DEATH SENTENCE ON COUPLE

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 December 1935, Page 12

DEATH SENTENCE ON COUPLE

' MURDER OF CHILD. ' LONDON. October IS. James Henry r Mills and his wife, Edith, both aged 62. of John Brightstreet, Blackburn, were found guilty at Lancaster Assizes yesterday of the murder of Helen Chester, 3. the daughter of Mr and Mrs Charles Chester, next-door-neighbours. The jury added a recommendation to mercy in the case of the woman. When asked why sentence of death should not be passed. Mills said, “I am absolutely innocent." His wife, who is very deaf, made no reply. Both accused were sentenced to death. Earlier in the proceedings, Mr W. Gorman. K.C., and Mr Glynn Blackledge, who appeared for .lames Milk; and Edith Mills respectively, stated,

‘‘l do not call any evidence.” The child was missed on Sunday, Juno 30. and the prosecution alleged that on the Monday smoke and pieces of paper were seen issuing from the chimney of the Mills’s house. Later a parcel was found, containing parts of the body of a child, these beingburned. Mr J. C. Jackson, K.C., prosecuting, said the case depended upon what was known as circumstantial evidence. No 'one had been called to suggest that it might have been an accident. Summing up. Mr Justice Hilhery referred to the finding of a carbolic soapy liquid in the copper of prisoners’ house. He said that perhaps a body had been removed from the fire, and Io remove the smell or, perhaps something else, the hands might have been washed in the liquid—in the words of Shakespeare, ‘‘to wash the filthy witness from my hands.’’