DEATH SENTENCE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 201, 8 August 1928, Page 5

DEATH SENTENCE

FOR WUBIN MURDERER. “A TALE OF HORROR.” ’Australian and N.Z. Press Assn.! [United Prew Association—By CableCopyright. I (Received 8, 8.15 a.m.) Perth, Aug. 8. Clifford Hulme has been convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his employer, Harold Smith, at Wubin. The Chief Justice, Sir William McWilliam, said: ‘‘l have listened in this Court to many terrible tales, but never one to equal this in horror, disclosing, as it did, deliberate killing and unspeakable bestiality and cruelty to your employer’s family.” Dr. Kerr, prison doctor at Perth, gave evidence that Hulme was capable of feigning insanity,, although it was imposhible to affirm the state of his mind at the time of the tragedy. The Inspector-General of the Insane, Dr. Bentley, declared that Hulme must have been insane at the time of the tragedy owing to the absence of motive.

Accused’s defence was insanity’.

Clifford Hulme, employed by a farmer, Harold Eaton Smith, reported to the police on June 24th that he bad killed Smith. The police investigated and found Smith in the bush with a bullet wound in his head, and that Smith’s wife and six-year-old daughter and baby of twelve months had been violated, the daughter after having her skull fractured by a blow from a piece of wood. Another daughter Elsie, aged ten years, states that Hulme tried to strangle her when she attempted to intervene. Hulme told the police that he shot Smith while the latter was driving a tractor, adding that his mind was a blank after that, but he remembered changing his clothes and walking 23 miles to Wubin and then entraining for Dalwallinu. Hulme was born on Lord Lascelles’ estate in England, and has been in Australia five years.