Son Charged With Murder

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 61, 14 March 1938, Page 8

Son Charged With Murder

Father’s Body Found Under Pile of Hay APPARENTLY DEAD A MONTH SHOCKING TRAGEDY NEAR AUCKLAND Per Proas Association. AUCKLAND, Last Night. The decomposed body of an elderly man. Robert Fitzroy Spensley, a farmer of the Henderson Gum Block road, Swanson, with a bullet wound in the centre of the forehead, was discovered this afternoon hidden beneath a small pile of hay 20 yards from his house. Detectives from Auckland began investigations and within a short time after the body was found at 8 o’clock to-night Francis Robert Spensley, aged 18, son of the murdered mau, was charged with murder and will formally appear before a Magistrate to-morrow. It is said that in the four years the murdered man spent in the locality he had become fairly well known if a iriiie uncommunicative and at various umes of the day could be seen doing odd jobs about his small farm. For short periods of the year the victim, who had beeu a old prospector, visited the Te Aroha district to work on a claim he possessed so as to avoid forfeiture. Generally these visits were short. This year, however, he did not Teturn and so as far as could be discovered he had not been seen after February. it was because of his habit of going each year to Te Aroha that his absence for a fortnight did not inspire comment, but as the period became protracted the suspicions of local people were aroused. This afternoon Mr. fcj. Hammond, a neighbour, resolved to find out if Spensley were ill, as he was about 60 years of age and lived alone with his son in a three-roomed house, Mrs. Spensley having predeceased her husband some years before. Mr. Hammond had occasion to climb over the fence separating tr.j home paddock from the house section, when to his horror he saw what appeared to be the body of a dead man lying beneath a shallow mound of hay and screened from the road about 80 yards distant by a five feet high belt of pinus insignus. Without delay and informing no one of his intention he hurried to the nearest telephone and rang the police who were on the scene iu a remarkably short time, followed by Dr. Walter Giljuour, pathologist. As soon as Dr. Gilmour made an examination he said in his opinion the man had been dead a month. The detectives were of opinion that lie had been shot with a .22 calibre rifle. A search was made in the neighbourhood and two men returned with two guns. Exhaustive inquiries were made at all the farmhouses in au endeavour to find the murdered man’s son, but at 5 o’clock the youth walked into the house to find the police in charge. He was taken into the kitchen and questioned. The body itself was clothed only in a shirt and woollen underpants.