Jail for brutal assault on elderly woman

Press, 20 November 1981, Page 19

Jail for brutal assault on elderly woman

For brutally bashing an elderly woman over the head with his fists, a footstool and a brass candlestick which shattered with the force of the blows, kicking her about the face as she lay on the floor, and then stealing money and taking her car, a young man was jailed for 18 months by Mr Justice Hardie Boys in the High Court yesterday. Ross Davies Miller, aged 29. unemployed, was sem tenced to 18 months imprisonment on charges of wounding Cecilia Mary Baddiley, aged 69, with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, unlawfully taking her car and stealing $B. The police statement said that Miller went.next door to Mrs Baddiley’s flat in Rangiora at 7.15 a.m. on August 27. She thought he had come to say goodbye as she believed that he was leaving that day to join the army. As she was bending over a table attending to a bird Miller hit her on the back on the head with his hands, struck her several blows with a stool and then with a brass candlestick which broke. While she was lying on the floor he kicked her about the face. After taking $8 and the woman’s car keys from her handbag he drove her car to the West Coast. He drove into Craddocks Service Station in Westport and when the vehicle had been filled with $23 worth of petrol he drove off without paying. He was apprehended by the police at a road block in the Buller Gorge. Mrs Baddiley, a widow, suffered two fractures, numerous large lacerations to the skull, and bruising to the cheeks and nose. She was admitted to the intensive care unit at Christchurch Hospital. Mr N. W. Williamson, for the Crown, said that it was a very brutal assault and a photograph showed a clear imprint of a ripple sole on the woman’s cheek. Later in the day Miller was sentenced to six months imprisonment on charges escaping from Addington Prison and theft by Judge Frampton in the District

Court. The term is to be served at the same time as the sentence imposed in the High Court. Mr P. H. B. Hall, for Miller, said that his client appeared for sentence on a horrible crime — a completely unjustified, unprovoked assault on a frail old lady. Such offences always caused a sense of outrage. The real difficulty in the case was trying to answer the question why? Miller was not a horrible human being. He had a pleasant manner and personality. The reports shed some light on the hidden side of his personality but it was hard to accept that Miller would act in this extraordinary callous way because he could not make emotional adjustment. There was nothing in Miller's past to suggest that he had a propensity for violence. He was not prepared to offer any explanation or excuse for himself. He simply accepted that he had to be punished for his crime. It was clear that there was no premeditation to the assault and the thefts which followed. In his own words “something clicked” when he went to say goodbye to his friend and neighbour, Mary Baddiley. The police accepted that there was no premeditation after a detailed interrogation about his intention when he went into the woman’s flat. If he had not been believed he would have been charged with aggravated robbery. There was no apparent motive for the crime, Mr Hall said. At the time Miller had been under considerable strain. He had no money and no job. He had told his mother and Mary Baddiley that he was going to be inducted into the army on the day he committed the offence. That was a lie and perhaps one Miller could not face up to or live with. His fantasy world was coming apart. At the aged of 29 he was living with his mother in a cramped pensioner flat — trapped with no money or prospects and about to be found out in his lie. Then something “clicked.” His offending was doomed to failure. He took off in Mary Biddiley’s car and it was only a matter of hours before the police caught up with him. The whole thing made no sense unless it was a way out of a hopeless abyss. Miller recognised the enor-

mity of his crime when he told the interviewing policeman: “I don’t know why I hit her. We get on good together. It’s like hitting your mother.” “I suggest the reason why he won’t discuss the offence is because he feels so wretched about it,” Mr Hall said. “Miller knows he is going to prison. He wanted to plead guilty' from the moment of his apprehension.” Although he had some previous minor convictions this was the first time Miller had been to prison. He had spent three months in custody and by pleading guilty had saved the taxpayer the cost of a trial and Mary Baddiley and his mother from the distress of having to give evidence against him. The assault on Mary Baddiley was severe and the result could have been far more serious but it appeared that she had not suffered any permanent disability. In view of the matters in the psychiatric report a direction for treatment would be appropriate, Mr Hall said. His Honour said that the case puzzled and worried him. Miller had very properly admitted what his counsel had described as a horrible and unjustified attack on an elderly lady. It was a brutal crime. “You hit her from behind on the head several times with a stool and a brass candlestick and kicked her in the face while she was on the ground. She was severely injured,” said his Honour. Fortunately, she had apparently made a full recovery although as a result of the attack she had been too terrified to live on her own any longer and had to go and live with her son in Auckland. “The extraordinary thing about the case is that this old lady was. a close friend of your mother and lived next door. You were friendly with her and she let you into the house and was quite unprepared for what happened to her,” his Honour said. He accepted that the offence was not premeditated but was the result of a spontaneous outburst. The big question was why and he hoped that Miller was asking himself that question. It was clear that he had problems of a psychological nature. The charge of wounding with intent was very serious and that type of violence was all to common, said his Honour.