The Princeton union., 1880-10-07
Remarkable Discovery of q Murder
in Bermuda =.

The following account OF murder
which was ccmltted in Bermuda in the
autumn OF 1873 is taken from a letter
written to Gen. Sir j. 81. LEROY, G.. B.,
F. r., S., lately Governor Of these is
lande, and author Of the Annals Of Ber-
muda,'' by the Attorney General Of the
islands, Mr.. s. Brownlow Gray. The
mode Of discovery Of the crime is so re-
markable that think it ought to be put
on record, and Sir ]. III. Lefroy has kind
ly permitted me to make extracts from
the letter for that purpose ! believe no
no account of the circumstances Of the
case has as yet been published in Eu-
rope. There seems to be no likelihood
as to mistake regarding the facts. The
special occurrence could probably only
happen in the tropics in warm water.
F." ( .s....'' ~ h, II. N. MosELEY.
I'm the autumn of 1878 q man CONT
ted terrible crime In Somerset, which
was for some time involved IN deep mys-
tery. His wife, handsome and decent
mulatto woman, disappeared suddenly
and entirely from sight, after going home
from church en- Sunday, October 30.
Suspicion lmmediatly fell upon the hus-
band, q clever young fellow OF about
thirty, but no trace of the missing wom-
an was left beh1nd, and there seemed q
strong probability that the crime would
remain undetectea On Sunday, how
ever, October ~, a week after the wo-
man had disappeared, some 6omerville
boatmen. looking out toward the sea, as
is their custom, were struck by observ-
ing, in the Long Bay Channel, the sur
face of which was ruAed by a slight
breeze, long streak Of calm such as, to
use their own illustration, cask Of oil
usually difuses round it when in the
water. The feverish anxiety about the
missing woman suggested some strange
connection between this singular calm
and the mode of her disappearance.
1.-TWO or three days after-why not
sooner I cannot tell you-her brother
and three other men went out to the
spot where it was observed, and from
which it had not disappeared since Snn-
day and, with series Of fish hooks rang
ed along long line, dragged the bot
tom Of the channel but st first without
success. Shifting the position Of the
boat they dragged little further to
windward, and presently the line was
caught. With water glasses the men
discovered that it had caught in a skele-
ton which was held down by some
heavy weight. They pulled on the line;
something suddenly gave way, and up
came the skeleton Of the trunk, pelvis,
and legs of a human body, from which
almost every vestige Of human flesh had
disappeared, but which from the min
ute fragments remaining, and the tern
pie stencil, had evidently not lain long
in the water. .. -8
s'The husband was q fisherman, and
Long Bay Channel was tavor1te fish
ground, and he calculated, truly enough,
that the fish would very soon destroy ali
means of Identification but it never en-
tered his head that as they did so their
ravages, combined with the process o1
decomposition, would set free the matter
which was to write the traces of hia
crime on the surface of the water. The
case seems an exceedingly interesting
one; the calm is not mentioned in any
book on medical jurisprudence that
have, and the doctors seem not to have
had experience of such an occurrence
A diver went down and found stone
with rope attached, by which the body
had been held down, and also portions
Of the scalp and of the skin of the sole
Of the foot and Of clothing, by means q1
which the body was identified. The
hushand WAS found puiltv and axecnted