HORRIBLE MURDER AND SUICIDE.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume IV, Issue 553, 13 June 1882, Page 2

HORRIBLE MURDER AND SUICIDE.

Christchurch, This Day. A ghastly crime is reported from the Timber District of Oxford, some 30 miles northeast of Christchurch. The particulars <jo far as known are :—Yesterday morning albout 5.15, soon after a gang of platelayers of the Oxford Branch Railway had commenced work, and whilst two men named Packuetz and Horne were placing a sleeper on a trolly, another of the gang named John Greenfield, who was standing behind with an adze in his hand, suddenly lifted the adze and said to John Horne, who was helping to load the trolly, “You b- , I will do for you,” and struck him with the adze behind the ear, the blade of the adze running across his neck and penetrating in to a depth of two inches and a half, severing his head from his body. The foreman of the gang, Packnetz, said “John, what are you doing, man,” whereupon Greenfield rushed upon the ganger and said, “You b , I will do for you too.” Packnetz ran away, and the murderer followed him for a considerable distance, when Packnetz suddenly turned upon him and seized him, ami in doing so received a blow which the murderer aimed at him on the side of the head, but fortunately only with the handle of the adze. Packnetz then seized the adze and wrenched it from him. The murderer then ran away across a field on the opposite side of the main road, and was afterwards found by Sergeant Scott lying down in a furrow where there was only a small quanity of water. He was stretched at full length in a furrow with his face in the water; when turned over lie was found to bo quite dead.

Horne has lived a long time in Oxford, and during the greater "part of the time has been employed on the railway. He has a wife and family of seven children. He has been a steady and careful man, and has acquired some property. Greenfield has not been long in the district, and leaves a wife and four children, the youngest of w'hich is about six weeks old. From the position of the cut it must have been given whilst Horne was stooping at the trolly with his back towards the murderer, tho blow being given over the left shoulder. The whole width of the adze, which is an ordinary carpenters one, penetrated to its full width, and almost sovered the head fiom tho body. Sergeant Scott was quickly on the spot, and both bodies were laid at the Oxford Hotel on beds, side by side. Tho murder took place near Starvation Hill.