ATTEMPTED MURDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 103, 3 May 1934, Page 7

ATTEMPTED MURDER.

LABOURER SENT TO PRISON. ATTACK ON WOMAN. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. Twelve years' imprisonment was the sentence imposed by Mr. Justice Reed in the Supreme Court this afternoon upon John Conway Murphy, a labourer, aged 42, who had t>een round guilty of attempting to murder Mrs. Daisy Heimdal on the night of April 2 on the hills at Berliampore. Addressing the prisoner, his Honor said: "You are fortunate your victim (li(l not die, for if she had theio would have been no question of manslaughter and you would have had to suffer the extreme penalty for murder. There was here no sudden, unpremeditated attack. On your own admission you secured the necessary weapon and went out with this woman with the intention that should she not agree with your request you would kill her, and when you had left her you thought you had killed her. "The least sentence m such circumstances that I can impose," concluded the judge, "is 12 years' imprisonment with hard labour."

At the trial evidence was given that Murphy attacked Mrs. Heimdal on a lonely track on the town belt near the I municipal golf links, using a spanner and a knife, and inflicting severe injuries Ito her neck and chest, and afterwards I surrendering hims6lf to the police, statI ing. that he bad. murdered a woman.