CHARGE AGAINST WOMAN

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 July 1936, Page 5

CHARGE AGAINST WOMAN

PATHOLOGIST’S EVIDENCE.

[PEB PRESS ASSOCIATION.] NAPIER. July 24. The hearing of five charges of using an illegal instrument against a Hastings woman, Isabel Annie Aves. alias Craike, was continued this afternoon. Four women gave evidence of having been successfully operated upon with the object of procuring a certain result. The charges made by the accused varied in amount up to £35. One witness said detectives visited accused’s house, and accused told witness they had been there in the afternoon. Mrs Aves told witness the detectives had found a body in the garden, and instructed witness to tell them she had buried it herself. She had not done so. A resident of Palmerston North stated he. knew accused when he was in business as a grocer in Hastings. In addition to this, he was employed as salesman for a firm of general merchants and druggists. She asked him to procure certain articles for her. This he did from a Wellington firm.

Phillip Patrick Lynch, pathologist at Wellington Hospital, said that on June 26 he accompanied Detective Farquharson to accused’s house. He was present when officers exposed the body of an infant buried in a duck pen at the rear of the premises of accused. it was buried ten inches deep and surrounded with lime. It was not decomposed. At the morgue a post-mortem examination of the body was made. It was the body’ of a female weighing six pounds six ounces. There were no external marks of violence. “Appearances would, be accounted for only by the child having breathed either during actual delivery or after birth," said witness, who added that he formed the opinion that the child had received no attention after birth, and he could form no opinion how long the child had survived after birth. He could find nothing which pointed to suffocation as a cause of death. Examination of another foetus uncovered a. few feet from where the other was found showed that, it had developed for six months. It had possibly been buried for some days, possibly a week or two. He did not think that it was viable. He saw foetal remains dug up from the kitchen garden of number 20. None of the remains, with perhaps one exception, appeared to be those of a viable child.

The court adjourned at 10 p.m. this evening until to-morrow morning, when five further witnesses will be heard. ACCUSED COMMITTED. NAPIER, July 25. At to-day’s hearing, Detective Farquharson said that he visited accused’s house, armed with a search warrant. He found medical articles, promissory notes etc, <md two account books. There were two women in bed in the house.

Witness then detailed the digging operations. Tlie discoveries resulted in the arrest of Aves. who said she could not account for what had been found in the yard. Many foetal remains were discovered. Two instruments had been recovered with two lots of remains.

Detective Mills gave corroborative evidence.

Constable Chalmers stated that when he was in accused’s bathroom, (he latter said “It looks as if (hey have got me this time." Accused was committed for trial.