MURDER AND SUICIDE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 62, 10 September 1937, Page 11

MURDER AND SUICIDE

A SYDNEY TRAGEDY

CHILDREN TERRIFIED

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, September 2.

Jealousy is believed to be the motive which led Charles McCormick, 45, to murder Mrs. Dorothy Hay, 37, in a Coogee house and to commit suicide.

Terrified neighbours, straining their ears for sounds of the struggle, heard nothing but the blare of a dance tune from a radio set in the house. They had seen Mrs. Hay, with her throat bleeding, dragged up the front steps into the house by McCormick. She was struggling. One neighbour heard a woman's voice cry out: "Quick, save me." Another heard a man shout: "I'll fix her this time." Mrs. Hay, who had -been separated from her husband, had been living with McCormick for some years.

When detectives arrived they had to hack their way through the back door. As they entered they, heard a thud in the front bedroom, where they found Mrs, Hay, apparently dead, and McCormick still breathing. Both had their throats cut. A razor with a broken handle lay near the bodies.

Mrs. Hay, a mother of four children, was well liked in the neighbourhood, but little was known of McCormick, who had been employed in two hospitals as a laundryman. Mrs. Hay had been employed in a city restaurant. A snapshot of Mrs. Hay was found, on the back of which McCormick had vritten: "The only woman I have ever loved."

Shortly after.' the police arrived, Doreen, aged nine, the youngest child, came home. She was taken into the care of neighbours. It was then realised that another girl, Beryl, 11, and a boy, John, 14, were missing. An hour later they were found crouched behind bushes on a hill overlooking their home. They were terrified, and although unaware of what had . happened, shrank from going to the house. They were taken in by neighbours. The eldest child, Eric, 15, is working in the country.