OFFICER'S MAD CRIME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17459, 1 May 1920, Page 2 (Supplement)

OFFICER'S MAD CRIME.

MURDERS WIFE AND CHILD ✓. . - -y j* THEN COMMITS SUICIDE. Captain James: Leach, R.G.A., aged forty-five, his wife. Maud Alice, aged thirty-seven, and their three and a-half years old son, Geoffrey, were the victims of a terrible triple tragedy at Brockhurst, near Gosport. » Leach was on leave from the Purflect Demobilisation Depot, and he arrived at his home, Hanley road, Broekhurst, late at night. He said he had been detained by a mass meeting, and he seemed slightly depressed. But he greeted his wife in his usual affectionate manner, Mrs. Lizzie B.linger, s'ster of Mrs. Leach, was in the house, and before she went to bed she heard Mrs. Leach Bay to the captain, "If you have not finished work, you had better return to the camp on Sunday." She left them chatting quite affably. Next morning alio took tea to them. They then secmod to be in their usual sprits. Before leaving them, she lifted the child from his cot and took him to her own room. After lying down for a few seconds, she heard a"gurgling noiso in his parents' bedroom. Though she went thcro, she could not enter. She pushed hard against the door and so managed to force it partly open. Then she was terrified at seeing her sister, who had evidently tried to reach the door, lying on the bedroom floor, her nightdress saturated in blood. Leaoh was standing over her, with a razor in his hand. _ - Screaming for x assistance Mrs. Bellinger rushed out of the home, and a neighbour fetched the police. But when they I arrived Mrs. Leach and the child wero ! lying at the foot of the stairs with their I throats cut. i . Captain Leach was found in the bedroom with similar wounds in his throat. All were dead and a razor was found bv Leach's side. 'Mrs. Leach was the captain's second wife. They had two sons in the army. Not one word of a quarrel had Mrs. Bellinger heard, so that the sudden became all the more mysterious. It would seem that after Mrs. Bellinger rushed from the house, Mrs. Leach, in her frantic struggle, must havo had strength enough to rise and to break free from the bedroom. Mrs. Bellinger thinks her sister must have been attacked after falling asleep again. At the inquest the jury found that Captain Leach, R.G.A., killed his wife and son, Geoffrey, and then committed suicide during temporary insanity. It was stated in evidence that he had been suffering from influenza and had imaginative worries ,as to the accounts of the officers' mess at Purfleet Demobilisation Depot, where he was mess president. The accounts were actually quite correct. * Two days before the tradgedy the captain told a sergeant-major that he was "thinking of committing suicide," as worry over the accounts prevented him from sleeping. lie'also told this non-commissioned officer that he woke up in the night, lighted a candle, and wrote on a piece of-paper: "Shall I commit suicide before the mess meeting or after?" Later he woke again, and wrote: "If I do that, ( what will happen to wife and children?"