DEATH SENTENCES

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 108, 10 May 1939, Page 9

DEATH SENTENCES

TWO FOUND GUILTY, c THREE WOMEN MURDERED. f ■ b nuuunrr pxxas fail, i « " t (From Our Own Correspondent.) o SYDNEY, May 5. J Found guilty of the murder of Marjorie t Constance Sommeiiad, at Hillcre&t, near t Tenterfleld, on February 4, John Trevor Kelly, 24, motor mechanic, was sentenced s to death by Mi. Justice Halse Rogers at ▲nnidale this week. "You have been found guilty of a Murder of extraordinary ferocity," said the judge, when the jury returned after lees than three hours. "The jury has arrived at the only possible verdict. The evidence disclosed no mitigating circumstances whatever." The murder wae discovered when Nurse Sommerlad, of Coonabarabran. •inter of the dead woman, called at the Hillcrest farm. Mies Sommerlad was a niece of Mr. E. C. Sommerlad, M.L.C, well known in New South Wales as head of the Country Pres* Association, for ■any years. She kept house at Hillcrest lor her brother, Eric Sommerlad, who ran the farm. When Nurse Sommerlad arrived at Hillereet, she found her sister lying in a pool of blood on the dining room floor, with her head terribly battered. On a verandah she found her brother, also eovered in blood, lying under the mattrees of his bed. At first she thought that he, too, had been murdered, but he recovered and gave evidence at the trial of Kelly, who was arrested by the police in Queensland Two statements which had been made by Kelly were tendered as evidence by t'h* police. In the first of these Kelly ••id: "When I arrived at the farm that niffht from Tentertieid, Eric Sommerhwi inifl thiit owing to my drunkenness he «Mild not depend on ine, and gave me notice. 1 lo»t my temper, went outside •nd got an axe. Eric Sommerlad was,

in bed on the verandah. I hit him with the axe. He started to moan and Miss Kommerlad woke up. I met her in the hallway and hit her with the axe. Then I changed my clothes, took £2 and a cheque book from the drawer and left for Brisbane in the truck."

Second Statement. Kelly's second statement was as follows: 'I went into Miss Sommerlad's [bedroom to give her a parcel, which she had asked me to get in Tenterfleld. I eat on the edge of the bed for a while talking to her, and desire took possession of me. I made a suggestion to her, which she refused, at the eame time calling out for her brother Eric. I struck her on the face with my fist and left the room, but I heard her following me. Thinking she was going to call her brother, I hit her again. Then rushing outside I got en axe and went back and hit her with it as sne was rising from the floor. She screamed and I hit her again. I thought her brother would wake up and ruehed outside and hit him with the axe." The only witness called in defence was Kelly's father, who said that up to four or five years ago his son's conduct had been very good. Then, owing to unemployment, he seemed to get desperate and took to drink. He had been charged seveTal times with passing valueless cheques, and in 1937 had been sentenced to 18 months' gaol for having abducted a girl at Lismore. Kelly, senior, added that his son had once posed as a police traffic inspector and had stopped all cars, demanding to eee their licenses. Hie mother wae in the Broughton Hall Asylum and was definitely out of her mind. This evidence was called to support the defence of insanity, but a gaol surgeon and a psychiatrist testified that Kelly was sane. The psychiatrist, Dr. John McGeorge, eaid Kelly's intelligence quotient was 82, compared with the normal range of between 90 and 110. He considered that Kelly showed the mentality of a boy of 13, compared with the normal intelligence rating of Iβ. Blamed on Drink. In a statement from the dock Kelly said that Eric Sommerland had given him the cheque for £2, out of which his paid a taxi driver 8/. He drank the rest, starting with beer and finishing up with brandy. '"If it had not bnen for the amount of drink I had the tragedy would not have occurred," he.

declared. When asked in the usual way if he had anything to say before sentence was passed on him, Kelly, swaying on his feet and with his hands dug deep into his trouser pockets, replied in a low voice: "No, only that I am sorry. Only that." A plea of insanity also failed to save from the death sentence Raphael Fogarty, 32, a station hand, who at Congi Station shot dead Mrs. Edna Dixon, 24, wife of an employee, and Gwendoline Ruby Murray, 15. The evidence was that Fogarty, after seeing the two women set out with their lunch to go blackberrying, got a pea-riflle and followed them to the river. He shot the older woman first, as she stood with her back to him on the river bank, and when Gwen ran away he chased her and shot her, too. He then went back to the homestead, had his lunch and sat for a while listening to the radio. He then pretended that he had found their bodies in the river. In eupport of the insanity plea, his 65-year-old mother, a widow, blind in one eye and partly crippled, went into the box and, weeping, told how he had suffered head injuries in birth and had been unable to walk or talk till he was five. She said that his father, after shooting a woman, had committed suicide, and several other relations were peculiar. Fogarty's old schoolmaster also said he had 'been sub-normal and had been regarded by his schoolfellows as the village idiot. The gaol surgeon said Fogarty had the mentality of a boy of 10, but knew the difference between right and wrong. And he pointed out that Fogarty had been sufficiently intelligent to try to divert suspicion from himself.