SHOT DEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 21, 26 January 1939, Page 16

SHOT DEAD.

ERRING HUSBAND. FRIENDSHIPS WITH WOMEN. WIFE'S PATHETIC LETTER. (By Air Mail.) LONDON, January 1. Twiotimjf a handkerchief nervously, 33 year-old Irene Wray, charged with the murder of her husband, heard her mother read in Pudsey Borou-rli Court to-day a letter in which ehe was alleged to have complained of his friendships with other women. "Norman went out last night," the letter was said to have stated, "and when they had finished with the giw mask* he and someone else I don't know took two women in his car. . . . Mother, how can 1 go on living with a man liks he is? . . . My life is terrible. "I Mked him if he would have a talk with his eldest brother Fred. He nearly went mad. and told me he would kill me there and then if 1 didn't shut up. "He said he would give me two ways to take it—l had to go oil a* we were, and he would look after us both; or he would go out with them again, as lie knew where to find thein. What am I to do?" "Lmd Her Husband." The mother, Mre. Cardwell, said her daughter said ehe was going to see the girl. "1 said the best thing was to write," Mr*. Cardwell added, "and tell her ha was married, and she aaid that was what she had done." Mrs. Cardwell aaid that, apart from the complaint* made by her daughter, it waa clear aha loved her husband very much. Mary Jude, an attractive 15-year-old girl, of Thackeray, Bradford, said she! worked for the same firm as Mr. Wray, j who wm an acetylene welder, aged 34, and that la«t summer she went with another girl to his house, at his wife's request. Mra. Wray aalced if they knew Mr. Wray was married. When they replied "Yes," ah* aaid, "Don't you aee enough of him at work without coining home with him?* Ska then told them to get out of the gate, mad they went. '"Try to Save Him." Mra. Brsithwaite, of Ofelverley, near Bradford, aaid lira. Wray, who WM learning to drive a ear, aaid to her, "If •w I watch Norman with a girl in his car, or he ever admits it to me, I shall drive the car over the clitf with us all in it." It wm stated that jiat before Mr. Wray waa ahot Mrs. Wray had attended a Methodist Fellowship meeting, and Mr. E. 0. Robey, prosecuting, said that that night she went to the family doctor and aaid: "1 have shot mv husband in the hack of the neck. He will be dead when yon get there. Try to save him." Mr. R. M. Priestley, defending Mrs. Wray, aaid no jury #ouki convict on the capital charga "There is a clear explanation by this poor woman as to the reason for what happened," he said. Mra. Wray, who pleaded not guilty, waa committed for trial in Leeds.