SIX CHILDREN KILLED

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25537, 3 July 1948, Page 7

SIX CHILDREN KILLED

TRAGEDY NEAR N.S.W. TOWN

(Rec. 11 p.m.) SYDNEY, July 2. Huddled together in a blood-soaked bed. each shot through the head, the six children of Frederick Charles Hall, aged 46, a handyman, were found dead to-day in a ramshackle shanty four miles from Glen Innes. In another room, doubled up on the floor, hysterical and in a state of nervous collapse, was the lather. He is now in the Glen Innes District Hospital under a police guard. The mother, who has not yet been told of the tragedy, is in the maternity ward of a private hospital. A few days ago her seventh child died soon after birth.

The ages of the dead children ranged from 13 to two years. The police believe that they died about midnight last night, within a few minutes of each other, but the tragedy was not discovered until 9 o’clock this morning. Shortly before then, a boy ran to an ambulance station and told the officer that a man was having fits in the shanty. The officer rushed to the shanty and discovered the tragedy. Hall said that, after tea last night, all the children complained of stomach pains and mouth burning. He gave water to them for three hours, then everything went blank. He was rushed to hospital and given an emetic on suspicion that poison might have been used.