RAMARAMA MURDER CASE

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 85, 8 October 1915, Page 4

RAMARAMA MURDER CASE

END OF THE INQUEST ACCUSED COMMITTED FOR TRIAL. (IT TELEGRAPH— PRESS ASSOCIATION.) AUCKLAND, 7th October. The inquest concerning the death of John Thomas Perry, who was murdered at Ramarama on 25th September, was concluded to-day. The Coroner returned the following verdict: — "I find that John Thomas Perry was murdered by being shot through the head while lying in bed in his house at Ramarama. The evidence shows that the muzzle of the gun from which the shot was fired was held either against joy within two feet of deceased's forehead. The nature of the wound and the angle at which the shot was evidently fired render it most unlikely that the person who discharged the gun was at the time outside the room in which deceased was lying. The evidence shows that deceased's wife had for some considerable time past been improperly intimate with the witness M'Dowell, and had been partly on that account on bad terms with her husband, and had also spoken of leaving him. There -is no suggestion that deceased had any enemies. Mrs. Perry was in the bedroom with deceased at the time the shot was fired, and it would have been difficult for any other person to have left the room, which was filled with moonlight, after the shot had been fired, without having been seen, or heard by her. The gun, of which one barrel had been recently discharged, was found in the house. The evidence shows, so far as Mrs. Perry is concerned, a combination of motive, opportunity, and means, and an absence of any evidence tending to implicate anybody else, but, in fairness to her, in view of the fact that she now stands charged with the murder of the deceased, and in view also of the fact that the evidence is circumstantial and inferential, I do not propose to find definitely against her, or to analyse the evidence in detail. It is sufficient to justify her being committed for trial, and it* is in the interests of justice that I should not make a definite finding which might affect the minds of the jury wlio will try her." Accused was subsequently committed for trial.