WOMAN SENT FOR TRIAL

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 217, 13 September 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

WOMAN SENT FOR TRIAL

PERSHORE MURDER CHARGE

At Pershore, Prudence Butler (63), of Fladbury, near Evesham, was committed for trial at the next Assizes at Worcester, charged with the murder of her husband, Sidney Butler. Butler's body was found on July 4 with gunshot wounds in the chest in a van on the farm, at Fladbury, where ihe and 'his wife had been employed to scare birde in a cherry orchard.

George Harris, a carpenter, who was working in a shed near the van at ths time of the tragedy, said he heard a muffled shot, and a little later Mrs. Butler came up to him and said: "Sid iias shot himself and he is dead." ■ When asked how it 'happened she replied: "He put the gun in his , mouth."

The body, said Harris, was lying inside the van. Butler etill had his pipe in his

anouth, and had a wound in the chest. The gun was just outside the van. Questioned about this Mre. Butler said: "I took it out of his hand."

In a statement to the police Mrs. Butler said ehe was asleep in the hut when i her husband shot himself, and so knew nothing about it. She did not'hear the ehot; but in conversation with another witness, named_ George Mansell, after the tragedy, she said that her husband had complained earlier in the day of feeling unwell.

He had refused food, and just before the tragedy he said: "Give me the gun." She did eo, and he then asked for two cartridges. These she also gave to him, and said that she then turned away. She heard a report and, turning round, saw her husband" fall forward.

Medical evidence was given 'to the effect that'the gun must have been fired from a distance of four feet and that the wound was not consistent -with having been eelfinflicted.