YOUTH ON TRIAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 108, 10 May 1938, Page 18

YOUTH ON TRIAL

SWANSON TRAGEDY

CHARGE OF MURDER

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, May 9. The hearing of the charge against Francis Borgia Spensley, aged 19, of murdering his father, Robert Fitzroy Spensley, at Swanson on February 7, was continued in the Supreme Court today. The trial is being held before Mr. Justice Fair and a jury. Mr. V. R. Meredith, with him Mr. N. I. Smith, is prosecuting, and Mr. Allan J. Moody is appearing for the accused. Mrs. Selina Winslow, widow, Swanson, said that the accused was a friend of her sons and came to sleep in a tent with some of them about the first week in February. Later he brought guns with him and brought a motorcar. She saw him signing a cheque and he said his father had told him to do so. She insisted on the accused taking away the guns he had brought, and she afterwards found .22 calibre cartridges in the washhouse. In answer to Mr. Moody, witness said the accused had two fingers bruised when he came to her. He was quite a good worker on the farm. He was very nervous and seeme<J to be afraid of things. He used to sit and mope a lot and did not have too happy a time on the farm. Mr. Moody: Would you say he appeared to be a neglected boy? Witness: I should think so. A schoolboy, Sidney Keith Winslow, aged nearly 14, son of the previous witness, said that when the accused came to them in February he said his father was at Waihi prospecting and would be away for a few weeks. To Mr. Moody witness said the accused had two finger-nails off when he came to them in February. He always appeared frightened and nervous. Answering his Honour, witness said the accused told him he got the injury when his father was giving him a hiding and he put up his hand to ward off a blow. Constable John Norton, Henderson, said that the accused had told him he had shot his father with a pea-rifle. A near neighbour of the dead man, Lewis Charles Shaw, said he last saw him alive on February 6 or 7. In cross-examination, witness, said that the accused was a well-mannered boy, but he appeared to be nervous and highly strung. He did practically all the work on the farm. "I reckon he was overworked," said the witness. Mr. Moody: I am instructed that the boy was frightened of his father?

Witness: Yes, he was. He almost lived in terror of his father on occasions?— That is the way it appeaif d. , Witness said he had seen the father chasing the boy about the farm, and had seen him throw a lump of wood at him. i Mr. Moody: It is suggested the boy was worked like a slave? Witness: Yes, he was. A daughter of the dead man, and a half-sister of the accused, Mrs. Sarah Agnes lima Pender, said she lived at her father's house for some months in 1936, and her father and the accused were getting on very well then. Witness had not completed her evidence when the Court adjourned.