ALLEGED MURDER OF DAUGHTER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 141, 27 March 1948, Page 6

ALLEGED MURDER OF DAUGHTER

Woman Committed for

Trial

STATEMENTS PRODUCED BY POLICE (P.A. ) OHAKUNE, March 26. Evidence on a charge of murdering her four and a half-year-old daughter, Gale King!, at Makarunui, nar Ohakune, laid -against Margaret Mary Theresa Loo, aged 26, was completed in the Ohakune Magistrate’s Court before Messrs H. F. L. Delamar and W. H. Sandford, Justices of the Peace, yesterday. She pleaded not guilty and was committed to the Supreme Court on May 10 at Wanganui for trial.

The Crown Prosecutor Avas Mr N. R. Bain, of Wanganui, and counsel for the defence was Mr G. H. R. Skelton, of Auckland. * She told Gale to take her rockinghorse outside, stated accused in a statement before the District Coroner (Mr W. H. Sandford), and produced in Court by Constable John Haldane Beaton, of Raetihi. She caught a glimpse of the child as she went through the back door. She must have slipped on the steps. She found the child on her back with the rocking-horse on top of her fac#. She was bleeding at the mouth and seemed unconscious.

On February 27 he interviewed Loo at Auckland, said Malcolm John Ross, a detective-sergeant stationed at Auckland. After he had typed tAVO and a half pages of a statement, Loo said that what she had told him was “a lot' of lies.” She wanted to tell the truth. She then admitted causing the injuries to the child' and Avhen Avarned that she might be charged with murder, replied: “I -want to tell you just what happened to Gale that day.” In* the first statement made to Ross, Loo reiterated her story that a fall while the child was carrying a rocking-horse had caused the injuries. “Gale was a terrible girl to cry in the mornings,” said accused in her second statement. On December 3 she cried in the early morning and again lal(3r, probably because she was fretting for Loo’s husband, Avho was in Auckland. About 10 a.m. Gale Avas sitting in a chair crying. Accused told her to stop, and when she did not, Loo put her right hand on her forehead and pushed the child’® head hard against the bars of the chair. “At the time I did not care what happened to her,” said the statement. The child crumpled and slipped toward the floor, but Loo caught her in her arms before she hit the floor. Accused said she Avas frightened, but decided to wait until 4 p.m. before calling a doctor. About 2 p.m. she took the other two children to visit a neighbour, leaving Gale on the bed. Although Avorried about the child, she thought she would be all right. Accused admitted lying to the O’Connors and Dr. L. E. Jordan about the incident. Her son, Robert, Avas in the kitchen at the time of the accident, and she told him not to tell anybody what had' happened, and that if he did she Avould go to gaol.

“Gale did not like me very much, and about a year ago I started not to like her vei’y much,” said accused, who denied hitting the child with a piece of wood or anything hard..

On the application, of her counsel, Loo was admitted to custody at the Mount Eden prison, Auckland.