Triple murder charge for man
NZPA-AAP Canberra The police have charged a 28-year-old Sydney man with three counts of murder after the pickaxe killing of two women and the strangulation of a baby. A spokesman for Queanbeyan detectives said yesterday Paul Gerald Mason would be held in custody overnight and charged in the Queanbeyan Magisrates Court today with the three murders.
Mason, unemployed, from Riverstone in Sydney’s west, was co-operating with the police in their investigations, the detective said.
Queanbeyan detectives yesterday took Mason to the scene of the first murder, at Gundaroo, about 50km north of Canberra.
He also agreed to go with detectives to the New South Wales south coast town of Pambula where the other two murders occurred.
On May 12 Mary Alice Clark, aged 29, then 11 weeks pregnant, was beaten before being left to die in her farm cottage at Gundaroo.
Her son, aged 12 months, was found asleep and unharmed. Last Thursday Ruth Ferguson, aged 25, and her eight-month-old son, Mark, were murdered at their home in Pambula.
Mrs Ferguson had been struck about the head with a rock climbing pickaxe. Mark had been strangled. Their husband and father, a school teacher, Greg Ferguson, aged 26, found their bodies in the boot of the family car on returning from work. The police found Mason’s 1982 Sigma sedan bogged near the Clark home on Friday afternoon with a loaded .303 rifle inside. Mason turned himself in to Canberra police late on Saturday and he was immediately transferred to Queanbeyan.
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Press, 31 July 1989, Page 1
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254Triple murder charge for man Press, 31 July 1989, Page 1
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