Evidence Of Stab Wounds

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31143, 20 August 1966, Page 3

Evidence Of Stab Wounds

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Aug. 19. An Auckland pathologist used a blackboard and coloured chalks to demonstrate to a Supreme Court jury today the injuries which caused the death of Mrs Anne Elizabeth Kievit.

Before the court is Kenneth Mervyn McKay, aged 36, a truck driver, who is charged with murdering Mrs Kievit at Henderson on May 2. He has pleaded not guilty. Mr G. D. Speight and Mr K. A. Palmer are appearing for the Crown and Mr P. A. Williams and Mr K. Ryan represent McKay. The trial is before Mr Justice Gresson. Desmond John Andrew Doyle, a pathologist, spent several minutes at the blackboard. He marked two stab wounds and some bruising. Either wound could have caused her death, he said. Earlier Doyle said that on May 5 he examined McKay. SCRATCHES “On his hands I found numerous superficial abrasions which were very slight,” he said. “They are to be expected on a working man’s hands. On his legs I found a number of tiny pin-point scratches and very light scratch abrasions.” They appeared to be only a few days old, witness said. They appeared to be the sort of pricks and scratches one would get from walking through rough, prickly undergrowth, he said. He described portions of human remains which he had received for examination on May 6 and 7. To Mr Williams, witness said he had found three stab wounds in Mrs Kievit’s body. He thought it feasible that the disembowelment could have been done in the stream itself or on the water’s edge. LEFT LIGHTS ON For about two weeks before she disappeared on May

2 Mrs Kievit left outside lights on her house burning at night, said Gwen May McKinlay. Mrs McKinlay said she lived on the corner of Mrs Kievit’s driveway in Seymour road. Henderson. Mrs Kievit had frequent visitors, witness said. Sheila Rachel Freshwater, housewife, of Henderson, said McKay had told her last year that he had met a widow with three children and that he was very fond of her and hoped to marry her in August, 1965. Witness said McKay mentioned this “a couple of times.” She said she met McKay after August. 1965, when he told her that he had finished with the woman and added that “all women are tarred with the same brush.” John Ngauchun, a timekeeper. said he kept time sheets for the truck drivers of J. J. Craig, Ltd. He identified time sheets in accused’s name from April 15 to April 29. He said McKay’s time sheet fot April 29 showed half art hour’s “lost time” during deliveries made by McKay to a Panmure firm, but he could not remember whether he asked McKay about the lost time. SOLD KNIVES

Robert George Walker, of Mount Albert, store manager for McKenzies, Ltd., Pan-

mure, said he approached a man looking at the knives on the cutlery counter of his shop on the afternoon of April 29. The man asked him if the Japanese knives were any good. Witness said he replied that he thought they were good value for money. He said the man bought two Japanesemade knives and an Englishmade knife. Witness identified two of the knives produced by the Crown and said the third was similar to the one sold to the man. Witness said there was something about the transaction which struck him as “unusual.” When he made a joke to the man about the knives witness said the man did not seem to think it was humorous. Mr Speight: Were you expecting the man to whom you sold the knives to be in the Magistrate’s Court? —Yes. Mr Williams: Even so, you were not sure you could identify the man?—No. Evidence given by F. J. Cairns, a pathologist, at the preliminary hearing was read to the Court as Cairns is now overseas. This said he was present when Mrs Kievit’s body was taken from the grave on the bank of the Oratia stream to the Auckland mortuary.

In his opinion death was ■caused by stab wounds, loss of blood and shock. He said any one of the stab wounds would not have been immediately fata] and he was unable to say whether mutilation of the body had taken place before death. There were no wounds on the arms or hands and there were no torn fingernails to indicate that a struggle had taken place. HAIR SAMPLES Donald Frederick Nelson, a forensic scientist attached to the D.5.1.R., Auckland, said he removed hairs from a piece of barbed wire. He also had a hair from a pair of man’s trousers and a sample of hair taken from the scalp of the deceased by Dr. Cairns. He considered it very probable that the hair from the barbed wire came from Mrs Kievit. The long hair could have come from her but it also could have come from some other source. In his opinion the hairs found on the wire had been torn out. Witness said cotton and woollen fibres found on pieces of tree and one of the knives corresponded with some articles of men’s clothing produced as exhibits. The hearing will continue on Monday.