Dr. Voss

In a field near Eesen, Belgium, fortnight ago a peasant looked up from his spring radishes to see the Imperial Airways liner City of Liverpool suddenly burst into flames and crash like a meteor in a field, twelve passengers and the crew of three dying instantly (TIME, April 3).

One of the passengers was a Dr. Albert Voss, dentist, of Manchester. At a coroner's inquest into his death last week, the story of the disaster became stranger than ever. The body of Dr. Voss was picked up nearly two miles from the wreckage of the plane. It was not burned. Evidence seemed to show that Dr. Voss jumped from the plane. Though his 16-year-old niece Lottie was one of the killed passengers, there was a possibility that he might have set the plane afire.

Coroner A. H. Flint called as his first witness Dr. Voss's eldest son, Hugo, who testified that though his father did smoke occasionally he never carried a pocket lighter, used matches.

"Do you think," asked Coroner Flint, "that your father deliberately or accidentally set fire to the liner, by which 14 people were roasted to death?"

Answered Hugo Voss: "I am convinced he was incapable of doing such a dastardly thing."

Without comment Coroner Flint called the next witness, a lawyer representing Hugo Voss's estranged brother Albert Jr., who told a story that set.every neck a-crane in the little courtroom:

Dr. Voss and his partner L. 0. Dearden, another victim of the crash, were not only dentists but dope smugglers. Working with a former Air Force Officer named Pleass they would take frequent trips from the continent by air, drop packages of dope attached to tiny silk parachutes from the plane windows at pre-arranged spots. According to this story they knew that they were to be arrested when the City of Liverpool landed. Dr. Voss set fire to the plane, cremating his partner and his niece, and jumped on the 1,000-to-1 chance that he might escape with his life.

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