Accused ‘flew into rage’

Press, 8 May 1978, Page 14

Accused ‘flew into rage’

PA Napier. An American civil engineer has been committeed for trial in the Supreme Court at Napier later this month, on charges of murder and attempted murder. The accused, Claude Russell Caldwell, aged 36, pleaded not guilty at the end of a lower court hearing at Napier to charges that he murdered Geoffrey Easthope, aged 24, and attempted to murder his wife, Billie Eugenia Caldwell, aged 35, at Napier on April 7. Detective Sergeant J. E. Clews said that Caldwell had made ■ a statement in which he had said that he “flew into a rage” when he saw his wife and another man having sexual intercourse in a flat adjoining their own. Caldwell, employed by an American company installing an industrial power unit for the Electricity Department at Whirinaki, said in the statement that he was discharged from hosptial on April 7, after a haemhorroids operation a week earlier. Later that evening, he had gone to look for his wife when she had not returned from a neigh-

hour’s house, where she “was going to listen to music.” While looking for her he had heard her voice from the adjoining flat as he passed its bedroom window. The statement said that looking in, he had seen his wife and another man both naked and “making love.” Caldwell has said that he then rushed into the flat, picked up a knife that had been left lying on a bench, and burst into the bedroom, where he stabbed the man several times.

He had followed his wife back into their own flat, where he had hit her as she attempted to call the police. He had stopped stabbing her when she had said, “Don’t kill me, think about the children.”

Detective Sergeant Clews said that Caldwell had declined to sign the statement, but had written an addition which said that he was reluctant to sign as he was concerned about his future, and that the contents of the statement were not “verbatim,” nor did they convey the “grief and remorse” which he felt.