STATION TRAGEDY

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 210, 2 June 1944, Page 6

STATION TRAGEDY

Inquest Into Deaths Of Victims , MURDER AND SUICIDE (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) GISBORNE. June 1. The story of the tragedy at Bexhaven Station on May 18 in which Mrs, Lois Rosemund Mill lostxher life was told at the inquest before Mr. E. L. Walton today. ’ . . The evidence of the principal witness, a Maori youth working on the property, showed that Taia Matu, aged 15, demanded shotgun cartridges from Mrs. Mill, enforcing his demand by taking her by the throat. When he was told where the cartridges could be found he partly strangled Mrs. Mill and battered her head, leaving her hidden under the bed in the spare room. The assault took place outside the house and Mrs. Mill was still living apparently when she was dragged inside. Medical evidence indicated that she died subsequently from shock and loss of blood. Matu later told his workmate the story of his attack and said, according to the other boy, that had Mrs. Mill’s ■ children come upon him while he was committing the crime he would have killed them too. r George Mill, husband of the murdered woman, said that Matu had come to him from the Child Welfare Department two months previously, and in consequence of an incident on April 16 when Matu and his workmate had taken horses without permission he asked' the child welfare officer to visit the! station. Witness knew no reason why Matu should hold a grudge, against his wife. The coroner found that Mrs. Mill died from shock following on concussion and loss of blood from bead injuries received on May 18. A verdict of death by a self-inflicted gunshot wound was returned at the inquest into the death of Taia Matu, who was found dead in a scrub-covered gully two days after the death of Mrs. Mill. The superintendent of the Child Welfare Department, Mr. J. R. McClune, in a statement relative to the employment of wards of the department, said that Mr. G. Mill wns a first-class employer for such boys and had been successful with others entrusted to him. Matu was a persistent absconder but had not previously shown any tendency to violence.