HOW A FAMILY DIED.

Mataura Ensign, 29 November 1911, Page 5

HOW A FAMILY DIED.

THE QUEENSLAND TRAGEDY. WHAT A CINGALESE SAID. BY ELECTHIC TKLECIiAMI. COPYRIGHT. I'Elt UNITED I'liKSa ASSOCIATION. Received November 29, 9.35 a.m. BRISBANE, Nov. 29. Police Court proceedings have commenced at Maekay against George Silva, the Cingalese who is charged with the murder of Agnes Ching and her five children. Accused was employed at Clung's farm. The constable who arrested Silva detailed a conversation with the prisoner who said that when Ching left home he was shooting a hawk with Ching's gun and afterwards he went to sleep. Near the railway lie met Ching when returning and told him that ho had not seen the family. After the victims were discovered prisoner went to inform the police. Me carried the clothes he had been wearing during the day in a parcel but threw them away. Witness said, "You're fooling! You know who murdered the family." Prisoner replied, "God knows they were good to me. I never murdered them!" When the bodies of the two missing children were found prisoner broke down and cried. Tracks near where they were found compared with prisoner's boots. Another police witness declared that prisoner admitted burning the clothes he was wearing on the day of the murder. Witness found in the remains of a fire a portion of some clothing, a gold watch, a razor and a medicine bottle which prisoner claimed. Prisoner told witness that he, a neighbouring Hindoo farmer named Dooley Khun and a white man conspired to murder the family a few Sundays before and Dooley Khan shot the mother and killed the baby beside her. He continued, "1 shot Maudie and Hughie. When Eddie Dooley returned to school ho told them their mother and the children were waiting for them in the back paddock. We went together and Dooley Khan was waiting with a pea-rifle and shot them. Khan wanted to marry May Ching and get the farm. I wanted Maudie but her mother objected." Prisoner admitted that he used a revolver and shot Maudie and Hughie and after searching the paddock lie found the weapon.

A message from Mackay, dated November 19, in the Sydney 'Daily Telegraph' stated: —The wife and three children of a well-known Chinese farmer on Alligator Creek, named Chariot) Ching, have been brutally murdered. Two other children of the same family are missing. Ching, who has been in the district a number of years, married a white- woman. His farm is situated about 20 miles from Mackay, in the Plane Creek district. Ching had just completed the season's harvesting, and on Kriday last he went to the Plane Creek mill, leaving a Cingalese at the heme stead with Mrs Ching and a girl aj::< d between 16 and also two little (nikireii, a boy aged 4 years and a girl aged 18 months. Ching returned about 5 p.m. and found the house shut up. The Cingalese had tea with him. About 9 p.m., as his wife had not returned, he visited the neighbors. Finding she had not been there, lie went to another farm, with the same result, and then returned and procured a lantern, and with the Cingalese went to ihe house, which he entered through a window, the Cingalese holding the lantern. Ching found the wife, with three children, huddled together on the floor, dead, covered with a tablecloth, and a Bible resting on the bodies. The eldest girl was shot with a revolver, while the children's skulls were battered in with a blunt instrument. A gun belonging the house was found outside smashed to pieces. Two other children, a boy 10 years of age, and girl of S, wore at school on Friday afternoon, and reached home about four, leaving several other children at the gate. Nothing more was heard of them until noon to-day, when their dead bodies were found in a paddock three-quarters of a mile from the house. One had been shot and the other had its skull smashed in.