MAREO PETITION

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24366, 19 September 1944, Page 4

MAREO PETITION

VIEWS OF BRITISH ANALYST EFFECTS OF VERONAL "The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND, September 18. # The new petition to the House or Representatives concerning the case or Eric Mareo, now serving a life sentence in the Auckland Prison for the murder of his wife by veronal poisoning, features a report by Dr. G. K. Roche senior official analyst to the British Home Office, whose qualifications to express an authoritative opinion are set out in his report. Dr. Roche deals at length with the Crown theory that Mrs Mareo must have been given a fatal dose of the drug by Mareo on the Saturday night of her death. Dr. Roche says that had the quantity alleged to have been administered been taken in a cup of milk brought to her by Mareo it would have turned the .milk into a porridge which would have been noticed by the others present From his experience of similar cases, Dr. Roche expresses the opinion that there is no justification whatever for postulating the administration of a third dose of the drug on the Saturday night and that the fatal illness can be fully explained by the taking of one dose the previous night and a second one the next morning. Concerning the medical evidence at the trials,, Dr, Roche says: "I recognise that Dr. W. Gilmour and other doctors, and also the analyst who gave evidence at both trials on behali of the prosecution, gave their honest views throughout, but it is equally clear that they were labouring under a considerable disadvantage in that they had experienced only a very few cases of veronal poisoning, - and were quite unfamiliar with certain aspects of such cases. . “They naturally relied upon recorded cases, but some of these which are quoted in certain works of reference are far from satisfactory in the light of later and wider experience. The New Zealand medical witnesses do not appear to have realised that a person who has taken a possible fatal dose of veronal can become completely comatose and subsequently regain more or less complete consciousness, and then relapse into a coma without taking any further dose of the drug. This may in fact occur more than once before the patient finally succumbs. The conclusion reached by the New Zealand doctors that Mrs Mareo must have taken a third dose of veronal on the Saturday night for the reason that she regained consciousness and later again became comatose, is based on inadequate knowledge of the effects of this drug.” ' . .