LEVIN TRAGEDY.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18921, 9 February 1927, Page 10

LEVIN TRAGEDY.

SLOMAN FOUND TO BE INSANE. ACQUITTED ON MURDER CHARGE (FBISS ASSOCIATION TII.CGRAH.) PALMERSTOX NORTH, Feb. S.

William George Sloman, who was charged in the Supremo Court today with the murder of his wife and daughter at Levin on November sth, was acquitted on the grounds of insanity, and ordered to be detained in strict custody during the pleasure of the Minister for Justice. Many witnesses were called in the defence Lti support of the plea, including neighbours, who testified to the prisoner's ever-growing depression up to the time of the tragedy as a result of business worries. It was stated that Sloman had expressed the intention to commit suicide previously. Henry John Tyzard, medical superintendent at the Poriru.i Mental Hospital, said he had examined the accused and found him suffering from alternating, or circular, insanity. Sufferers of this type of insanity alternated from melancholia to mania, and melancholic patients, if not actually suicidal, were always potentially so. Slomnn did not properly understand the nature of his net. The state of his health wns impairing his reasoning powers. Other medical evidence of a similar nature was also given. His Honour, summing up, said it was abundantly plain that the deed was either the act of a fiend or a madman. It had been shown that Sloman was not a fiend, but n good husband and father. It was a singular thine *" n * a text-book by a well-known authority on mental diseases contained almost a parallel example with that before the Court. This authority pointed out that a person suffering from suicidal melancholia who killed his wife usually killed her as being the sharer in hit) own personality, and when he was rational he would explain his conduct by saying that he could not leave one he loved to face tho world alone, and that his motive was to save his victim from suffering to protect her against some more terrible affliction which threatened them jointly.