SYDNEY SHOOTING

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 October 1946, Page 8

SYDNEY SHOOTING

WOMAN ALLEGES BRIBE OFFER EVIDENCE FOE THE CROWN SYDNEY, October 17. Evidence that David Stewart Dawson offered her £5OOO to keep out of he Palm Beach shooting case was given by Mrs. Mary Ann Verspoor, the wife of an American, when the hearing of the case was resumed today. The witness had accompanied David Stewart Dawson, his sister, and George Rankin Mac Kay in a hired car to Palm Beach on the afternoon of September 8. She gave an account of happenings at the Stewart Dawsons’ which, she said, she was visiting Cor the first time. __ Witness continued that, when David Slewart Dawson fired two shots, Slewart. Dawson senior, was brandishing a bottle, but Mac Kay had his hands in his pockets. Stewart Dawson kicked Mac Kay in the face and on the leg after he had fallen. Two days later, she had telephoned l he defendant to ask about a handbag which she had left at Palm Beach. He replied that ho wanted to see her, and he insisted on doing so. Twenty minuates later, he came to her flat. He suggested that Mac Kay ■should say it was an accident, and he asked her to see Mac Kay for him. She replied that Mac Kay could not be bought off. He suggested that Mac Kay should say that he attacked Stewart Dawson senior, because of a mental flashback brought on by the war. She replied that she would not commit perjury. It was then that he offered her £5OOO at the rate of £5OO yearly for five years. She replied: “David, I won't be bought! I won’t be sold!” His response was: “Well, maybe, I cannot buy you, hut I am certain that I can. sell you.”

This had infuriated her so that she said that she did not, care whether he went up for five years or twentyfive, In leaving ho threatened her about revelations in Court. The de- • endant again rang her on September 17, but she refused to see him, or to act as a go-between.