WRONGLY CHARGED WITH MURDER.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 September 1920, Page 6

WRONGLY CHARGED WITH MURDER.

An eleventh-hour confession by a bov resulted m the dramatic collapse of a murder trial at the Hants Assizes yes. terday (reports the London Daily Chronicle of July 8). 7 On Saturday afternoon, May 8, in a farmhouse m the remote village of Wield, between Winchester and Alton a boy named Frederick Mesenger, aged /' *' as . fo " nd «'iot dead. Th tt lad was a cripple f rom birt)l; and had'also the use of one of his arms. The lad had been shot through the head at short Ihafa ( POhCe ' nvest 'S a tions showed xv B P Mt| ng gun, belonging to Philip U-stbrook (or Messenger), an elder brother, had been used and placed back °" ,'*? ( !' ai -; k the kitchen. It was the tL a l v 1<! faniil - v were awav at the time, and his mother declared that waf\h ? f V. lle fann llCl ' crippled son was then in his grandmother's garden 30 yards distant. Her other two were playing cricket on the village green. ihi mn» taW ' h y s the Police arrested the mother, Fanny Edith Messenger W W 'n ''f eldCSt 80n ' I>hiU P "er' q- . (or Messenger) aged wiirde" ' arged t! ' em With wilfnl ,J'' cy w « re I'laced on trial at the assizes, . but on their entering i lie dock Mr Charles, for the nrosecudrali h ? a few dftys bef ° re the dead boy s youngest brother, Reginald, l?r!l i conf(,ssed that he Shot lred by accident when cleaning the gun The prosecution, therefore, offered no wVifcsj, 5*