A RAMSGATE MYSTERY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1014, 7 October 1882, Page 3

A RAMSGATE MYSTERY.

The trial at Ramsgate of James "Walter for murder resulted in a verdict of Not Guilty, but in reognition of the circumstantial nature of the evidence, the jury added, " We give the prisoner tlie benefit ©f the doubt." The case was essentially this :—On Ist April Charles Wagner, aged seventeen, possibly fresh from some Newgate romance stole £l5O given him by his father, a butcher, to bank. The money was not banked, but Wagner and Walter—a man of twenty-six, in butcher's employment, though under notice to quit —went off to Ramsgate for a day's outing, and with the'£lso in their pockets. Both were seen together in Ramsgate together on Saturday afternoon, but after thac the lad Wagner was never seen alive. His dead body, his hand grasping a tobacco pipe, was found at the foot of St. Lawrence's Cliffs at six o'clock on Sunday morning. The discoverer of the body met the accused on the sands shortly after, and tola him of the finding. Walter did nothing except tell his informant that he had lost a friend in the night, and he did not even go to the mortuary to see if the body was that of his quondam companion. No money was found on cither Wagnei's body or on Walter when apprehended. Pending a search and further investigation, Walter is again in custody on the charge of larceny.