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| Via Newspapers.com |
Here is yet another example of that popular supernatural staple, “a vision of murder.” The “New Orleans States,” February 19, 1911:
SYDNEY, Feb. 18. — A most mysterious story comes from Perth, West Australia. The mysterious disappearance of a girl named Ethel Harris led a representative of a Perth newspaper to make an investigation, which had sensational results.
He communicated his discoveries to the police and the developments became still more remarkable. The story is briefly as follows: Some four or five years previously a man who called himself Wilson went through some kind of official ceremony with Ethel Harris, whereby she thought she was married to him. A little time ago, however, she disappeared, and some suspicion was aroused. Her father made inquiries of Wilson, who was now working at a foundry under the name of Smart, and was told by the "husband" that his daughter had gone to Adelaide on a holiday, and was well and happy. Then followed investigations which found that Wilson, alias Smart, had not really married Ethel Harris at all.
It was found also that under the name of Smythe he had shortly before married a girl named Mary Jane Pemberthy, and that he had a wife living in Victoria, and an adult son in Perth. He was arrested on a charge of bigamy, and inquiries into the fate of Ethel Harris were pursued. The strangest circumstance in the whole strange story, however, is that Miss Pemberthy told of a vision she had of an apparition in the bathroom of the house in which she was living with Wilson, or Smart. She declared that she saw the form of a woman struggling in the bath, and gave a minute description of the vision, which appeared to her on two occasions. But the police obtained several more tangible clews to the fate of the vanished girl, with the help of the marvelously clever black trackers, and eventually excavations were made under an old disused smithy in the neighborhood.
The result of the exploration was the discovery of a human body, which was strongly presumed to be that of the unfortunate girl.
At the time the message was sent Arthur William Smart had been sentenced to two years for bigamy. Further developments in the case will be awaited with great interest.
Wilson--or Smart, or Smythe, or whatever you care to call the creep--was eventually found guilty of Harris’ murder, and was accordingly executed.
