Army & Navy - Murder at Honingham Hall

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In the drawing room of Honingham Hall in England's Norfolk County, Sir Eric Teichman sat before a cosy fire and was content. Lunch was over and quiet lay on the big house. Then, from outside, came the sound of shots. Sir Eric, 60-year-old retired British diplomat and expert on Far Eastern affairs, rose from his armchair, growled to Lady Ellen: "I'm going out to stop this damned poaching." Unarmed, he set out to stop it.

When night fell, and he had not returned, Lady Ellen was worried. She organized a search party to comb the woods and fields of their 3,000-acre estate. They found nothing. She asked a woman friend to take up the search with her. They went out after midnight, soon returned for dry shoes.

On the second trip, they found Sir Eric. He was dead, "crouched as though he had been watching someone." A .30-caliber bullet from a U.S. Army carbine had pierced his left cheek, entered his body. Fifty yards away British police and U.S. Army MPs found ten empty cartridges, two wads of chewing gum. The rest was easy: the investigation moved to a U.S. Army airdrome near by.

Last week, three days after the shooting, Private George E. Smith Jr., of Pittsburgh, was arrested on a charge of murdering Sir Eric Teichman, Private Leonard S. Wijpacha of Detroit on a charge of being an accessory. A U.S. Army court-martial prepared to hear evidence in an ancient English crime: murder by poachers.