27 JULY 1878, Page 3

Joseph Garcia, the Spanish sailor arrested for the murder of

the Watkins family at Llangibby, near Newport, in Monmouth- shire, was fully committed for trial at the Caerleon Petty Sessions on Monday. Two of the elder girls were not at home on the evening of the murder, and so escaped, one of them having left her parents, after a fortnight's holiday, on the very day of the tragedy, identified the prisoner's boots as those which had belonged to their father, as did also the village shoemaker ; and other property be- longing to the Watkins family was also in his possession. Garcia's clothes were stained with blood, and it seems pretty clear that he had been engaged in a violent struggle. The corpses of the three children had been partly burnt ate r death. One of the most curi- ous statements made, according to some of the accounts of the examination, is that over the head of the murdered man, who was lying with his wife in the garden of the cottage, the murderer had strewed flowers, which looks very like a grotesque bit of senti- mentalism, as of course these flowers did not hide or pre- tend to hide in any way what had been done. The Spaniard apprehended is only twenty-one years of age.