WIFE'S DEATH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 306, 28 December 1939, Page 9

WIFE'S DEATH.

HUSBAND ACQUITTED.

MURDER CHARGE FAILS.

SHOT THROUGH THE HEAD.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 21. After a retirement of 18 minutes, a jury at the Central Criminal Court acquitted John Henry Moran, 35, seaman, on a charge of having murdered his wife. Moran's wife, Florence Mabel Moran, 34, was found shot throujrh the head at her home in Forsy the Street, Glebe, on November 2i>. Moran, standing limply in the dock, trembled when the foreman of the jury announced the verdict. He walked unsteadily from the court, supported on ea«h side by a constable. Dr. Stratford Sheldon said in evidence that the bullet which killed Mrs. Moran passed through her head in a direct line from right to left. The bullet had been fired at close range, and at right angles to the head. Clorene Pickett, of Forsythe Street, Glebe, said Moran awakened her about 5 a.m. on November 25, and shouted:— "For God's sake run into the house. I think my wife has shot herself. I'm going for a doctor." Mrs. Pickett said she found Mrs. Moran lying unconscious on a bed with a rifle beside her body. Detective-Constable Clifford said Moran at first said his wife had shot herself while he was out of the bedroom. Later he had made a statement in which he said his wife had been shot accidentally while he was handing her the rifle. Moran Gives Evidence. Moran, giving evidence, said the accident so upset and frightened him that he thought it best to say his wife had tried to commit suicide.

Sir Henry Manning (Attorney-Gene-r*l, appearing for the Crown): You handed the rifle to your wife with the muzzle facing her 1 Moran: I must have. Your hand touched the trigger?—l don't know. But it went off. I put it to you that you placed the rifle over your wife's body?—l never did. I didn't touch it. I don't know what happened to the rifle, because I didn't stop to examine anything. Moran wept. "Like a Nightmare." Interviewed after hie acquittal, Moran said: "The whole thing seems like a nightmare. "Three weeks ago I had a home, a wife, children, and a motor car. "I've lost my wife. I don't know where my children are, or what has happened to my car. "Of course, I will try to get my home together again. "In the new year I will get work on a ship again. "At Long Bay I had a cell between five condemned men. "Prisoners used to point out the gallows to me. "I'm glad the whole thing is over."