MURDER OF PARENTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1936, Page 2

MURDER OF PARENTS

ACCUSED MAN INSANE. [per press association.] DUNEDIN, May 11. The hearing commenced at the Supreme Court of the charge against Stanley Davidson, of murder at Rayensbcurne, on February 25, of his father, Thomas Davidson, and his mother, Agnes Mclntosh Davidson. Accused, who nleaded not guilty, was represented by Mr. J. M. Paterson. The Crown Prosecutor said that accused lived with his parents and a brother and sister. When the latter two left home, accused was in bed, apparently normal. Three hours later, a neighbour heard Mrs. Davidson screaming. She rushed towards the neighbour with hands upraised and covered with blood. The neighbour also saw Davidson lying face down, and accused standing over him, beating him with an axe or' tomahawk. It would appear that Mrs. Davidson had been attacked, that the husband went to her rescue, and when seen by the neighbour, she was running back in the hope of rescuing her husband. The police shortly afterwards arrived. When questioned by Chief Detective Young, accused said: “I have slogged them with an axe.” Asked why, he replied: “Just temper. They were nagging a man.” The Crown Prosecutor added that the whole issue of the case would b c that of insanity. Accused had formerly been an inmate of a mental hospital. The Crown Prosecutor understood that medical men would say that at the time of the offence, accused was suffering from a mental disease. The facts were such that he did not feel it his duty to controvert the evidence of the medical men.

Evidence for the Crown was then called.

Mr. Paterson called Doctor Hayes. Superintendent of Seacliff Mental Hospital, who said he first examined the accused in November, 1933, and then found him in the early stages of a state of mind in which there was a separation between the thought processes and the emotional side of the mind. There was a gradual withdrawal from reality with emotional apathy. In March, 1935, he was admitted as a. voluntary patient, and in April was definitely committed. He then suffered from delusions and hallucinations.

Alter hearing the medical evidence that the deed was committed in an insane frenzy, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on the ground of insanity.

Judge Kennedy ordered that accused be kept in strict custody at Seacliff till the Minister of Justice’s pleasure was known.

NOT GUILTY. DUNEDIN, May 9. The jury returned at 2.42 p.m., with a verdict of not guilty, in the case in which Hugh Urquhart Neil Gunn was charged with the murder of William Beatty, at Waitepeka, on February 22.