15 YEARS' GAOL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 263, 7 November 1939, Page 5

15 YEARS' GAOL.

YOUTH SENTENCED.

"A LOW-BRED ANIMAL"

JUDGE'S OUTSPOKEN COMMENT (Prom Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 3. Three murders in Queensland have been I given wide publicity in 6/dney, one because of the violent language used by the sentencing judge.

When sentencing William Arthur Lewis, aged only 16, to 15 years' detention for the murder of Mrs. Iris Reta Grant, 23, at Derra, in Queensland, on August 8, Judge Brennan said he wished he could order the boy a weekly flogging and take a hand in it himself.

"He is a low-bred animal, a brute of a youth, not fit to be at large," said the judge. "It is only an accident that he did not murder a constable and the

woman's husband. There is no possi bility of reforming him."

The Crown Prosecutor said Lewis would not go to school and would not work, but would only lie about and read murder novels. This caused the judge to remark, "It is a pity that the Commonwealth Government does not ban a certain type of detective magazine and! prosecute those who sell them." He went on to say that in a radio serial! there were 10 murders every night. It took four headache powders to clear the head after listening to them, he declared.

According to the Crown, Lewis, when destitute, ill-clad and hungry, had been given a job by Mrs. Grant's husband. On the morning of the tragedy some remark had been made to Lewis about liiis laziness. Mr. Grant had to go away

on business and returned about midday with a constable on inquiry duty. Evidently hearing her husband coming back, Mrs. Grant struggled to a window and called out, "Vic, look out. He'll get you and the child." Rushing indoors the husband and consta&le found Mrs. Grant with shocking gunshot wounds in the lower part of the body. She died in hospital the same afternoon.

No Action by P.M.G. The judge's remarks about the radio serial were taken up by the newspapers with the Postmaster-General, Mr. Harrison. He said he did not intend to call for any report or do anything about it. The judge's remarks, he suggested, should have been addressed to parents who had the control of what their children listened to. It was obvious that there must be some adult demand for, such stories or the commercial stations would not put them on the air. The judge must have been exaggerating when he talked about 10 murders a night. The; serial was described by the manager of a Sydney commercial station as "a harmless thriller dealing with railroad pioneering in America." There were some fights with Indians in it, he said.

The man charged with the other two murders in Queensland is a postal employee, John Jameg Fitzsimons (26). He is charged with the murder, on September 11, of Grace Coles or Campbell (23) and her three-year-old daughter Hazel. Evidence was given by a detective wi.o told how, at a house where Fitzsimons had been living, he found the decomposed and mutilated body of the woman buried in a shallow grave in the backyard, in a mailbag. He then found the | child's body, wrapped in a towel, under] ian old fuel stove which served as a I stand for pot plants. j A single girl, Myra Agnes Carmichoel, now living at Cairns, said Fitzsimons [had asked her to marry him. She said jhe would first have to fulfil two promises—to practise his religion and go to confession and Communion, and to change the design of his clothes. He promised to do both. She went away for a time and when she came back to Ayr, the township where Fitzsimons lived, he again asked her to marry him. . She spoke to him about something her , mother had told her concerning his sister-in-law and himself, but he told her-there was no need to worry as Mrs. Campbell had gone back to her husband.