ROCKDALE TRAGEDY

Evening Star, Issue 20023, 14 November 1928, Page 4

ROCKDALE TRAGEDY

GORONIAL INQUIRY

Prow i«oaiafioa—By Tolc.jrni.ph—'Copyright.

SYDNEY, November 13. The coroner to-day inquired into illo Rockdale tragedy, Thomas Stanway, a local tobacconist, related tho homicidal conversations of Garnet Alexander Robb, who killed four members of the household, and then committed suicide. Robb just before tho tragedy talked of razors and rides in a most eccentric way.

The coroner commented that if Stanway had communicated Robb’s homicidal' tendencies to the police it was quite possible thnt tbe Palmer family might have been alive to-day.

Dr Egan, who knew Robb at Nimbin, said he had treated Robb for delusions in 1927. He had then feared that people were injuring and persecuting him. Tho coroner returned a verdict that the victims had died from bullet wounds inflicted by Robb, who had committed suicide in the same manner while mentally deranged. [A sensational shooting aII ray occurred at Rockdale on November 1. when Alexander Robb entered a house and blazed away with a revolve]’. Ho killed three women and a man, and then turned the w’eapou on himself. Robb was described as a religious maniac and a Spiritualist, and tho family with whom he was staying was known to be trying to get him out of the house.]