FATAL QUARREL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 267, 10 November 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

FATAL QUARREL.

WOMAN KILLED. ROMANCE AND BUSINESS. ! A PARTNERSHIP THAT FAILED. Found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter, Leslie David Harding, "the limping man," was sentenced at London to five years' imprisonment. Harding, who is 23, pleaded guilty when the trial began, but his counsel, Mr. J. L. F. Hale, at once rose and said, "That ia a mistaken That is not my instruction." At the suggestion of Mr. Justice Ackinson, Mr. Hale spoke to Harding, who then pleaded "Not guilty." He was accused of the murder of Mrs. Covell, at Watford. Mr. Eustace Fulton, prosecuting, said Mrs. Covell carried on a business at Watford called the Swift Secretarial Bureau. After her husband was killed in a motor accident she took Harding into partnership. They lived at Bricket Wood, and later in St. Albans Road, Watford. Partner Disappears. Mrs. Covell disappeared about July 13, and Harding made various excuses for her absence. When her little boy came home on holiday from school at Bruges, Harding told him his mother was-away on holiday. Later, a stain was noticed on the ceiling of the office below Harding's bedroom. The landlord broke in and the body of Mrs. Covell waa found. Harding made a statement (continued counsel) in which he said he killed Mrs. Covell when she was asleep with a pair of pipe grips, and put the body in a trunk. Mrs. Covell's 10-year-old eon, Frank, a fair, curly-haired boy, identified the trunk in court as one usually kept in the toxroom. Mr. Hale: Did you get on all right with Mr. Harding?—Yes. He was quite nice to you?— Yes. • Harding, giving evidence, said that when he started work he had a cycle accident and broke both legs. About July, 1933, he was introduced by a Watford solicitor to Mrs. CoveH, for the purpose of getting employment. He told her he was expecting compensation for his accideut. Later she suggested that he should go into partnership with her. At first they were only friends. In February last at the suggestion of Mrs. Covell, they went to live together at the flat in Watford. He was then much in love with her, and she said she wae in love with him. Proposed Marriage.

Harding said they were happy together. He proposed marriage, but .she said she would not marry him until the business was more successful. The night before Mre. Covell's death they were on pood terms. Early next day she said that she was leaving the business, and had git another situation with more money.

"I told her that would not be fair, as I had put money iu it and she had not. When I reminded her that I had put the money in she said I was the biggest fool, that she owed me nothing, and that I could go back home. I called her a rotten cheat, and ehe struck me across the nose. Then I struck her with the grips. I jumped up. but I don't remember picking them up. I don't remember striking her." Mr. Hale: Until she struck you, did you intend to hurt her? —I did not intend to hurt her at all. Harding said they had not quarrelled before. He signed the statement that he had killed Mrs. Covell in her sleep, but it was not true. "I did not trouble what 1 signed if they left me alone," lie uddc-d. Counsel then addressed the jury.

Mr. Justice Atkinson, summing up, said if it were proved that Mrs. Covell so provoked Harding that her conduct vould have destroyed the self-control of a reasonable man, it would be open to the jury to find a verdict of manslaughter.