A YEAR'S CRIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 27, 1 February 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

A YEAR'S CRIME.

SYDNEY'S TWENTY-FIVE MURDERS. TOLL OF GANG WARFARE. Twenty-five murder cases, in which 36 people died, was Sydney's total for 1929. Of these three were not cleared up. But in point of sensationalism, none compared with the famous Condon case, which is still unsolved. There were nine instances where lovers were concerned, five being death pacts. Domestic tragedies totalled four, in which two husbands were arrested. One was acquitted, while the other awaits trial. Perhaps the saddest investigation police carried out was the shooting of Rene Linton, pretty J. C. Williamson actress, by her lover, Strachan Knight, at the home of the latter's mother, Cremorne, on May 28 Miss Linton was wid.ely known, beautiful and vivacious. Knight shot her and then committed suicide. On March 21 the body of Vera Stirling, an elderly woman with several aliases, was found in Hyde Park, near College and Liverpool, streets, with her hands tied together with a stocking. Death was due to suffocation. The police were unable to sheet this crime home. This was followed by the finding of the body of another woman, Selina Stanley, 70, on a vacant allotment, near Coulson Street, Erskineville. She had been done to death m atrocious fashion, a blunt instrument having been forced into a vital organ. On October 7, Leslie Wliatley, 30, was shot twice in the abdomen, in Foveaux .Street, Surry Hills. He was with his brother and another man. This case, too, remains a mystery. If the story Thomas Ivory, 44, told before he died on the morning of October 25, was true, he met liis _ fatal injuries in' terrible fashion. He said that somebody set his clothes alight. He died in agony. Evidence at the inquest was not sufficient for the coroner to indict any person for Ivory's death. Death Pacts. Death pacts showed an increase in numbers. Most poignant was that by poison of Dulcie Welsh, 17,, who left a home at North Sydney to die with Clifford Marsh, 24, in a hut at Fairfield. Although her father strongly protested that Marsh had given his daughter poison, evidence pointed to a death pact. Underwood Street, Paddington, was again represented by a tragedy. It was there that Williams killed his children, and on January, 1928, Hilda Hancock was murdered. Alma Preston, 32, and Charles Wilson, 35, were, found, lying in a yard with their 'throats cut on February 18. Wilson had slashed the woman and then himself.'Arm in arm they walked from a room to the yard,, where they died in each other's arms. • On July 17, . the first fatal case in the underworld fued was recorded, when George 'Gaffney was ; shot dead, and Walter Thomlinsori 1 wounded. James Devine was acquitted of'the murder charge, self-defence being proved. This had been preceded, by numerous shootings and was followed on November 9 by the death of Bernard Dalton, 39, outside a William Street hotel. Walter Thomlinson was again wounded. A particularly ferocious drama where passion played a big part, was enacted in a Rose Bay flat. Dorothy Cooper, a 19-year-old North- Sydney 'girl, died instantly when. George Horton, 21, her lover, turned a gun .on . her. He wounded Constable Fox, of Paddington, and then ended his own life. . Despite the increase in the number, of deaths, compared' with previous years, Svdney's record compares favourably with big American cities. During 1929, said P.Wdent Hoover, recently, there were 9000 murders in the United States of America.