WIFE-MURDER ALLEGED

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 November 1931, Page 5

WIFE-MURDER ALLEGED

HAMILTON MAN’S TRIAL STATEMENT TO DOCTOR [PER PEE 8 8 ASSOCIATION.]

HAMILTON, November 4. The trial of Arthur Walter Smith, 50 years, charged with alleged murder of his wife, Lois Alexander Smith, 29 years, at her home in Liverpool Street, Whitiora, on the night of October 3, opened before Mr Wyvern Wilson, S.M. at the Hamilton Magistrate’s Court to-day. Prisoner, who walked into court

without assistance, was permitted to sit in the dock. The first witness, Dr. A. G. Waddell, stated that he was called to the scene of the tragedy by a girl, giving the name of Phyllis Smith, who told him that father was spitting blood. Witness hurried to the house and was met

on the footpath by Phyllis. He entered the house and saw the prisoner at a bedroom door. He was in his pyjamas and slippers. The pyjamas ■were covered with blood, and he was wiping blood from his hands with a handkerchief. Witness then noticed Mrs Smith lying on the floor dead.

Witness stated that Smith pointed in his wife’s direction muttering: "She’s all she’s all right.” Smith was bleeding from the throat and spitting blood. Witness bandaged Smith, telling Phyllis to ring for the ambulance and the police. When witness returned to the bedroom, the baby was crying in a cot near accused’s bed.

Witness again attended to Smith, and while doing so, Smith said that he had been working about seven weeks up north. He said he would not have the children disgraced by their mother having relations with other men. He said he saw his wife meet another man and go off with him in a bus.

Witness described in detail the knife wounds in the throat and on the body. The cause of death was haemorrhage due to severance of the jugular vein. Constable V. Naylor produced photos of the room shortly after the fatality. Constable Fraser, who arrived at the scene of the tragedy shortly after midnight, said that he met Dr. Waddell at the gate, and they saw Smith together in the kitchen. He was sitting on a stool, and holding his head between his hands. There was blood all down the front of his pyjamas, and his throat was bandaged. Witness assisted Smith to the ambulance. The prisoner at the time remarked, “She went too far. She went too far.”

There w r as no sign of drink on accused, who appeared calm. Witness described the condition of the room,

; and said that the body of Mrs Smith was lying at the foot of the bed, on [her right side, with her head in a pool of blood. Constable Fraser, continuing, said that a blood-stained knife was lying on the'dressing table. There did not appear to be signs of a struggle. Witness found some trousers on the floor, in the pocket of which there was a letter, in which prisoner said that his wife came home shortly after 11 o’clock on the night of the tragedy, and would not answer him, when he asked if she would have supper. He had been told she had been out with another man. “It was too hard after all I have sacrificed for her,” the letter concluded. Accompanying the letter was prisoner’s last will and testament, written on a sheet of paper in pencil. Smith in this bequeathed all his real and personal property and insurance moneys to his sister, to be held in trust for his children, and used to settle his debts, following:his decease. (Proceeding.)