DEAH SENTENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 224, 21 September 1935, Page 11

DEAH SENTENCE.

FARMER KILLS WIFE.

THREE SHOTS IN BODY.

SUGGESTION OF JEALOUSY. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, September 17. "I would far sooner have died myself than see my wife (lead,'' said Harold Ferguson, aged a -farmer, during a statement made from t*ie dock at the Central Criminal Court, Sydney, on Monday wnen answering a charge of murdering his wife. Ferguson a few minutes later was found guilty by the jury, and the Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Jordan, passed sentence of death. Following the death of his wife Ferguson gave himself up to the police, and in. a will made at the Gosford police station he left everything he possessed to his only child, a two and a half year old boy. The case for the Crown was that Ferguson had followed his wife, Gwendoline May Ferguson, on the morning of August "1 to tin; farm of a neighbour ; nd lired three shots into her body from a repeating rifle. From the dock Ferguson said that he and his wife were married in 1032, and .six moilth«s ago when she returned from n trip to Sydney she showed him a letter t>he had received from a man. The latter stated the writer had won a lottery prize and intended taking her to England. On the morning of August 31 he found his wife packing up, and when questioned she said she was going to live with the man concerned in the letter. She also said she was going to take the baby with her.

Because he had been shooting birds off his crop of peas Ferguson had the rifle with him when ho went over to the iarra of Higgins, his neighbour. His wife had gone there, and he wished to trv to make things up with her. Higgins ordered him off the property, and when lie said lie wished to have a quiet talk with his wife Higgins, ho alleged, caught hold of him, and there was a struggle, during which the rifle went off three or four times.

William Harold Higgins, the farmer concerned, denied that he had struggled with Ferguson, and stated that he°was ."0 yards away when Ferguson shot his wife.

Jn passing senteuec of death the Chief Justice said the jury could not have come to any other conclusion 011 the evidence.