MURDER CHARGE AT WANGANUI

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26493, 7 August 1951, Page 8

MURDER CHARGE AT WANGANUI

WOMAN’S DEATH AT WAIMIHA HEARING IN SUPREME COURT (New Zealand Press Association) WANGANUI, August 6. Allegations that Thomas Whetto, aged 46, a railway employee, struck the woman he had married Maori fashion and thus caused her death were made by the Crown when the trial of Whetto began in the Supreme Court at Wanganui to-day. Whetto pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder. The Crown Prosecutor (Mr N. R. Bain) said that Whetto was a fullblooded Maori, and he and the woman he had married Maori fashion, Ngahaka Paahi, otherwise known as Ngahaka Whetto, had lived together since about 1942. They had four children, the youngest a month old at the time of its mother’s death.

Evidence would show that Whetto and the woman lived in a primitive hut in the isolated locality of Waimiha, and that in April last the woman gave birth to a child at Te Kuiti. She returned to the hut on May 7. In a statement to the police the accused had said he had a feeling that the child was not his and had been quarrelling with his wife about it for some time. On the night of May 9, according to the statement, the accused kept asking his wife about it and she would not answer.

“He got very wild and hit her with his open hands and fists for half an hour,” said Mr Bain. “He said he knew he was hurting her, but did not care.” The accused had then tried to revive his wife. Medical evidence would show that she suffered from an enlarged goitre, and it would be said that as a result of the battering she received the goitre expanded and caused suffocation. There was some provocation, but it was very slight

Evidence on the lines of the prosecutor’s address was heard this afternoon, and the trial was adjourned until tomorrow.