THE TRIAL OF MOUAT

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 138, 15 May 1925, Page 6

THE TRIAL OF MOUAT

SECOND EDITION

NO EVIDENCE CALLED IFOR DEFENCE. Per Pres« Association. CHRISTCHURCH, May 15. The trial of Mouat on a charge of wifo murder was resumed this morning. Detective Thompson, recalled, said that since the arrest on March 9 part of the section at Beckford street had been dug over by Someone. A heap where the os magnum bone was found had been disturbed and a largo animal bone was now lying there. The defence did not call any evidence. In. opening his address for the Crown, Mr Donnelly said : "I am sure it is with great feelings of satisfaction that you are approaching the end of this long, difficult and very important trial.” It was the right of the accused to say that tho Crown s ease ’had failed in the burden of establishing his guilt. It was upon this privilege that the accused rested his defence. The evidence for tho Crown, which hail been laid before the jury during the last few days, was the only evidence. It stood alone, uncontradicted and unchallenged, except' to the extent that it would be criticised, commented upon and explained in the address of counsel for the defence. Mr Donnelly, continuing, said that the jury must remember that direct evidence in cases of that nature and not requisite facts did not lie and could not be mistaken and that circumstantial evidence had been "relied upon from the earliest All the facts pointed to Mrs Mouat s death at Mouat’s hands. There were a. few simple facts, the inference from which was beyond dispute. The first was that Airs Mouat was’left alone with Mouat in a house; the second was that she had not been seen again; the third was that lie should know what had become of her be cause he was the last person with her before her disappearance and was her husband; the fourth was that ho persistently made false statements to tho police; the fifth was that she had not been seen since she went into the house with him on the evening of February 19. Olio hundred and one points of the evidenco showed that she was alive in tho house that night, lho woman could not be snatched or plucked out of the world. She must have been alive in the house and her body must have been destroyed, dismembered on interred. Thirty-one bones found in tho garden had been shown to be the bones of a small Woman and they must belong to her. 100 answer' to all the questions suggested by those facts was that she was dead and that she met her death at Alouat s hands. Mr Donnelly, after speaking one anil a-half hours, concluded by saying that any suggestion of suicide was hopeless. The Grown’s case was that Alouat committee the crime callously. . , ... Mr Thomas, for the defence, said that there wa3 no evidence that Mrs Alouat was dead and no direct evidence that she had been murdered. The bones obviorwly were human but it could not be said because they were found on the section that there had been murder I lie bones might have been left by the Maoris in the or ’seventies. The Crown had not proved that the bones were those of Mrs Alouat.