MURDER OF FIVE PERSONS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1044, 16 December 1882, Page 3

MURDER OF FIVE PERSONS.

A tailor named Conrad was found guilty on the sth October of the murder of his wife and four children at Berlin. The trial, which excited much interest, disclosed a remarkable career of depravity. Conrad, who is 3-i years of age is described as a man for his station in life of great force of character, intelligent, enquiring, well-read, inventive, ready, and of remarkable selfpossession. He had been engaged in various occupations, including military service. He had been a diligent reader of Schiller and of Darwin, and his study has ended by making him a believer in nothing. Not only had he renounced religious faith himself, but he had compelled his wife to leave the church, aud brought up his children without religion. He formed an acquaintance with an unmarried woman, and in order to be free to marry her, he on the night between Ilth and 12th August, strangled his wife and four children while they slept. In the morning the corpses of the mother and her youngest child were found hanging at the back of the door, while the dead bodies of the other three were found similarly suspended in a wardrobe. On the mother's bed hy a volume of Schiiler open at the poem of the Kindernioderinn (Child Murderess), which the father had placed there so as to suggest that his wife had committed both infanticide and suicide. A letter, however, which h« wrote to his mistress was so strong a point in the chain of circumstantial evidence against him that he was found guilty and condemned to death. His own theory was that having had a quarrel with his wife on the night in question, he rushed from her presence into another room, where he fell asleep, and the mother then committed the crime. In the morning he sent for a locksmith to pick the lock which he himself had fastened, and made a most dramatic pretence of weeping and fainting when confronted with the Indies. When sentence of death was pronounced upon him he ainted, and had to be restored with wine.