CHILD MURDER CHARGE EVIDENCE IS CONCLUDED

Grey River Argus, 7 May 1948, Page 3

CHILD MURDER CHARGE EVIDENCE IS CONCLUDED

BLOODSTAINS ARE IN QUESTION CHRISTCHURCH, May 6. When the hearing of the charge against William Eric Cooper, of murdering Leslie James Boswell, was resumed in the Supreme Court to-day, Mr J. K. Moloney, for the defence rasied an objection to the evidence to be given by Sergeant Alan Robertson Grant. After a short adjournment to chafnbers, the evidence of Grant was proceeded with. . Grant said that on February 10 he interviewed Cooper, who said the missing child’s name was Boswell not Coper, the boy being his wife’s son. Cooper sad ihe had left his wife at a tram shelter at Sumner and taken the boy up some steps. Seeing a tram coming he had told the boy to go back to his mother. That was the last he saw of the boy. Cooper had said it would be like his wife to say he had “done the boy in.” There was no suggestion at that time that the boy was dead.

Cooper’s statement added that after returning from Sumner he went to the pictures. On his return to private hofel where he was staying with his wife, he was told by her the boy was missing. After making inquiries at Sumner, he rang the police.

“I did not harm him in any way,” Cooper declared in his statement. Sergeant Grant said that the following day Cooper, with a detective, went to Aranoni track, Clifton, where a boy named Bone)' pointed Cooper out, saving he was like a man he had seen going up the track with a litt I *-. boy. Grant described the finding of a child’s pink sun-hat. in a culverti The hat was bloodstained. In a later statement, Cooper said he had taken the boy up Aranoni track and sent the boy home from there. He had denied t»e murder of the child. Up to that time the word ‘ murder” had not been mentioned. When Cooper’s attention was drawn to this Cooper replied: “You are only trying to hang a man.” When told the child’s body had been found near where the hat was found, Cooper became agitated, continued Grant. Asked it he had any statement to make, Cooper said: — “No one saw 7 me murder the kid.”

Evidence Concludes P.A. CHRISTCHURCH, May 6 Thirty-five witnesses had been heard and 32 exhibits had been produced when the case for the Crown concluded in the Supreme Court this afternoon in. the trial of William Eric Cooper, aged 43, nurseryman, on the charge of murdering Leslie James Boswell, aged three years and nine months, at Clifton, Sumner, on February 9. The jury viewed the locality this afternoon. No evidence was called for the defence. Counsel will address the jury tomorrow, and Mr Justice Fleming will sum up. Police witnesses to-day were crossexamined about warnings being eiven to the accused before they, took statements. They said that the accused was not warned on February 10 when interviewed atjilelfast freezing works, where he was" employed. He was warned during an interview on February 11, when detectives learned that the boy’s body had been found When Dr D. T. Stewart, pathologist, gave evidence that, bloodstains were found on the accused’s clothes, Mr J K. Moloney, for the defence, asked if medical science could differentiate between the stains from the blood of a man and stains from the blood of certain animals The witness replied that it could not. Mr Moloney: "If a. man had the opportunity of being in a place where the blood of animals was shed, is it possible that it is the blood of animals you diagnosed?” Witness: “Yes ”•