COOGEE MYSTERY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 36, 11 August 1923, Page 7

COOGEE MYSTERY

STORY OF THE HUSBAND

WIFE'S DEATH CONCEALED.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.)

• SYDNEY, 10th August. During the hearing of the charge of misprision against Alfred Heaydon in connection with the Coogee mystery; the police produced two statements' made to them by Heaydon. In the first, he declared that when Ing wife left him he understood that she was going to stay with friends. She informed him' that she intended to undergo a certain operation. He tried to dissuade her, but the effort was futile. He alleged that he did not know she was dead, but he wrote to a sister-in-law stating that his wife was dead in order to stop correspondence. In a later statement, Heaydon said that he had visited his wife while she was in bed in a home. The nurse subsequently told him that his wife was dead. The nurse visited him and scared him by saying that she and he would be hanged. She urged avoidance of disgrace for his child's sake, also that it was his wife's absolute, wish that he should do nothing to cause disgrace for the child's sake. For these reasons he did not report the matter to the police. He did not see his wife after her death, and did not know what became of the body. Witnesses ga-ve evidence that Heaydon told them his wife had left him.

As the result of a report by medical officers, an inquest is being held on the bones found in connection ■with the Coogee mystery. \