TAKING OF LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 137, 11 June 1936, Page 22

TAKING OF LIFE

, CAPITAL PUNISHMENT REVIVAL OF CONTROVERSY CASES IX AUSTRALIA (From "The Post's" Repressntative.) SYDNEY, June 4. The hanging of a murderer in Melbourne and the decision of the New South Wales Cabinet that another [ should be hanged here have again rejvived controversy about capital punishment, which had only recently died down following the execution of Edwin Hickey, a youth who killed a man in a train between the Blue Mountains and Sydney. The Melbourne murderer was Arnold Sodeman, 36, who was found guilty of killing a six-year-old girl at Leongatha, and, according to a confession he made to the police and produced at his trial, had similarly killed three other girls in the last few years by binding and Suffocating them. He stated that he killed them without motive, but from an irresistible desire. An appeal was made to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on behalf of Sodeman, but it was dismissed. From the time of his arrest in December until his execution he spoke only 13 words at the inquest, the trial, and the execution. This is unique among condemned men in Melbourne. Neither his wife, relatives, nor friends saw him after his arrest, his only visitors being his solicitor and a clergyman. After his arrest he said he wanted ,to be hanged, because he could not help himself. Shortly before his execution he told the deputy governor at Pentridge gaol that he was "glad it was nearly over." A DISEASED BRAIN. A post-mortem examination showed that Sodeman's brain was diseased and showed early lepto-meningitis, which was causing gradual mental degeneration. A doctor who specialises in diseases of the brain said that leptomeningitis had no specific cause and no specific effect, but it would lead to paralysis of the brain, causing mental trouble of various kinds. The disease can persist for years without causing death, but can bring about serious congestion of the brain should the subject take much alcohol. At the trial of Sodeman three doctors, all lunacy experts, seated that Sodeman was .suffering from some mental disorder and at times was not conscious of what he was doing. The Sydney murderer condemned this week to be hanged on June 15 was James Leighton Massey, 21, who shot and killed Norman Stead, after having attempted to* rob the Star Service Station, Darlinghurst, on the night of February 10. Massey claimed that Stead rushed at' him and made a grab at the pistol, and that in the struggle the safety catch must have been released. He denied that he had fired the shot, saying that all he had the pistol for was "to scare him." Massey, a married man who came from Victoria, declared that he was badly pressed for money, and it was with the object of trying to raise his fare back to Melbourne that" he decided to hold up the service station. The pistol, he said, he had found in a Melbourne park. He had had,the pistol for about twelve months —it had a fascination for him, he said. He admitted in crossexamination that, armed with the same revolver, he had held up a garage in Old South Head Road and had taken £5 4s. LIFE SENTENCES. Aubrey Potter, who was with Massey when the murder was committed and had been sentenced to death, had his sentence commuted to years' hard labour. Massey had said that Potter did not know the revolver was loaded, and had stood outside the garage when Massey entered it. The Executive Council, which endorsed the Cabinet's decision about Massey-and Potter, commuted the sentence of death'on four other murderers to penal servitude for life. These were Lionel John Roberts, 17, who murdered Robert King, 22, grazier, at Moor.oob.ee Station, near Tamworth, on February 14; Roy Malcolm Souter, 17, murderer of Christopher Bolger, 22, grazier, near Wagga on December 30; James Earsman, 67, sentenced for the murder of John Hewett, 94, who was found battered to death in a hut in Gilgandra on January 19; Percival Henry Thompson, 55, sentenced for the murder of his wife and mother-in-law, at Parramatta on December 27. It was ordeVed that all except Earsman should never be released.