WAIKINO TRAGEDY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 136, 10 June 1940, Page 11

WAIKINO TRAGEDY

MURDER ALLEGED

CHARGE AGAINST TRUCKER

LOWER COURT CASE

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

WAIHI, This Day.

Arrested at Waihi at the beginning of May, Douglas Herbert Cartman, single, aged 22, previously employed as a trucker in the Martha gold mine, appeared before Mr. W. H. Freeman, S.M., in the Waihi Magistrate's Court today, charged with the murder at Waikino on April 2 of Elizabeth Agnes Hamilton, a married woman, aged 27, whose body was found next morning in scrub on the side of the WaikinoWaitewheta road, three miles away from where that of Lloyd Moran, aged 15, son of the then proprietor of the Waikino Hotel, Mr. J. J. Moran, was found.

Moran and Mrs. Hamilton, who was a cook at the hotel, had gone for a stroll on the evening before. '

The Crown Prosecutor, Mr. V. R. Meredith, with him Mr. N. I. Smith, is conducting the case for the prosecution, .and Mr. F. McCarthy, Auckland, is appearing for the accused. Twentyeight witnesses have been subpoenaed, and it is expected that the hearing.will last at least two full days. ■ :

The first witness was Stanley- Eric Anderson, Public Works Department engineer at Paeroa, who surveyed the Paeroa-Waihi highway from 15 chains on the Paeroa side of Waikino. Hotel. He detailed measurements taken, including one of 150 feet where a car tyre track left the roadway to where it rejoined the road. Two skidmarks, one'of 77 feet and another of 21 feet, were observed, together with a mark six feet long, beginning at the end.of the former mark. Other marks appeared to have been made by an object having been dragged over the consolidated clay. Witness also produced plans showing where both bodies were found, and he detailed the position of. numerous bloodstains in the intermediate vicinity of where ~the boy's body was found at, a point 16 feet below the road, from whence the bloodstains led. Sergeant/T. Dunn had shown the witness where a tyre lever and part of a woman's clothing . had. been, found near Mrs..Hamilton's body.

Constable Arthur Albert Gudsell, Hamilton, produced' photographs of the two bodies and of the principal localities mentioned in the previous witness's evidence. .

Constable Victor Naylor, Auckland, produced further photos relating to the site of a motor-car accident near the Waikino Hotel and of the accused's house and garage in Walmsley Road, Waihi. A skirt found in a .gully in Willows Road and a shoe in the scrub at the back of the accused's house* were subjects of other photographs.

Olwyn Mary Shaw, waitress, at the Waikino Hotel, gave evidence of the clothes Mrs. Hamilton was wearing on the night of April 2.

(Proceeding.)