DROWNED IN TROUGH

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 283, 13 November 1936, Page 7

DROWNED IN TROUGH

Young Married Man and His Daughter MURDER AND SUICIDE By Telegraph—Press Association, INVERCARGILL, Nov. 12. A distressing tragedy involving infanticide and suicide occurred at Otama, Eastern Southland, last night, when a young married man committed suicide by drowning himself in a stock water-trough and drowned his daughter, aged six weeks. A searching inquiry made to-day by the district coroner at Gore failed to produce any reason for the tragedy.

The victims were William Joseph Thomas Green, farm labourer, aged 28, and Muriel Gladys Green, aged six weeks, his daughter. Green was employed as a labourer on the farm of his uncle, Mr Robert Mee, and with his wife and child lived at the farmhouse. He apparently was in normal spirits on Wednesday and spent the day ploughing. In the evening, after he had fed and watered tlio horses, he announced that he was going to bed, but some time later it was discovered that he and the child were mining. A search was organised with the co-operation of neighbours, and eventually the bodies were recovered from a water-trough about 100 yards from the house. The indications were that Green had held the child in his arms in the water, which was not more than IS inches deep. At the inquest Agnes Isabella Naomi Green, wife of Green and mother of the child, said she could not give any reason for the tragedy. She and her husband had been happy in their married life, and they had no financial troubles. She had known her husband for about two years and had given him no cause whatsoever for jealousy. Her husband had consulted a doctor concerning his health while witness was in a maternity home a few weeks ago. Witness did not ask the reason for his visit. Her husband was very fond of the child, and witness could only think that he had taken the child’s life because he could not bear to leave it after him.

The coroner said that the tragedy was incomprehensible. From the evidence which had been given he could only return a verdict that the father had murdered the child by drowning it in the water-trough and that he had committed suicide by drowning while in a state of mental depression.