"PEEPING TOM" KILLED.

Auckland Star, Volume XLV, Issue 182, 1 August 1914, Page 17

"PEEPING TOM" KILLED.

MAN FATALLY SHOT WHILE WATCHING LOVERS.

At «n Inquest at Barrow on June 10, into the death of John Turner, forty-eight. it whs shown that he was shot in the heail while watching lovers. The local term for tap practice is "spotting." An open verdict that Turner died from a gunshot wound was returned, because a couple woo were known to be in possession of a pistol at the place where Turner received bis Injury had not been traced The coroner and the chief constable- severely crossexamined two married men named Smith and Wharton, who carried Turner home unconscious, and then, instead of telling that bt> had been shot, concocted a etory that he had fallen on a stone. Smith, said the coroner, knew that Turner was watching a couple when he heard the pistol shots. A clerk named Raymond Williams said he saw Smith and Turner on a high bank which overlooked a footpath over which a young couple would have to pass. The young man. when thirty yards away, pulled a pistol out of his hip pocket and banded it to tbe girl, who pointed it at the ground, but did not fire.