Further Evidence In Murder Trial At Dunedin

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 October 1948, Page 7

Further Evidence In Murder Trial At Dunedin

(P.A.) DUNEDIN, This Day. Further evidence was heard in the Supreme Court this morning in the trial of John Fraser, aged 48, a brewery employee, who is charged with the murder of Alexander Sickels at Abbotsford on the night oi August 4. William Frank Self, a neighbour of Fraser, identified a' 12-gauge double-barrelled shot gun as one he had lent to Fraser on August 4. Fraser had come to him at 5.15 p.m., said Self, remarking that he wanted to go shooting next day. Fraser’s son, John Malcolm Fraser, a labourer, aged 20, said that his mother had left home after an argument with his father. It had been a “little bit of an argument,” his father had told him. His father went off his food, could not sleep and did not feel like doing anything about the house after Mrs Fraser left. Witness said that his mother had told his father a day or two before the tragedy that “she was definitely going for a separation.” His father fold "him that the “Sickels were behind it.” On the night of the tragedy the accused left about 6.15, saying that he war going to a euchre party. Dorothy Grace Sickels, wife of the dead man, said that about 8 o’clock on the night of the tragedy there was “a strange knock” at the door. She was knitting and her husband reading in the sitting room. Her husband went out. “Nobody spoke,” said Mrs Sickels, “and I thought it was'strange. I got up and stepped out into the passage. I saw Fraser with a gun pushing my husband back. Nobody spoke. Fraser looked at me and I said, ‘Don't do it, Jack.’ He pulled the trigger and my husband fell back. . “Fraser turned to me and said. ‘Now for- you.’ He was after me and I rushed back into the sitting room. I turned the key smartly. I was in a daze for a minute. Then I rushed to the window and called for help. I knew no one would hear me on account of being in the back street. I cot out of the window. I don’t know how I did it. I pulled it with me and fell into the garden. I ran on tmtoe to Todds next door, and told Todd that Alex had been shot. I then collapsed.” The lunch adjournment was then taken.