ALLEGED MURDER

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3261, 31 January 1931, Page 5

ALLEGED MURDER

COLSTON BEFORE THE COURT.

NATIONAL PARK TRAGEDY. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) Taumarunui, this day. At the Magistrate’s Court this morning, before Mr. R. M. Watson, S.M., Charles Colston, aged 35, a boilermaker, was charged with the murder of Alice Rose Florence Anderson at National Park on January 6. Mr. H. T. Gillies, Crown Prosecutor (Hamilton) prosecuted and Mr. B. W. Elwarth (Auckland) appeared for the accused. Mr. Gillies said he did not intend to open the case in this Court, and called the first witness, William Augustus Hutton, civil engineer and a licensed surveyor with the P.WJL The witness Hutton said he visited the scene of the tragedy, and produced a plan of the locality. On the extreme left-hand top corner of the plan there was shown an enlarged plan of the room where the tragedy took place, showing a picture of the dead woman recumbent on the floor. It was pointed out to witness by the police that witness observed that damage was done to the vertical window bar where the tragedy took place. The bar was damaged rather less than half way up the bottom pane and the only window in the room was a horizontal angle relative to the side of the house, also its vertical angle shown on the plan was a horizontal angle 34 degrees 35 minutes and its vertical angle 8 degrees 30 minutes. The height of the damage to the window was 4ft. lsin. from the floor. Witness stretched the tape from the inside to the outside of the room and the tape struck the back sft. 3ins. from the floor. If the shot was fired into the room anything over sft. 3in. in height must have been struck by the shot as shown by the damage done to the window bar. Witness observed blood spots on the walls as' shown in the perspective plan.