MURDER TRIAL BEGUN

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26031, 7 February 1950, Page 6

MURDER TRIAL BEGUN

ELDERLY WOMAN’S DEATH AT FOXTON (New Zealand Press Association) PALMERSTON NORTH, Feb. 7. The trial of Napoleon Brown, a fiaxcutter, married, aged 28, of Foxton, on a charge of murdering Mrs Emily Christina Hall, a widow, aged 69, at Foxton, on November 3, was opened in the Supreme Court to-day. The trial is expected to last all this week, i Mr G. I. McGregor, opening for the Crown, said he would attempt to establish motive, opportunity, and method. Evidence to-day was similar to that at the preliminary hearing. Twenty-two photographs showing Mrs Hall’s house, its environs, what the police found inside the house when they entered, injuries to the' dead -woman, and how the police considered the fire shovel ■ must have been held to inflict the head injuries on Mrs HalPwere produced in albums for the benefit of the jury by Sergeant J. Colclough, fingerprint expert in Wellington. The witness also produced fingerprints and palmprint photographs taken from the shovel and compared them with fingerprints and palmprints of the accused, finding 12 points of similarity in the t . fingerprints and 25 in the palmprints. He said there were 244.000 chances to one against the fingerprints’ being duplicated and 298,000,000,000,000 chances to one against the palmprints being duplicate*! x