Murder charge

Press, 31 March 1981, Page 9

Murder charge

Kenneth Francis Joseph Linton, aged 31. a machine operator, charged with the murder of Kathleen Hilda Fleet in her North Beach home on March 2. was further remanded to Sunnyside Hospital until April 13. when he appeared before Judge Bisphan in the District Court. Sargeant B. N. Thompson sought the lifting of the earlier interim suppression order of the defendant's name because of the acute embarrassment being caused to the dead woman’s husband and family. The lifting of the interim suppression order was opposed bv Mr S. K. Kaminski, on the instructions of the defendant's counsel (Mr B. McClelland Q.C.) who is in Wellington. Suppression of the defendant’s name was lifted. Linton appeared at a special sitting in the District Court, charged with Mrs Fleet’s murder, in the early evening of March 2.' When the police were called, to the house in North Beach earlier that afternoon they found the body of the 25-year-old victim in the kitchen. She had stab wounds and her -head was almost decapitated. Several articles recovered from the house included an axe and some knives.