A horrible band of murderers, who have committed, as is
admitted by themselves, between twenty and thirty murders, have been arrested in Nelson, New Zealand, and were to be tried in August at Wellington. The first murder which excited suspicion seems to have been that of Mr. George Dobson, of Christchurch, Canter- 'bury, who started at the beginning of June for the township of Arnold, to proceed a short distance towards the Grey. He was never again seen alive. Soon after four men crossing the Mann- _gatapn range, near Nelson, disappeared finally. In the middle of June four men were taken up on suspicion, one of whom (Sullivan by name) anxious lest the others should forestal him, made aminute confession of their more recent murders. They 'had strangled Mr. Dobson, and at first left him sitting upright -under a tree, as if he had died from exhaustion, but afterwards, fearing detection, had returned and buried him. They planned to meet their four later victims on a part of the road where the banks were high and the bush beyond them thick, so that it was not possible for them to escape. Two of the murderers, fully armed, barred the road, and two more got into their rear, and of course the quadruple murder was easily effected. They committed a fifth murder soon afterwards, had planned, it seems, a robbery of the Bank of New South Wales at Nelson, and actually carried strychnine with them, in order to poison parties of diggers who might be too numerous to attack. The wretches after the con- fession were confined in cells lined with iron, on purpose to pre- vent their escape, and a very curious incident marked their con- .fluement. The gaoler wished to put them in the gaol dress, but they, maintaining that, however guilty they might be, they had not been convicted, and were as yet only accused men, violently resisted, and the authorities, respecting the legal validity of their .objection, even in the face of such hideous crime, acquiesced. There seems to be more respect for the strict letter of the law in New Zealand than in Jamaica.
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