The Sun. — 1860-08-24 (London, England)

THE MURDER IN THE QUEEN'S PARK, EDINBURGH.  Although the police authorities are actively engaged investigating into the circumstances -attending the untimely death of the unfortunate girl Slater, nothing of a tangible and conclusive nature has as yet transpired to assist them in tracing home the actual guilt or complicity of the affair to any one. The evidence affecting the prisoner Tanner is, we believe, of a merely circumstantial character ; while the strongest evidence against the two men, who are still missing from the regiment of Light Dragoons at Piershill, is furnished by the suspicious circumstance of their flight. The task which the criminal officers have to accomplish in the case is necessarily a very difficult one, from the lateness of the hour at which the murder was committed, the difficulty, it might almost be said the impossibility, of identifying the actual perpetrator of the deed, and singling him out among so many men, all about the same size and stature, and wearing the same uniform, and the utter absence as yet of any eyewitness to the murder. A numerous variety of rumours concerning the case have been widely circulated about town—such as, that when the two men, Tanner and Quin, were apprehended, the other two soldiers made their escape in civilians' clothes from a house in Campbell's-close ; and the criminal officers have been busily employed in testing the accuracy of these stories—in every case, as was to be expected, finding that they were destitute of foundation. We learn also that a number of persons went to the Police-office on the pretence of having something to tell ' regarding the matter —as to their havinig seen the girl at certain places on the night in question, and so on— merely to gratify their morbid curiosity to have a sight of the dead body; but their evidence was found to be worthless. These circumstances, of course, must have thrown some impediments in the way of the officers prosecuting a proper line of inquiry. An instance of this morbid appetite for the least item of information about the case, no matter how apocryphal, is afforded by the fact of so many people clustering about the County Buildings during the precognition of the witnesses, and congregating in the Queen's-park, in the vicinity of the spot where the murder is supposed to have been committed. The tree at the foot of which the corpse was found has been stripped of its bark in various places, apparently by persons actuated by the same motives as the people in Glasgow, who chipped off bits of the window-sill of the house in which Madeline Smith resided. About a dozen witnesses, both military and civilian, were examined by the Procurator-Fiscal yesterday ; but we understand that no new fact of importance was elicited. The two soldiers are still absent from their regiment, and inquiries are being made after them. The postmortem examination of the body of the deceased girl was commenced yesterday by Drs. Reillar and Smith, but has not yet been brought to a conclusion. Several parties have still to see the body, and there are various points upon which medical examination has yet to be made.—Caledonian Mercury.