Detective tells of finding boy’s body

Press, 23 August 1979, Page 7

Detective tells of finding boy’s body

A Supreme Court jury yesterday found a boy, aged 15, guilty of the murder of his half-brother, aged five, and half-sister, aged three. The accused was sentenced to. life imprisonment on each charge by Mr Justice Casey. The accused’s name and those of a number of witnesses were suppressed.

Detective Robert Thomas George Ealatn, the officer-in-charge at the murder scene, said that the body of the boy was lying on its back with the head towards the top of the bed. There was blood on the pillow and ah impression of a bloody handprint. The clothes on the bed of the girt were very disarranged and one cot blanket was lying on the floor. On both beds were cuts which went right through the bed clothing and into the mattress. There were bloodstains on the walls and on the carpet near a teddy bear, Detective Ealam said. Dr Richard Arthur Cartwright said that he examined accused at 6.10 a.m. on March 27. There were no signs of injury on him nor blood stains. He was very quiet and had no spontaneous conversation. Most of the discussion with accused involved questions and answers.

Accused had told him that the previous evening he had been left to babysit for the two young children while his father and stepmother went out. The children had been very noisy and that had upset him.

Dr Cartwright said that accused was reluctant to discuss events from the time of the alleged stabbing. He became rather sleepy towards Ute end of the interview and his voice was low. However, accused had given some account of events following the stabbing. Accused had told him that he had been very frightened and had gone to the home of his girl-friend. To Mr R. L.’Kerr, who appeared with Mr G.jM. Brodie for the accused, Dr Cartwright said that accused did not seem to be unduly upset Witness expected that a boy of 15 might have shown some signs of having been crying in the circumstances or have been apologetic. He did not show much sign of any emotion but that could

have: been because he was tired. In his final address to the jury Mr N. W. Williamson, who with Mr I, A. McCaw, appeared for the Crown, asked what other reason there could be for the boy fleeing from his home and having blood on his hand when he arrived at his girlfriend’s place, other than he had stabbed two children in anger.

There was no doubt that the two children were murdered and that fact had not been challenged by the defence. Members of the jury might well wonder why the children were killed by the accused. Accused had told Dr Cartwright, who had examined him in the early hours of March 27, that the children were very noisy and that had upset him. He admitted that the children were often noisy and they had not done it deliberately to annoy him.

“Because of the force used and the number of stab wounds members of the jury might wonder about the sanity of the person who committed the offences but sanity is not an issue in this trial,” Mr Williamson said. The cumulative effect of all the evidence was that there was an overwhelming case against accused. He had been left in charge of the children who were asleep in bed when his step mother left for work at 6.40 p.m. Accused was watching television.

At 8.10 p.m. there was no reply to a telephone call to accused’s home by his step mother. It was between those times that the children died. At 8.30 p.m. accused arrived at his girlfriend’s place and told her that the two children were dead and he claimed that he had been held while a “group of guys from up north” killed them. Accused showed the blood on his hand to the girl and it was a strange feature of the case that no blood was found on his clothing. It was not known if accused had changed his clothing after stabbing the children. it was highly significant that accused had a knife in his possession and that he showed it to his.' girl-friend, Mr Williamson said. If persons had burst into

the house and stabbed the two children why did not accused go for help. Instead he fled from the house and went to sleep in the Linwood Park pavilion. That was not the action of an innocent person who had just witnessed two small children, of whom he was in charge, murdered in their beds, said Mr Williamson. Mr Kerr, in his address to the jury, said that the tragedy on this night evoked tremendous sympathy for the mother and father of the dead children, but all such emotion had to be put aside and the evidence considered dispassionately. The Crown said that accused had killed his stepbrother and step-sister but it had failed miserably to prove the allegation beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury had to be left in a considerable doubt as to what actually happened on this night. There was nothing ’ to suggest apart from normal sibling rivalry that there was any real hatred by accused of the two children. It was only natural that he should flee from the house

in shock and horror after witnessing the deaths of the youngsters. If accused had killed the children why was no blood found on his clothing? He was supposed to have the knife used in the stabbing in his pocket, yet no blood was found inside the pocket. There was no evidence to show that accused had changed his clothing. Why was there no evidence as to who had made the bloody handprint found on one of the pillows? The police had not bothered to inquire as they had jumped to the conclusion that accused had done it and had set out to get him. The Crown had failed lamentably to establish any motive even though it was not required to. Accused had absolutely no reason to carry out the dastardly offences which occun-ed in his home on that night, Mr Kerr said. The only possible conclusion members of the jury could come to on the evidence was that there was a very real doubt as to what happened on this night and the verdict had to be not guilty on both counts, said Mr Kerr.