a fall from the rocks seemed out of the question ; the man had beon murdered, and hidden away. About forty heavy stones, some of them weighing as much as a hundredweight and a half, were piled above the corpse. All the pockets had been emptied-not so much as a scrap of paper was left in them to establish identity. The dead man’s cap was found a little above the boulder, stuffed into a cleft of the rocks. The hue and cry was raised for “ Annandale,” and soon it was found that Annandale and Laurie were one. After his flight from Arran he went back to Glasgow, where, if he could have kept his own counsel, he might have escaped suspicion. But he began telling his mates of his visit to Goatfell, and when they heard of the murder, and read the description of the murdered man’s companion, they began to have faint suspicions, which his behaviour soon converted into certainty. He left Glasgow abruptly, and subsequently wrote a letter to his landlady, in which he observed that there were some people trying to get him into trouble, and that he would thank her to give them no information until he had established his innocence. Laurie had said much the same thing to a young woman with whom he had kept company, and had told her that he would have to leave her soon. The landlady naturally made inquiries of another lodger, and he was able to tell her that Laurie had talked of his having a return ticket to London in his possession, though he had made no journey from London at that time. It was known that just such a return ticket must have been among the articles taken from the body of the murdered man. The police were sent for; they searched Laurie’s room,and found a pair of knickerbockers similar to those worn by Annandale at the time of the murder. Ly

Laurie was now running for his life. From Glasgow he - went to Liverpool, from Liverpool to Manchester. At Liverpool, he left his box behind, and the landlady, struck by its resemblance to one described in the papers in connection with the crime, gave it : up to the police. ' The . publicity 1 given to the. case in the Press was of immense service to the cause of justice all through. Laurie was tracked from place to place by the help of the accurate descriptions of all the known circumstances of the case which -appeared in the papers. The other conspiring cause of his detection was his own loquacity. He chattered all round the crime if not exactly

on the crime from first to last. When he was not chattering with his tongue, he was chattering with his pen. Ha wrote letters to the papers or the police to say that he would never be found—that ho would commit suicide rather than surrender, that he would clear his character in his own good time, and that he would leave the country never to return. These were brave words, but there was not much in them. The half-cazedand pennilessfugitivesoon struck north again into that very neighbourhood of Glasgow where well nigh every man he met was as a detective perfectly familiar with his features, his height, his and every single detail of fiis appearance. The day came when he was recognised, hunted, run down in a wood, and, after a poor make-believe attempt to draw a knife across his throat, safely lodged in gaol. In reply to the charge he said, ‘I robbed him, but did not murder him.’ He ought also to have added, 'I buried him,'for the man certainly did not bury himself. The line taken by the defence was that Mr Rose had fallen from the rocks, and that his companion, seeing him dead at his feet, had yielded to a sudden tempta tion of making off with his belongings, and concealing the body. He had appropriated them so thoroughly, by the way. that he had re marked the shirts in his own name. , There was the usual conflict of professional evidence, borne of the surgical witnesses said that the state of the remains was entirely inconsistent with the supposition of a fall. Two others, however, were of a contrary opinion—although the skull had been beaten in with such persistence that splinters of the bone were lying near the body. A single fail could hardly have fractured it like that, and if it had, it would have fractured well nigh every bone beside, to say nothing of the internal organs, which were all intact. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that Rose was murdered, and that Laurie was his murderer.