Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Yet another “vision of murder” story, but this one sounded more plausible than most.  The “Chicago Inter Ocean,” December 1, 1907:

CAPETOWN, Nov. 30.--A little girl named Ellen Pinnock, returning home in Grahamstown from making purchases at a grocer's, disappeared recently, and no trace of her could be found. A detective at length picked up one of articles purchased by the girl near the Grahamstown golf links and took it back to the grocer, who suggested the calling in of a young man named Staples, a clairvoyant. 

Staples was placed in a hypnotic trance, and in the presence of two or three witnesses was asked if the child was dead. "She is dead--murdered." he replied, "and her body lies under the floor of a house."

“Can you see the house?" he was asked.

"I can." he replied, and proceeded to describe the murder in detail. He was roused from his trance, and. accompanied by the detective and a party of five other men, went to the golf links and indicated the caretaker's house as the house he had seen in his trance. The place was broken open, and in a cellar low the body of the murdered child was found.

It lay beneath the foundations of the house itself, and was covered with sacking soaked in iodoform. The body was found on the sixth day after the girl's disappearance. Suspicion fell at once on the caretaker, a man named Kerr. Previously it had been thought that the girl might have fallen into a large road pond on the golf links, and at the moment of the discovery of the corpse Kerr was engaged in dragging this pond. He had posed as a friend of the Pinnock family, and called on them to express his sympathy the day after the girl was lost.

Staples had never seen Kerr before. The clairvoyant was taken to the pond and asked if he could identify among the men at work there the murderer whom he saw in his trance. He pointed to Kerr, who was subsequently arrested. Much circumstantial evidence was produced against Kerr at the inquest, though the coroner refused to hear anything as to what the clairvoyant had done.  A verdict of willful murder against Kerr was returned.

Thomas Kerr was put on trial for the girl’s murder, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict.  Kerr was subsequently rearrested, this time for assault (it was decided that he could not be tried twice for murder.)  However, I’ve been unable to find what happened next, so I presume the authorities were eventually forced to set him free for a second time.  As far as I know, Ellen Pinnock’s murder remains officially unsolved.