Farmer Charged With Wife Murder

Northern Advocate, 17 December 1938, Page 9

Farmer Charged With Wife Murder

[Per Press Association. Copyright .] NELSON, This Day.

As a sequel to the shocking tragedy in the sequestered little centre of Uruwhenua, in the Golden Bay district, early yesterday morning, when Mrs Laura. Hay Kerr, aged 49, and her 10-year-old son Jack, were fatally shot, Arthur Frederick Kerr, farmer, of Uruwhenua, was charged this morning with the murder of his wife. On the application of Inspector J. Carroll, Kerr was remanded to appear at the Magistrate’s Court at Nelson on Monday next. Grim Struggle for Rifle. Following the shooting yesterday morning, there ensued a grim struggle for possession of the rifle between the husband of the dead woman and his daughter, Miss Ila Kerr, aged 19, who eventually succeeded in Cresting the weapon from her father with the assistance, in the closing stages, of another brother, Max Kerr. There were no eyewitnesses of the tragedy, and there is nothing- to suggest the motive. The family was held in high esteem by the people of the Golden Bay district, to whom the news of the tragedy came as a great shock.

The detonation of rifle shots in quick succession awakened Miss Kerr shortly before 5 a.m. At first she did not take any notice of them,, ns her father was in the habit of using his pearifle in the morning to shoot starlings. A Ghastly Discovery. However, when she heard her father moving about the house she became suspicious that something was wrong. Rushing from her room to that occupied by her mother and young brother, she was horrified to find them lying in bed with blood pouring from bullet wounds, which subsequently proved fatal. The victims had apparently been shot while they were asleep.