FAMILY TRAGEDY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20965, 31 August 1931, Page 12

FAMILY TRAGEDY.

SEVEN PERSONS DEAD. PARENTS AND FIVE CHILDREN. DEATH PACT SUSPECTED. A shocking domestic tragedy, involving apparently tho murder of a wife and five children, and tho suicide of the husband, who had been unemployed for nine months, occurred at Carlisle, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, early on the morning of August 21. The man evidently shot his wife and children with a revolver and then ended his own life, first cutting his left wrist with a razor and then shooting himself in the head.

The victims were:—Roderick A. Davies. the husband, aged about 36, carpenter; Dorothy Davies, the wife, about 35; Rita Davies, 14; Robert Davies, 12; Dorothy Davies, 10; John Davies, six; Alfred Davies, five months. Mr. Samuel Knifton, a neighbour, called at Davies' three-roomed Wooden house about 9 a.m. and found tho following note on the back door: "Mr. Knifton, please open the door." Regarding it as his friend's joke he walked into the kitchen, where a lamp was burning.

Mrs. Davies was lying dead on ' a bed with blood all round, and a bullet wound in her head. Seated in a chair beside the bed was Davies' dead body, with a wound in the temple and a revolver in one hand. Mr. Knifton went for the police, who found John, Rita and the babv dead in one bedroom, and Dorothy and Robert dead on stretchers in another. All had bullet wounds in the head. There was no sign of a struggle. The detectives state that they believe that Davies acted with his wife's consent, killing her first, and then the children. The reason for this belief is that a bed had been removed from the verandah to the kitchen, that the wife lay on _ tho bed fully clothed, and that the chair in which Davies died was drawn up clo'se to the bed.

The detectives found a bottle which they think contained an opiate, and which might have been used before the shooting. Nineteen discharged cartridges and a bloodstained piece of iron were picked up. The nearest house is only 40ft. away, but the occupants heard nothing unusual during the morning. Davies received a dole amounting to £2 9s a week. The house was well stocked with food, and the parents and the were in a healthy condition. Rita Davies, the eldest child, became 14 years of age on the day of tho tragedy.