WOMAN'S DEATH

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 181, 2 August 1941, Page 12

WOMAN'S DEATH

SORDID STORY TOLD MURDER SUSPECTED (0.C.) SYDNEY, July 30. After a two-day hearing the coroner yesterday" adjourned until next Tuesday the inquest on Mrs. Dorothy Duckworth, who on July 2 was found dead in a chair in the house of a friend just around the corner from her own place in Surry Hills. It was alleged that after she had been placed on a couch she lay there for several hours wtu'le a woman friend and two men sat talking in an adjoining room. Mrs. Duckworth's husband, Richard James Duckworth, 40, labourer, Mrs. Sarah Maude O'Brien, 29, domestic, and Bruce Edward Plunkett, 24, carpenter's improver, were present in custody on a charge of murder. Henry Thomas Parrott, a wharf labourer, said Mrs. O'Brien told him over a drink in an hotel that "Dicky" (Duckworth) had stabbed Mrs. Duckworth. They took a taxi to Mrs. O'Brien's home and found Mrs. Duckworth lying on the dining room floor. He tried to waken her but got no response, and said to Mrs. O'Brien, 'She's pretty drunk. I can't make her talk. ,. Just before tea Plunkett came in, and while they were having tea Duckworth arrived. Mrs. O'Brien said to Duckworth, "What did you want to do that for?" Duckworth replied, "I had occasion to do it."

Parrott said ho then helped Duckworth to put Mrs. Duckworth on the couch. Mrs. O'Brien wiped up the iloor and went for a doctor, but came back and said she could not get one and had been advised to send for an ambulance. "If I had known that Mrs. Duckworth was lying stabbed in Mrs. O'Brien's house, I wouldn't have gone there," Parrott added. "I thought she was drunk." Dr. C. E. Percy, Government Medical Officer, said that when he examined Mrs. Duckworth at 10 p.m. she had been dead for from six to twelve hours. A wound on the left side had penetrated to the heart and the right lung. Alleged Statements On the second day of the hearing the police produced statements alleged to have been made by Mrs. O'Brien. Duckworth and Plunkett. Mrs. O'Brien was alleged to have stated that Plunkett said to her on the night of July 3. "Dot and Dick (Mr. and Mrs. Duckworth) started to fight. Dick picked up a knife and stabbed Dot. He pulled it out a bit and pushed it in again." Mrs. O'Brien was also alleged to have stated that Plunkett also told her that he took the knife from Duckworth, wiped it with a handkerchief, and put it in a drawer. Mrs. O'Brien stated that on returning home on July 2 she and Parrott saw Mrs. Duckworth sitting on a chair which was tilted forward! Mrs. Duckworth's hands and knees were on the floor and her head was slumped forward. Mrs. O'Brien added that her husband was over-

seas with the A.1.F.. and that she had one daughter. Plunkett boarded with her. Plunkett was alleged to have stated. "I knew my fingerprints would be on the knife," so I washed it. I was pretty drunk at the time." Detectives also produced notes of an alleged conversation between Mrs. O'Brien and Plunkett in Long Bay Gaol on July 9. Plunkett was alleged to have denied having told Mrs. O'Brien that he had seen Duckworth stab his wife. Mrs. O'Brien, after saying to Plunkett that he knew both he and she were innocent, was alleged to have said to him. "You know Dick 3' done it. Dicky's got nothing to lose. I've got a baby."