MURDER DRAMA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 161, 9 July 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

MURDER DRAMA.

THREE DEATHS REPORTED. ______ t WOMAN PACES CHARGE. A murder drama, with the interest focused on * flask of coffee, and with the widow ot «n Englishman as the principal figure, is being played at Johannesburg, and has aroused great interest. Crowds thronged the Court where the preliminary examination was held of Mrs. Daisy do Melker, charged with the murder of two former huebauds and her son, Cecil Rhodes Sproat, in whose body traces of arsenic were found. Mrs. do Melker, who was born in Grahamstown in 1888, has three sisters living in England. Her maiden name was Hancorn-Smith, and she married a Mr. Sproat, an Englishman, whose mother died in England last year. Evidence has been given concerning the last illness of Mrs.' de Melker's son. Cecil was twenty years old. .He had often referred to the fact that when he came of age he would inherit money. He intended to leave home and launch out in business of his. own. A mechanic with whom he worked mentioned the queer eli'ecta, of a flask of coffee from which he and Cecil Sproat drank. The mechanic related how after drinking the contents of a flask which Sproat brought from home, they were both seized with pains in the stomach. He himself felt quite fit again the next day, but Sproat was looking very ill, and asked to go home. He never saw him alive again. Mrs. de Melker was said by another witness to have remarked, when condolences were made to her on the death of her son, "It is nice to have the will made out." Reference was also made to her "strange calm" when he died.