Charged With Murder Of Girl And Baby

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30678, 18 February 1965, Page 10

Charged With Murder Of Girl And Baby

(New Zealand Press Association) NAPIER, February 17. Wounds in the head, consistent with bullets having been fired from a 22 rifle, killed a 17-year-old girl and her four-month-old baby, a pathologist, Ray Richard Lycette, told a Lower Court hearing in Napier this afternoon.

He was giving evidence in a case in which a 30-year-old Napier Hospital worker, Jack Robert Corbett, is charged with having murdered the girl, Emily Brown, and the child, Thomas Brown, at Omarunui dump, near Taradale, on January 25.

The hearing began today before Mr W. K. L. Dougall, S.M., and is expected to take two days. Mr G. E. Bisson appears for the Crown, and Mr H. W. Dowling, with him Mr T. R. Peach, is representing Corbett.

Evidence was given that on January 25, at 8.15, a man calling himself Jack telephoned the Napier Police Station and said he had killed his girl and their child. The man had said their bodies could be found at Omarunui dump and he was going to “do himself in, too.” The mother of the dead girl, Riwia Brown, of Auckland road, Greenmeadows, said she had known Corbett and Corbett’s mother for some time. She met Corbett again when she was in hospital. When her daughter was 15 she went to work at the Napier Hospital and was “living in.” Corbett was also working at the hospital and he visited their home and was welcome, said Mrs Brown. About March 24 last year her daughter stopped work at the hospital and said she was going on holiday for a week. Mrs Brown said she next heard from her daughter when she telephoned from Auckland. She was asked to return home, but refused. Mrs Brown said that on December 17 or 18 last her daughter telephoned from Auckland and said she had bad news.

“She said. It is going to be a shock. I have had a baby,’ ” said Mrs Brown. She was told the baby was three months old. She asked her daughter to return home, and they arrived the next day. Some days later, said Mrs Brown, »he picked up her

daughter and Corbett in Clive square, Napier, and Corbett just shrugged his shoulders when asked to go home with them. “He agreed to come home and when my husband asked him what he was going to do, he said: T suppose we will have to get married,* and he kept saying it,” said Mrs Brown. Mrs Brown said she told Corbett she did not like his attitude and all they wanted to know was whether he wanted to marry her daughter, Emily, or not. Mrs Brown said Corbett left the house without telling anyone after he received a telephone call from his sister, Mrs Morgan. Corbett telephoned from Auckland later. He returned to Napier and Emily visited him several times. One afternoon, said Mrs Brown, she spoke to Corbett herself on the telephone and he told her he had a lovely home with everything in it and he wanted Emily to live with him. “Only If Married” Mrs Brown said she told him Emily could go only if they got married. He said nothing about the question of

marriage. Two days before Emily’s death, she believed Corbett and Emily went for a walk. She got in touch with the Taradale police because she wanted “friendly advice” about taking the baby away from Emily, said Mrs Brown. Mrs Brown said Constable lan Bose came to see Emily on the Monday she was killed. He saw her about 4 p.m. and afterwards she believed her daughter received a telephone call.

Emily had said she had to take the baby to meet Corbett on the bus, said Mrs Brown. “She said Jack wanted to see the baby for the last time. She said she wouldn’t be very long.” “Emily spoke to her brother and told him to give her half an hour and then go to the bus stop. She told me she was a bit frightened,” said Mrs Brown.

Mrs Brown told the Court that her daughter left with her baby about 5.50 p.m. She did not see them again. Patricia Morgan, of Napier,

Corbett’s sister, said Corbett returned to Napier in December after working in Auckland for some months. He said he had come to make arrangements about a house section he bought three years earlier. “He was very nervous and highly strung then and it was not usual for him,” said Mrs Morgan. She said Corbett was upset that the baby seemed to be looking thin. On Saturday, January 23, he told her Mrs Brown would not speak to him and he did not know why. He had said that whenever he rang the Brown home, Mrs Brown would hang up on him.

Andrew Reid, a detective

senior-sergeant, said that on the night of January 25 in company with Sergeant D. B. T. Harvey he found the bodies of the girl and child in the Omarunui dump. The next morning, he went to Burlington road, Napier. Corbett was inside the house. Soon after 5 a.m. Detective Sergeant H. Baldock and Superintendent J. L. Graham approached the house and talked from the outside to the occupant. Reid said he had known Corbett since he was a schoolboy. After a considerable time, he persuaded Corbett to open the window. “Holding Rifle” “He was holding a rifle with one hand near the top of the barrel, continuously pointed to his chin and sometimes to his open mouth. “The other hand was in the trigger guard area,” he said. “Every time anyone went near Corbett he became tense and it was obviously unsafe to try to disarm him,” he said.

He said the police officers outside the house were joined by two of Corbett’s friends. Corbett undid the barrel of the rifle and ejected six bullets from the magazine.

He said Corbett also gave him two envelopes containing a total of £204. The hearing will continue tomorrow.