A FAMILY OF MURDERERS

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10713, 7 November 1912, Page 3

A FAMILY OF MURDERERS

A story oi ? crime which could hardly pi bo rivalled in tlio Wild West eome.s to j hand from Calviniii, Cape Colony, which small community, it appears, can claim the unenviable distinction of possessing a single family, five members of which have, been charged with murder or with attempted murder. The details are being told apropos of the death sentence 'which has just been passed on Jacob Swart, who uua been found guilty of kicking his wifo to death. A second member of the family was found guilty of the attempted murder of a fanner, but tli« jury field that Jie was insane at tlio time of the crime. The evidence, in this case showed that ho mistook his victim for a man who had illtreated him in his youth. Leah Swart was found guilty of murdering it child which she had been nursing by smashing iU'hcad in with ,a stone. She wassentenced to death, but in her case the sentence was reduced to one of penal servitude for life,. The most sensational case, however, was that of iwo of. the Swart brothers. They were arrested for theft, whereupon they shot dead tlio policeman who m :do thearrest and strangled a farmer who accompanied him. The two desperadoes then took to flight but were followed by two policemen into, the wilds of North-West Cape Colony, where the country was so barren that both pursuers and pursued were'd'orced to feed on roots. Eventually the. fugitives wero captured, after a fight in which, one- of them way, wounded, and having been sentenced were hanged.